Picture a Victorian Christmas: sprigs of holly shining in the candlelight, a stately tree standing in the corner, uptight revelers partaking in sedate celebrations suitable for the whole family. That’s what I thought, too, until I found out what really went on during a traditional Victorian Christmas while doing research for my novel, Screwing Scrooge: The Naughtiest Christmas Story Ever Told.
I discovered seven shockingly naughty activities Victorians enjoyed at Christmastime. Let’s experience them together with a typical Victorian man as our host. We’ll call him Bob Cratchit, since that’s the name of Charles Dickens’ hapless clerk in A Christmas Carol, and the lead character in Screwing Scrooge.
Night is falling. The candles are lit, the boughs of evergreen have been hung, and the guests are waiting in the parlor. Bob emerges from his bedroom, where he was giving his collar a final tweak, to greet them. But he’s interrupted by a knock at the front door. He opens it, and who should it be? Why, the postman!
Mail was delivered twelve times a day in Victorian London, and the postman is holding out several incredibly creepy Christmas cards to our host. No scenes of winter wonderlands or holly-decked halls greet Bob’s eyes, but dead birds, crazy-eyed Kris Kringles, gun-wielding dogs, sentient Christmas puddings grinning as they are stabbed with tongs and knives, and children being boiled to death in teapots.
Bob reaches for the holiday missives — whoops, he and the postman are caught under the mistletoe that hangs above the door! During the Victorian era, mistletoe kisses weren’t the perfunctory pecks you’re probably picturing. They could get a little lustful at times … or even a tad incestuous. As nineteenth-century poet and Christmas aficionado Eliza Cook wrote,
We’ll hang mistletoe over our dear little cousins,
And pull them beneath it, and kiss them by dozens
His heart pounding from the heated embrace, Bob heads to the parlor to join his guests and begin the festivities. First, the games. The Cratchit parlor is cramped and crowded. What better game to start with than blindman’s bluff?
“To play the standard game of blindman’s buff,” explains the Encyclopedia Britannica. “One player is blindfolded and then disoriented by being spun around several times. The other players, who are not blindfolded, amuse themselves by calling out to the ‘blind man’ and dodging away from him. … A player touched or caught by the blind man takes on the blindfold, although sometimes the blind man must guess the identity of his captive before the blindfold is removed.”
As described in the eighteenth-century pamphlet Round About our Coal Fire, or, Christmas Entertainments (yours for just one shilling back in 1796), the goal was more sadistic than merry. “It is lawful to set anything in the way for folks to tumble over, whether it be to break arms, legs, or heads, ‘tis no matter, for neck-or-nothing, the devil loves no cripples.”
In the Dickensian version of the game, it borders on sexual assault.
The way he went after that plump sister in the lace tucker was an outrage on the credulity of human nature. Knocking down the fire-irons, tumbling over the chairs, bumping up against the piano, smothering himself amongst the curtains, wherever she went, there went he! He always knew where the plump sister was. He wouldn’t catch anybody else. … She often cried out that it wasn’t fair; and it really was not. But when, at last, he caught her; when, in spite of all her silken rustlings, and her rapid flutterings past him, he got her into a corner whence there was no escape; then his conduct was the most execrable.
Speaking of sexual assault, next Bob and his guests play a game called Puss in the Corner. The basic premise can be summarized as “the men get extremely handsy with the women.” Or, per Round About our Coal Fire, “When a man catches his woman, he may kiss her ‘til her ears crack.” But should she fight him off, “then be assured she is a prude, and though she won’t stand a buss in public, she’ll receive it with open arms behind the door, and you may kiss her ‘til she makes your heart ache.”
The festive pervert who wrote the instructional Christmas pamphlet called Puss in the Corner, “a very harmless sport.”
All that romping and groping has made the party-goers thirsty. Time for the refreshments. A generous host would offer his invitees wassail, which is beer with chopped up apples and pumpkin pie spice sloshed in. In Dickens’ A Christmas Carol and Screwing Scrooge, however, Bob “compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons,” which would get his guests considerably drunker.
After a cooling drink, everyone girds themselves for the most dangerous Christmas game of all: snapdragon.
“Not snapdragon,” said George. “I burned my tongue beyond recognition last year.” – Screwing Scrooge
A hush falls over the assembled crowd. Bob takes out a large, shallow bowl and sets it on a table. As his guests watch, he carefully pours brandy into it. He reaches into a paper bag and grabs a handful of raisins. He drops them into the brandy. Then he lights the liquor on fire.
Samuel Johnson (he of the famous “WTF am I reading?” meme) describes what happens next as “a play in which they catch raisins out of burning brandy and, extinguishing them by closing the mouth, eat them.”
This is not some firewalking trickery, in which science protects the participants from being burned. Getting hurt was the point, according to Eliza Cook.
We shall have sport when Christmas comes,
When “snap-dragon” burns our fingers and thumbs
In a time before antibiotics and hospital burn units, this was indeed a mad game. Writer Anne Ewbank of Atlas Obscura has actually played snapdragon to see just how hazardous it could be; you can read what happened here.
The night is growing late. Santa Claus is on his way. The only thing left to do is blow out the candles and gather ‘round the fire for a ghost story. You might think ghost stories are for Halloween, and you might tell Bob so, but he will indignantly retort that you are wrong though you won’t understand him because his speech is unintelligible thanks to his blistered tongue.
A Christmas Carol is the only Victorian Christmas ghost story that is still popular today. But now, there’s another for your holiday entertainment. Screwing Scrooge: The Naughtiest Christmas Story Ever Told is a wickedly funny satire of Charles Dickens’ beloved classic, A Christmas Carol … with all the naughty bits Dickens left out.
Get yourself a copy today, and have yourself a naughty little Christmas!