'Silent' night: visualising a Victorian Christmas

It's that time of year again! In today's episode - a festive special featuring plenty of yule tide tangents - we talk to author Sarah Cook about 'silent' Christmas. Digital Content Manager Christina Webber has questions: were Christmas movies a thing in the silent era? Would we recognise some of the tropes of today's Christmas film in the movies made a century ago? And why does the iconography of a Victorian Christmas still have such a hold on our imaginations?

Listen along to Episode 31 to hear about all this and more. As another tempting teaser, Sarah also shares a little bit with us on 'creepy' Christmas - see below - and we've included a plethora of additional reading and viewing links in the show notes in case your interest is suitably piqued...Additional reading/ relevant links:

• Read the full English transcript of this episode
• Read 'The best Christmas films of the Silent Era' by Sarah Cook (courtesy of Film Stories)
• Watch Santa Claus (1898) on BFI Player
• Watch Harold Shaw's A Christmas Carol (1914) on BFI Player
• Watch The Night Before Christmas (1913) on YouTube
• Watch HippFest at Home: 'A New Look at Our Oldest Films', an illustrated presentation on Victorian film made for HippFest 2024 by Bryony Dixon
• Read more about the portrait commissioned by Prince Albert in 1848 (courtesy of the V&A)
• A great Christmas film every year from 1925 to now (courtesy of the BFI)
• More information on purchasing a HippFest 2026 Festival Pass