Gilded Age Christmas Etiquette

Give your wife something for herself, not a piece of furniture or an article for family use. Ditto as to your husband. 
– Photo source, Pinterest

Christmas Chimes

Do not make Christmas a day of balancing accounts of gifts. Santa Claus comes down the chimney when love kindles the fire. Christmas is the day when the children get up without being called. Better is a little gift where love is, than a necklace of diamonds for appearance's sake. 

The most approved invitation etiquette for a Christmas dinner is that prescribed in Luke xiv., 12-14. Give your wife something for herself, not a piece of furniture or an article for family use. Ditto as to your husband. How much brighter the fires on our own Christinas hearths will look when we know that we have been the means of brightening a fire that had grown dim on some other hearthstone. Good Housekeeping, 1889

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Holiday Gift Giving in 1906

The soul of Christmas is thoughtfulness and remembrance, rather than display of reckless generosity

The Social Diary on Christmas Etiquette

There is etiquette in Christmas gifts, as in all the amenities of life. And every Christmas brings, with its good cheer, a world of unfortunate blunders in sending presents. Promiscuous Christmas gifts are only defensible if the token is of no intrinsic value and really amounts to no more than a greeting. It is pleasant if those who can afford it, send some pretty trifle of the season to their acquaintances, all around. The little token causes no embarrassment to the recipient and establishes no obligation. There are hundreds of forms of little baubles that lend pretty color to that idea. Blessed are they who buy Christmas gifts with taste, rather than with lavish expenditure. 

The soul of Christmas is thoughtfulness and remembrance, rather than display of reckless generosity. An inexpensive gift of rare good taste —showing that the giver took pains—is far more agreeable than a mere lump of cost that, perhaps, is of no use to the one receiving it, causing more regret over the waste of money than pleasure. That point is the secret of happy Christmas giving. How much better to be able to send a pretty thing to all on your list than to blow yourself for some of them and abandon the others. The artistic little gift is the salvation of the hard-up who would otherwise indulge in the folly of going on short rations through January and February to make a Christmas splurge. 

Christmas is pre-eminently the children's time and the old people's time. Parents who double-cross their children by waiting until Christmas to buy them what they must have, anyhow, commit a peculiar cruelty. And the sons and daughters who forget their old parents are even more cruel, for while the disappointment of children passes away, the aged have nothing sweeter than being remembered and nothing sadder than being forgotten. –Grace Grundy’s “Social Diary”, 1906

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

13 Victorian Etiquette Tips for Men

Did you know that flowers and candy comprise the gifts which, according to etiquette, a young woman may receive from a man friend? And that a gentleman alway sends his card with a gift?

Thirteen Points of Etiquette

Thirteen questions gent by “Bashful,” concerning the correct deportment of a young man in his relations with young women, are answered in the following: 

1. It is not the correct thing for a young man to call upon a girl unless he has first received her permission to do so. 
2. If a young man desires to make the acquaintance of a girl whom he has never met, let him ask some friend of hers for an introduction, or obtain a letter of introduction to the young lady. 
3. Two gentlemen should never try to “sit each other out” when calling upon the same young woman. The caller who arrived first, ought to leave first. 
4. When making a call, the young man should leave his umbrella, overcoat and rubbers in the hall, also his hat and cane. A formal call should not be of more than half an hour's length. 
5. If a man is escorting two ladies, only one of them should take his arm, the other walking by her side. A gentleman does not offer his arm to the second lady unless there be some special reason, such as the bad condition of the sidewalk or feebleness on her part. 
6. A man does not offer his arm when walking with a lady in the daytime unless it be on a crowded street or slippery walk. 
7. Flowers and candy comprise the gifts which, according to etiquette, a young woman may receive from a man friend. A gentleman alway sends his card with a gift. 
8. When a gentleman is introduced a second time to a lady whom he has met before, it is not necessary for the lady to mention the previous meeting. Gentlemen are expected to ask for introductions if they do not know the ladies who are without partners at a dance. 
9. Gentlemen and ladies do not enter a room arm in arm. The lady enters in advance of the gentleman. 
10. Gentlemen should always shake hands with other men when introduced, but a man should never offer to shake hands with a lady unless she indicates a desire to do so. 
11. A gentleman lifts his hat to a lady acquaintance whom he meets on the street, and also to any lady whom the person walking with him happens to salute, but he does not look at the lady if she is not an acquaintance of his. 
12. When a young man escorts a girl to her home, he goes with her to the door and leaves when she is admitted, unless she invites him to come in. 
13. If a young man wishes to invite a girl whom he has met only a few times to go with him to an entertainment he had better send her a written invitation by mail or ask permission to call, and then when he calls, invite her. It would be correct to ask for the young lady whom you wished to see, if some member of her family whom you did not know came to the door to admit you. – Marin Journal, 1895

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J. Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia