Christmas time! That man must be a misanthrope
indeed, in whose breast something like a jovial
feeling is not roused—in whose mind some
pleasant associations are not awakened—by
the recurrence of Christmas. There are people who
will tell you that Christmas is not to them what it
used to be; that each succeeding Christmas has
found some cherished hope, or happy prospect, of
the year before, dimmed or passed away; that the
present only serves to remind them of reduced
circumstances and straitened incomes—of the
feasts they once bestowed on hollow friends, and
of the cold looks that meet them now, in
adversity and misfortune. Never heed such dismal
reminiscences. There are few men who have lived
long enough in the world, who cannot call up such
thoughts any day in the year. Then do not select
the merriest of the three hundred and sixty-five
for your doleful recollections, but draw your
chair nearer the blazing fire—fill the glass
and send round the song—and if your room be
smaller than it was a dozen years ago, or if your
glass be filled with reeking punch, instead of
sparkling wine, put a good face on the matter,
and empty it off-hand, and fill another, and troll
off the old ditty you used to sing, and thank God
it's no worse. Look on the merry faces of your
children (if you have any) as they sit round the
fire. One little seat may be empty; one slight
form that gladdened the father's heart, and roused
the mother's pride to look upon, may not be there.
Dwell not upon the past; think not that one short
year ago, the fair child now resolving into dust,
sat before you, with the bloom of health upon its
cheek, and the gaiety of infancy in its joyous eye.
Reflect upon your present blessings—of which
every man has many—not on your past
misfortunes, of which all men have some. Fill your
glass again, with a merry face and contented heart.
Our life on it, but your Christmas shall be merry,
and your new year a happy one!
"Sketches by Boz", CHAPTER II—A CHRISTMAS DINNER
Dickens' theory of art is an example of petit-bourgeois
art: nothing controversial sexually, nothing that
challenges the family structure or laws. The art
depicted above in no way stretches Dickens' attitudes.
Indeed, Dickens can easily be imagined being present
at the "ball" in the opera "Die Fledermaus":
"Chacun à son goût!".
.
The term "Biedermeier" comes from the pseudonym
"Gottlieb Biedermaier", used by the country doctor
Adolf Kussmaul and the lawyer Ludwig Eichrodt
in poems, printed in the Munich Fliegende Blätter
(Flying Sheets), parodying the poems of the
Biedermeier era as depoliticized and petit-bourgeois.
The Biedermeier name was at first applied in a joking
spirit, to a period of European culture and a style
of furniture, decoration, and art originating in
Germany during the period between Napoleon's defeat
and the 1848 revolution and especially popular there
and in Austria. It is believed to have been named
for the worthy, bourgeois-minded "Papa Biedermeier,"
a humorous character featured in a series of verses
by Ludwig Eichrodt, published in Fliegende Blätter.
The Biedermeier period found expression in comfortable,
homelike furnishings, simple in design and inexpensive
in material, fitting the requirements of the German
people in a time of little wealth following the
Napoleonic Wars. Biedermeier refers to work in the
fields of literature, music, the visual arts and
interior design; the style corresponds to the Regency
style in England, Federalist style in the United States
and to the French Empire style.
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