in any kind of excess tends to worsen the condition of sick people (304–5). Concluding with a sketch of drunken men whose condition is difficult to differentiate from apoplexy, Hunt’s contribution contrasts the idealized view of England underpinning the stories that surround it. Thus, reading the number in its entirety reveals an ongoing conversation among the pieces that makes each one less definitive than it appears in isolation.
Following Hunt’s contribution, “Christmas in India” by Joachim Heyward Siddons returns to extreme vaunting of English Christianity as a civilizing force. Siddons’s essay bounces off of the idea that Christmas in a land associated with Hinduism and Islam (denigrated as “idolatrous” and “rude”) is not a ridiculous concept. The projects of “zealous missionaries” and others have succeeded in transforming India so that “the tide of European conquest, and, better still, the tide of European civilisation, has carried to the benighted land knowledge, and a large spirit of toleration” (305). Ignoring the violence of conquest and imperialism, the speaker then explains how Indian culinary traditions and decorative plants are repurposed to enhance Christmas celebrations. In another linking of the Irish to racialized others, rural Indians’ worshipful offerings “resemble the contributions of the Irish peasantry to Father Luke or Father Brady” (306). The strength of the colonial rulers in this setting is so profound that they can even affect the experience of climate in Calcutta, where English households light Christmas fires and “there is a wintry feel about the atmosphere; and as the chairs are drawn round the fire-place, and the whiskey-punch is brewed, the cherished idea of home on Christmas Day is suitably and completely realised” (306). Siddons’s idyllic domestic fireside forecasts the frame concept Dickens develops for 1852 and reduces the materials necessary to create such an atmosphere to chairs, a fireplace, and some whiskey. The emphasis on “home” as both private and public, as a space for family celebrations as well as the achievement of England’s national dominance, also resonates with the voyeurism of the number’s opening piece, in which Christmas celebrations are surveyed to ensure that celebrants exhibit an appropriate level of cheer and introspection.
Dialogism continues to characterize the 1850 number as the imperial project moves from hot to cold in Robert McCormick’s and Dickens’s “Christmas in the Frozen Regions,” which relates an episode pertinent to an 1841 polar expedition. McCormick joined an expedition that explored the South Pole in the same two ships John Franklin would take on the ill-fated 1845 expedition in search of the Northwest Passage. The level of fictionalization in McCormick’s piece is unclear, particularly since Dickens is listed as a collaborator. The story is important to the Christmas canon in at least two ways: first, as part of the premier Christmas number’s endorsement of imperial dominance as part of the holiday’s significance; and second, as the journal’s first Christmastime reference to the Franklin Expedition, which Dickens later defended passionately and alluded to in many future Christmas stories. McCormick’s story is about how the men celebrate Christmas in 1841 with “the usual old English fare[,] Roast beef . . . followed by the homely never-to-be-forgotten plum-pudding” (307). Surrounded by icebergs, the crew carves a ballroom into the ice for New Year and sculpts a snow woman complete with “a profusion of ringlets” about her head (307–8). The story closes with an insistence that the missing members of the Franklin Expedition may still be alive (a Christmas wish disappointed years later as news of the expedition’s demise spread).21
McCormick and Dickens weave storytelling and exploration together to maintain English Christmas traditions, and Samuel Sidney’s “Christmas Day in the Bush” continues those themes in Australia. Two men living a sparse life at a “new station” in the bush take a shortcut through the countryside “guided by Bushman’s signs and instincts” to crash a gentleman’s Christmas party (309). True to the tropes of transformation that under-gird colonial dreams, the host states in his toast that he had been “a beggar and an outcast” at home in Devon (310). The story augments the others by encouraging continued use of colonial lands for the reformation of those who fail in the home country. A happy ending reinforces that point as one of the visitors marries the pretty woman whose presence had drawn him to the party, and they pass “every succeeding Christmas Day under his own roof in the Bush” (310).
The number’s concluding piece, Richard H. Horne’s “Household Christmas Carols,” lacks strong thematic connections to the preceding stories, indicating that Wills and Dickens explore the possibilities of the Christmas number genre without a map dictating how the pieces fit together. Still, the mix of voices in the carol form and the collaboration inherent in group song-making draw out the conversational dynamics that run through the collection. Horne’s piece is one long carol with distinct verses spoken in the first-person voices of ailing children. “The Lame Child’s Carol” is followed by verses (all with the same chorus) for children who are “deaf,” “deformed,” “deaf and dumb,” “blind,” and “sick.” The final verse from a “healthy” child includes the aforementioned ill friends in his winter play, and each verse firmly links the patient, hopeful endurance of children to Christian love (310–12).
In addition to delineating subjects deemed appropriate for Christmastime, the first number’s formal qualities embed dialogue in the genre. Considering Knight’s story of the Christmas pudding, Waters notes that “dialogism is . . . a defining feature of the periodical context of the story,” which holds true in varying degrees for each piece in the collection.22 The implicit conversation between the stories validates and reinforces the necessity for specifically English customs to determine proper celebration of the holiday. As Sabine Clemm remarks, “Household Words frequently shows itself aware of the arbitrariness of national characteristics and its own struggle to define these. However, even the most astute writers never quite abandon the assumption that an essential Englishness does exist, even though Household Words’ definitions of it are usually fairly feeble.”23 The Christmas numbers will continue to construct, respond to, and sometimes fetishize this “essential Englishness.” The 1850 number concludes without remarking that a tradition of holiday writing has begun, but the following year’s publication takes steps to distinguish the Christmas issue as special.
Extra Number for Christmas of Household Words
The 1851 issue, called the “Extra Number for Christmas of Household Words,” is the first to be designated an “extra.” An advertisement declares that it will please readers by “Showing What Christmas Is to Everybody,”24 and six of the nine titles indeed begin with “What Christmas Is. . . .” Lacking a mission strong enough to sustain interest for twenty-four pages, the collection’s repetitive traits emerge in multiple descriptions of Christmas, exposing a need for the type of frame concept that Dickens develops the following year. Each piece displays a different angle from which one might glorify an English Christmas, but the reappearance of domestic fires, trees, festive foods, and principles of charity signals a lack of originality and creativity. Even giving voice to usually mute symbols, such as tree branches, fails to provide relief from the abundance of holiday clichés that plague the number. Some of the stories touch on an occasional unpleasant experience, but such moments are sandwiched by joyous recollections, and, on the whole, one can stomach only so many mentions of redemptive currants.
Still, the number’s common focus, “What Christmas Is,” suggests that the stories reinforce one another and that no individual speaker is alone in believing that Christmas merits pondering in print. Dickens begins with “What Christmas Is as We Grow Older,” a rumination on the role of memory and regret in celebration that continues to build a foundational Christmas vision. The piece defines “the Christmas spirit” as “the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty, kindness, and forbearance” (1). Outgrowing romantic fantasies of life, one should place hope in future generations and encourage dreams in children rather than turning bitter and regretful. The piece also insists on a particular type of remembrance of the dead, barring grief and tears while insisting that residents of “the City of the Dead” be welcomed in the celebration (2). Recounting the sad deaths of individuals ranging from young children to sailors, the narrator commands, “You shall hold your cherished
