Esther M. Zimmer Lederberg
Biedermeier Dickens

Thomas Kinkade Christmas

Painting by Thomas Kinkade


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!".
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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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