Christmas by Judith Flanders

Author:Judith Flanders
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Early mentions of gift-wrapping are rare, and difficult to distinguish from the white or brown paper shops used to protect purchases on their journey home. In the 1860s a children’s book published in Boston mentioned in passing the ‘white papered presents’ under the tree, as though everyone did it, yet Nast’s 1863 engraving of Santa Claus in the army camp shows that the soldiers’ gifts came unwrapped in their wooden shipping crates. As late as the 1880s a British children’s book describing a German Christmas felt it needed to explain, as though it would not otherwise be understood: ‘Every present is wrapped up in paper, and labelled from Mary to Jane, or Jane to Mary, as the case may be.’

The wrapped present, arriving in the middle of the nineteenth century, fits chronologically with the pervasive mid-Victorian approach to decoration more generally, one perhaps best described as Things to Put Things In and Things to Cover Things With. Partly this was a matter of taste, but coverings and boxes were also pragmatic responses to gas-lighting and coal fires. Gas was much brighter, and easier to use, than candles or lamps, but it had significant drawbacks: it damaged textiles and metals, and degraded dyes. It also left behind a sticky residue that settled on every surface; the soot from the coal then stuck to the residue, making endless daily cleaning both laborious and necessary. Hence the great Victorian cavalcade of containerization: glass jars to cover flowers and ornaments; cases for spectacles, handkerchiefs and watches; covers for matchboxes; bags or jars for tobacco; folders to hold blotting paper, or stationery, or stamps; embroidery covers, needle cases and pin cushions; bags for fabric scraps, or buttons; toilet-table covers; slipper bags, stocking bags, nightgown and lingerie bags and more.

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