Hello, I'm Lucy Worsley, chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces.

You're listening to our podcast that explores the history and stories of our six palaces.

These talks are a collection of some of our best live events.

I really hope you enjoy listening.

Tis the season to be jolly, so we've dipped into our stocking full of podcasts

and pulled out three festive talks that explore Christmas traditions through the ages.

In this talk, historian Dr Mark Connolly takes us on a comical whistle-stop tour of Christmas

traditions from medieval times right through to the Victorians and Modern Day. takes us on a comical whistle-stop tour of Christmas traditions,

from medieval times right through to the Victorians and modern day.

So, let's get going about Christmas in the 19th century.

One of the big cliches that we have now that we carry around is that Dickens invents Christmas,

because there really wasn't such a thing as Christmas

before Scrooge and Christmas Carol and all that. That's going to massively overdetermined.

What I think Dickens does is revitalises in many ways, but or he expresses, shall we say.

It's not him personally. He is part of a wider

movement in the early to mid-19th century that is pushing Christmas forward again. It never quite

petered out as a festivity, but it was relatively modest.

And I think what happens in the 1830s, 1840s, as I'll come, I'll go into the reasons for this,

is a sense of needing to reconnect with ancient festivals.

And Dickens is one of the people that helps give it voice,

but he certainly doesn't invent the thing, lock, stock and barrel.

Now, one of the great elements of this is the Carol revival.

...