December 20, 2025 • 1 min
Early Victorian Christmas music = slow, haunting, minor key.
Think: “What if Christmas but with Gothic cathedral acoustics?”
🎧 The Strange History Podcast Love bizarre true stories, forgotten scandals, and history’s most unhinged moments?
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New episodes regularly. History gets weird here.
Think: “What if Christmas but with Gothic cathedral acoustics?”
🎧 The Strange History Podcast Love bizarre true stories, forgotten scandals, and history’s most unhinged moments?
Submit your ideas for The Strange History Podcast
Follow The Strange History Podcast wherever you listen and never miss an episode. 🔗 Listen & Subscribe:
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
iHeartRadio
Audible
New episodes regularly. History gets weird here.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome back to the Strange History podcast and
Day twenty of our Victorian Christmas countdown the twenty five
Strangest days of Christmas. We are in the home stretch.
If you are still following along, you are the true
hero of this saga. Just don't tell Santa Claus. Modern
carols tend to be jolly, bright or aggressively retail in tone,
(00:22):
but Victorian carols they were somber, minor key, slow tempo,
the musical equivalent of staring thoughtfully out a frosted window
while contemplating your mortal journey. Hymns like God Rest You
Merry Gentlemen were originally eerie and meant for candlelit chapels.
(00:43):
Victorians loved a little melancholy with their merriment. They believe
joy was deepest when contrasted with reflection. In eighteen fifty five,
a reviewer complained that a holiday church service felt more
funeral than festivity, to which the minister responded, life and
death both dine at Christmas. Victorian Christmas was never just cheerful,
(01:07):
it was beautifully bittersweet.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Sponsored by carols in minor holiday playlists, streaming, because sometimes
the best way to feel cozy is to feel slightly haunted.
Carols and minor available where all emotionally dramatic music is found.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Tomorrow we turn the Christmas tree upside down, yes, really
upside down, kind of like my brain. After making twenty
five podcasts in a row, Merry Christmas, only five days
to go.
Hello, and welcome back to the Strange History podcast and
Day twenty of our Victorian Christmas countdown the twenty five
Strangest days of Christmas. We are in the home stretch.
If you are still following along, you are the true
hero of this saga. Just don't tell Santa Claus. Modern
carols tend to be jolly, bright or aggressively retail in tone,
(00:22):
but Victorian carols they were somber, minor key, slow tempo,
the musical equivalent of staring thoughtfully out a frosted window
while contemplating your mortal journey. Hymns like God Rest You
Merry Gentlemen were originally eerie and meant for candlelit chapels.
(00:43):
Victorians loved a little melancholy with their merriment. They believe
joy was deepest when contrasted with reflection. In eighteen fifty five,
a reviewer complained that a holiday church service felt more
funeral than festivity, to which the minister responded, life and
death both dine at Christmas. Victorian Christmas was never just cheerful,
(01:07):
it was beautifully bittersweet.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Sponsored by carols in minor holiday playlists, streaming, because sometimes
the best way to feel cozy is to feel slightly haunted.
Carols and minor available where all emotionally dramatic music is found.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Tomorrow we turn the Christmas tree upside down, yes, really
upside down, kind of like my brain. After making twenty
five podcasts in a row, Merry Christmas, only five days
to go.
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