Christmas

Christmas reading, Victorian traditions and the stories behind the season: ghost stories told by the fire, the real tale behind The Nutcracker, and the most famous pudding in English fiction. Each post links to the prints that go with it, for your own walls or for someone who loves a book at Christmas.

12 October 2026

A Christmas Carol quotes and where they come from

A Christmas Carol is so quoted that many of its lines feel like proverbs. Here are the ones people use most, checked against the text, with the stave each one is from.

A Christmas Carol art print in warm candlelit Victorian painting: a cleared warehouse with a fiddler on a desk, Mr and Mrs Fezziwig leading the reel and young Scrooge laughing among the dancing apprentices.

12 October 2026

Fezziwig's Ball: a Victorian Christmas party

Mr Fezziwig is the best employer in English fiction, and his Christmas Eve ball is the best party. Here is what Dickens described, and how to throw one in a modern house.

Nutcracker and the Mouse King art print in etched lines with soft colour: the toys full size under a Christmas tree at midnight, the Nutcracker leading toy soldiers against the seven-headed Mouse King as Marie raises her slipper.

12 October 2026

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King: the story behind the ballet

Most people know The Nutcracker from the ballet. The story it came from is stranger, darker and funnier, and it was written for children over two hundred years ago. Here is where it began.

Victorian Christmas ghost story print in a warm engraving: five or six people round a parlour fire on Christmas Eve, candles low and holly on the mantel, with a pale face at the frosted window behind them.

12 October 2026

Christmas ghost stories: why the Victorians told them

Today we do ghosts at Halloween and carols at Christmas. For the Victorians, Christmas was the ghost season. Here is why a good fright and a warm fire belonged together.

Christmas pudding print in the style of a Victorian engraving with a warm flame-coloured wash: Mrs Cratchit carrying in the blazing pudding to the family table, with the line from A Christmas Carol beneath.

12 October 2026

Mrs Cratchit's Christmas pudding

The Cratchits have a small goose and a very big pudding. The scene in Stave Three is the best description of a Christmas pudding in English, and it is worth reading before you make your own.

A Christmas Carol quotes and where they come from

Fezziwig's Ball: a Victorian Christmas party

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King: the story behind the ballet

Christmas ghost stories: why the Victorians told them

Mrs Cratchit's Christmas pudding

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