York Castle Museum is opening its doors after hours this December for an unforgettable Christmas experience for all the family on the beautifully decorated Victorian Street, Kirkgate.

Join your guide on a festive stroll where you meet the people of Kirkgate in their Victorian attire.

Visit each shop with their festive displays, looking for the items on your list and pick up a few surprises along the way. If you manage to find all the Christmas gifts there is a very special person waiting to meet you!

Amy Baggaley, learning manager, said:

“We have organised fantastic family Christmas evening tours that are going to transport visitors back to Victorian York.

“Visitors can explore the decorated street and meet the shopkeepers who will tell them about their lives and their favourite Christmas traditions.

“There will be festive activities to do and a list of gifts to collect.

Once they have all the items on their list they are invited to sing a carol. If they sing it loud enough Father Christmas will appear to chat to the children and to give them a present.”

These special Christmas tours will be taking place from the 16th-20th December, from 5pm. The tour will last one hour and includes shopping list gifts, a present from Father Christmas for the children and coffee and mince pies (juice and biscuits for children).

£7.50 for children, £6 for adults. Includes admission. To book a place ring York Museums Trust on 01904 687633.

12 Victorian Facts of Christmas!

• According to William Hargrove’s “History of York”: “The first Christmas festival ever held in Britain was in York ”

• Christmas Day became an official holiday in 1834, but the real revival of Christmas did not begin for another decade, following the publication of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” in 1843 and the popularisation of the Christmas tree by Prince Albert around the same time.

• In 1860 T. G. Crippen stated: “Christmas! Is there any other word in our whole English vocabulary that calls forth such a flood of joyous emotion as that which designates the festival of humanity – The day which we are accustomed to regard as ‘peculiarly the Household Festival of England’ ”

• The first recorded Santa’s Grotto was unveiled in 1888 by J. P Robert in his store, in Stratford, East London.

• Boxing Day was not made an official holiday until 1871, it is also known as St Stephen’s Day, St Stephen being the patron saint of horses, which is why there are so many traditional race meetings on Boxing Day.

• Original calling cards were left at New Year’s, this then changed to Christmas cards, as Christmas became more important.

• It was only in the 1860s that Christmas cards were first printed en masse and it was not until the 1880s, when manufactures began printing them for a few pence per dozen, did they really catch on.

• According to the 1895 Darlington and Stockton Times, shops remained open until late on Christmas Eve, most likely because of the lack of domestic refrigeration. On Christmas Day, most shops were closed, except for the butchers. The Shambles may therefore have been very busy Christmas morning as twenty-five out of the thirty-nine shops trading on the street at the time were butchers!

• In 1841 Queen Victoria had her first Christmas tree at Windsor Castle. In 1847 Windsor Dining Room “Waited a baron of beef, a boar’s head with rosemary and bays and Christmas Trees on the sideboards loaded with presents. Each tree was lighted with eighty wax candles. ”

• One 19th Century magazine recommended to its readers that a twelve foot Christmas tree should have no more than four hundred candles; perhaps unsurprisingly there were several cases of houses burning to the ground from Christmas tree candle related fires.

• Christmas dinner, in almost all cases comprised of Roast Beef, Plum Pudding and Oranges or Nuts. Whilst Beef was the standard Christmas fare for the lower levels of society, Turkey was popular with the middle classes as early as 1860, with Goose being the preferred feast for the upper echelons.

• Christmas cake and Christmas pie were both popular. Much pride was taken over the creation of plum pudding as was shown in the 1850 Illustrated London News – Christmas Supplement, where it was claimed that plum pudding was an English creation and that the French had no idea how to make it!