Gesa Stedman reads from “A Christmas Tree” by Charles Dickens

Gesa Stedman, who teaches literature and culture at the Centre for British Studies in Berlin, reads the beginning of Charles Dickens’s story “A Christmas Tree”, first published in Dickens’s weekly magazine “Household Words” in 1850. The story describes a fairly recent innovation in middle-class English families: the Christmas tree, probably made fashionable by Queen Victoria’s German husband, Prince Albert, who had introduced this vital element of German Christmas celebrations to England in 1840. The story also tells us about Victorian toys and objects thought suitable as presents for both younger and older people, and hints at the choice of gendered gifts.