The Christmas feast has its roots from before the Middle Ages, but it's during the Victorian period that the dinner we now associate with Christmas began to take shape. Previously, meats such as beef and goose were the centrepiece of the Christmas dinner. Turkey however was favoured by the wealthier, middle class sections of 19th century society and before long it had became the fashionable choice; by the late 20th century it was the dominant meat in a traditional Christmas day feast!
The ‘official’ Christmas card didn’t come about until the 1840s. It all started with Henry Cole. He commissioned an artist to design a card for Christmas. The image was a joyous and festive one and promptly encouraged people to make their own. The advancement of colour printing technology and the halfpenny postage rate helped the Christmas card industry take off and in 1880 the Christmas card industry had produced 11.5 million cards in that year alone. The beginnings of a commercialised Christmas?