Christmas since the Victorian age has been a crucial national solvent and of great economic importance. This book covers all the vital themes contributing to the modern Christmas as an icon of cultural and social history: its Anglo-German origins and the idea of the bourgeois Christmas expressing family virtues; the liberal values at the heart of Anglo-American political, cultural and social life; the need for a touchstone with the past in an age of rapid expansion and thus the myth of Merrie England; the link with imperial expansion and the position of the mother country; the revival of English music, printing and publishing and the increase in literacy, shopping and consumerism--in short, all the elements making up the modern Christmas.