Tempting treats & festive feats: christmas shopping down the ages

Welcome to the History Extra podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine. As we get ever closer to Christmas, many of you will be heading out to the shops to look for the perfect presents. And this mad dash in search of festive gifts is nothing new.

In today's episode, Annie Gray, the author of The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker, A History of the High Street, takes Emily Briffitt on a tour of our festive spending habits, from the horrors of visiting a Victorian butcher's shop to enormous seasonal turkey parades and outrageous stunts involving elephants. We're going to be delving into the history behind Christmas shopping. Now, today, Christmas shopping seems to be an almost essential part of the holiday season. Has it always been that way? To some extent, yes, in that the festive period has always been a point in time where people ate more than they usually did and partied more than they usually did, and that meant

buying more than they usually did. Christmas itself, not necessarily the focal point for gifts. So really until the 17th, beginning of the 18th century, most people gave gifts at New Year and throughout the year as well. So there was a lot of reciprocal gift giving, things like the mickle muscles and things like that between tenant and landlord. But in terms of the festive season, it was New Year's Day, New Year's Eve, that kind of thing.

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