Christmas was especially family-oriented at the Gladstones' because several birthdays occurred during the Yuletide season. In the 1840s, The Christmas Carol and images like that of Queen Victoria's young family gathered around the Christmas tree popularized this familial orientation to the holiday more broadly. But there were startlingly liberal aspects to both Dickens's tale and the Gladstones' lives: they both reveal the private individual aiding the disadvantaged child to the point of almost making him extended family.
Read MoreThe Queen's Christmas tree at Windsor Castle, The Illustrated London News, 1848. This file is in the public domain because its copyright has expired in the United States and those countries with a copyright term of no more than the life of the author plus 100 years.