The Brontës and Christmas

This essay considers the Brontë sisters’ engagement with Christmas in their lives and art and examines the extent to which they shared the contemporary vision of Christmas. With the invention of the modern Christmas by the Victorian urban bourgeoisie, the mid-nineteenth century witnessed a vast proliferation of Christmas publications and culture. The sisters’ literary representation of the season could be regarded as a response to the new trend. Charlotte’s depictions seem both to endorse and to contest the dominant ideology of the Victorian Christmas. Emily casts a nostalgic eye on the old English Christmas, harking back to the diminishing tradition in the age of modernisation. Anne’s vision of Christmas is characterised by its distinct moral and spiritual undertones. In their brief lives, the sisters’ Christmas celebrations, modest and untainted, were reflected in their writing. To explore the Brontës’ Christmas is to encounter Christmas untouched as yet by the needs of industrial capitalism and its concomitant bourgeois culture, which would fundamentally transform the whole fabric of modern society.