Consuelo Vanderbilt’s Cold Christmas in a Gilded Cage

Three American heiresses and the very different Christmases they found in Britain

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When America’s wealthiest daughters crossed the Atlantic in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they swapped familiar traditions for the extravagance, pomp, and ceremony of the British Christmas season. Gone were the cranberry sauces of home and the cosy parlours of New York brownstones. In their place rose towering state rooms, formal house parties, and English customs shaped by centuries of aristocratic ritual.

But the Gilded Heiresses did not experience Christmas in Britain in the same way. The season reflected the character of their marriages, the quirks of the houses they occupied, and the roles they adopted as duchesses, viscountesses, and countesses.

Below, we slip behind three very different sets of doors to explore how some of our favourite American-born women spent their Christmases across the pond.