The Victorians Loved to Merge Science and Christmas Together (Part One)
These days, the only science involved in Christmas is domestic science; namely for how long and at what temperature to cook the turkey so as neither to poison the guests nor incinerate the bird. However, surprising though it may seem, science once played as important a role at Christmas time as gift-giving or cracker-pulling do now. This was in no small part down to the fact that just as Christmas was undergoing its transformation to become a popular festival, so too was science coming to capture the minds and intrigue the imaginations of Victorians the land over.
Newspapers, books, magazines; all advertised family-friendly, science-related Christmas presents and experiments that could be purchased and practiced at home. Not that science mania was only confined to the home of course. Pantomime productions took up science-related themes, and in the 1830s London’s Adelaide Gallery started putting on productions of popular musical pieces—Hayden’s “Creation” and Handel’s “Messiah”, for example—which featured electrical light shows or giant projections of microscopic organisms.