Christmas with the Hapburgs

Source: Hapsburger.net

Nowhere is Christmas celebrated with so much fervor as at the Austrian Court. A few years ago when Archduchess Marie-Valerie was a child, when Crown Prince Rudolph was alive, it used to be the most joyful day of the year for the Emperor and Empress. The "vie de famille' is to be found wherever the Hapsburgs are, for nobody is more what the Germans call "gemuhtlich" that the members of this family. When surrounded only by those she loves Empress Elizabeth's coldness and indifference vanish, her reserve breaks up, and she is transformed by what touches her sympathies and affections. 

The Emperor himself  is never happier than when giving pleasure to others, and Christmas eve has ever been his favorite fete day. Now since the Crown Prince's death, although the Court still mourns for its lost Prince, there are as usual two Christmas trees on the 24th of December - one for the family, and one which Archduchess Valerie still decorated with her own hands for a hundred poor children selected from families under her special protection. The great fir tree, glittering with gold and silver nuts, rosy cheeked apples and hundreds of gaily painted toys, is lighted at 4 o'clock in the afternoon in the Rittersaal, a splendid old room with painted casements, where Flemish tapestries, draperies of gold-colored velvet, and many escutcheons in enamelled metal half cover the wainscoated and finely carved walls. Every frame and mirror is garlanded with thick wreaths of mistletoe, and trails of variegated ivy and Christmas roses twine around the grim damascened armors which stand in a double row on both sides of the "saal." On the porphyry hearth a fire of aromatic logs burn, and adds its rosy glow to the radiance coming from the countless candles of the Christmas tree.

Source: Mrs. Daffodil Digresses

Servants in State liveries throw open the heavy inlaid doors and admit the troops of enraptured children, who enter, making their bow of courtesy reverently, but without shyness, and range themselves in two lines, the boys on the right and the girls on the left of the Christmas tree. Archduchess Valerie, in a dress of plain white advances toward them, a happy, kindly smile on her young lips, her small hands filled with parcels, like a good fairy to distribute her gifts. Each child first receives warm clothes, boots, caps, handkerchiefs, fur-lined gloves; then the toys are given to them, and with cries of delight they hump and laugh as freely and merrilly as if they were in their own homes. When the noise has somewhat subsided the Archduchess bids them sing "Kaiser's Hymn." For a minute all is still; then the grand melody rolls out under the high emblazoned ceilings, the fresh, clear voices going upward like the carol of the lark. As the glad young voices drop into silence the doors at the lower end of the Rittersaal open, revealing a large hall, where a substantial feast is prepared. How wide all the youthful eyes open in the sight of the long table loaded with huge pieces of cold beef, haunches of venison, great pumpkin turkeys and piles of daintily cut sandwiches. Wonderful cakes, studded with candied fruit, and showers of bon-bons, in capacious silver shells complete the feast, while the perfume of coffee and chocolate floats about.

After dinner the family Christmas tree is lighted, the party around it consisting only of the Emperor and Empress, Archduchess Gisela and her four children; her husband, Prince Leopold, of Bavaria; Archduchess Valerie, her husband and baby and the orphaned child of Crown Prince Rudolph. 

From Within Royal Palaces: A Brilliant and Charmingly Written Inner Life View of Emperors, Kings, Queens, Princes, and Princesses, by the Marquise de Fontenoy (Philadelphia: Enterprise Publishing Co.) 1892

Source: Habsburger.net