The Weekly Times 150 years: Christmas archives from 1869 and 1919
When The Weekly Times celebrated its first Christmas 150 years ago, readers were still adjusting to a summer festive season. But 50 years later the mood was very different.
THE realities of a summer Christmas were still sinking in for the journalists and readers of The Weekly Times in 1869 — but that doesn’t mean they weren’t appreciating the opportunities it presented for having fun while marking the day.
It is 150 years since The Weekly Times marked its first festive season with its readers.
In 1869 the newspaper was released on Christmas Eve, a day earlier than usual — just as this newspaper will be next week.
The theme of Christmas in Australia compared with merry old England was a theme tackled in a column in that paper.
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“It has become by this time quite a common remark amongst us, that Christmas in Australia is a very different thing from Christmas in England,” the author wrote, arguing it would be worth a philosopher’s while to question if this was because of the climate only, or something more.
“And yet — and this is important — the solid belief of most of us in the religious cheerfulness of the time, with all its sacred, though subdued meaning, is not greatly affected. We still love the day, though we are fain to celebrate it in a different manner. The conclusion seems to be that it is the externals only, and not the essentials, which are altered, and that in the genial climate of Australia the emotional verities of the religion of peace and love are not any more likely to be impaired than we see them to have been in the burning latitudes within the tropics.”
The writer of the Peerybingle Papers — a column in the newspaper that appeared for 96 years and commented on the issues of the day, often with humour — on Christmas Eve in 1869 wished everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year — “except fraudulent insolvents and criminals in general”.
The writer also wished for everyone a pocket full of money and a full stomach, “because Britons never could be merry and happy on an empty stomach, since the first invention of beef and beer”.
“Of all the ways of being happy there’s nothing to lick the Australian plan of dodging the sun on a hot-wind day by stopping in doors and stowing away beef, beer, and pudding till evening, and then winding up the fun by spending four or five hours with several thousand more perspiring Christians in a blazing theatre.”
The following week, on New Year’s Day 1870, the paper carried more details about how the colonials enjoyed their Christmas.
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And while it again alluded to the differences between Australia and England, it concluded it was just as possible to “spend a merry Christmas here as anywhere else”. It does seem, however, that there had been cool change on Christmas Eve.
“Christmas morning itself dawned as brightly and gently in its mild genial summer heat as if some white-robed messenger of peace had hovered over the city during the night, and left its healing influence lingering behind to remove even the remembrance of the fierce sirocco that for days previous had withered all ideas of merriment.”
After church, there was a rush to enjoy the day, and the crowds were so big that cab drivers charged three-times the rate. Picnickers flocked to the gardens and parks; the rush to Brighton “was unprecedentedly large, both by road and rail”; Queenscliff “attracted rather more than a holiday’s average of visitors”; the piers and beach at Sandridge (now Port Melbourne) “were crowded with promenaders”.
There was also a report on the performance of Handel’s Messiah by the Philharmonic Society on Christmas night — as well as a report on a visit to the Yarra Bend asylum on Christmas Day.
Fast-forward 50 years, to Christmas 1919, and reports on Christmas 100 years ago were looking a bit more as we would expect them to look today.
There was a series of recipes for Christmas cakes and meats; a couple of short stories appeared under the banner “Australian Christmas Stories”; and there were plenty of advertisements for Christmas gifts.
The front page of an eight-page glossy liftout of photographs on December 20 featured a koala with a joey on her back.
This was the “The Weekly Times Christmas Number 1919” — although none of the pictures therein were Christmas-themed. Instead, they included shots such as buffalo hunting in the Northern Territory, and then-and-now shots of Melbourne.
The picture feature the following week, however, included a page of pictures of the Christmas celebrations at Caulfield Military hospital.
There was an editorial in the paper, in which it was noted this was the 50th Christmas the paper “has been privileged to extend to its readers the greetings of the season”. It noted that while Christmas the year before, in 1918, had been one of thanksgiving for peace, this time there was “a whole-souled desire to restore the old Christmas spirit”.
And while the recent scars of the Great War could not easily be erased, readers were called upon to return from holidays refreshed and ready to help the world, if not Australia in particular, to rebuild.
“The greetings of the season and the wish that the future may bring prosperity and all happiness are extended to all our readers.”
Those words still ring true 100 years on. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, everyone.
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