Between Christmas and New Year is a great time to keep appreciating the Christmas Tree. This wonderful, excessive piece of Christmas description is Dickens, of course, from a magazine piece of 1850. This is later than two of the great descriptions of Christmas excess with which we are far more familiar – ‘A Christmas Carol’ published in 1843 and the wonderful Christmas section of ‘The Pickwick Papers’ written in 1836.
There are lots of points of interest here. The opening of the piece reminds us of the relative newness of the Christmas tree as a central feature of household celebrations. The multitude of toys and small gifts hung from the tree are enough to fill anyone with wonder. Dickens captures perfectly the transformative nature of light and occasion as he describes the cheap tin toys acquiring weight and lustre on the tree and in the eyes of the watchers.
Dickens goes on in the remainder of the piece to reminisce about his own memories of toys and playthings, the power of toy theatres, storybooks, dolls houses and their power to delight and sometimes terrify.
The Solitary Reader 