Christmas stimulates all industries, but there are some trades which practically live on the greatest of our yearly festivals. For instance, there is the manufacture of Christmas candles, which are used in countless myriads in the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches all over the world, and at which skilled artists work all the year round. These candles are of all sorts and sizes, but the speciality of the trade is the Paschal candle, which is some six feet high and three inches and a half in diameter, weighs nearly fifty pounds, and is invariably made of the purest beeswax. These great altar-shafts are elaborately decorated with broad bands and designs of blue, gold, bronze, and red, all painted by hand, so that it is no wonder that they are costly. Nine to twelve pounds per pair is quite a usual price. There are also the special small candles of all colours, made for the decoration of Christmas trees and known as “tree-tapers.”

The Christmas plum pudding occupies the energies of housewives for several weeks before Christmas. It also keeps busy large special departments of various biscuit and cake manufacturing firms for a large portion of the year; for we export plum puddings by the hundred tons to all parts the world. …

No one actually grows holly or mistletoe for sale, though plenty make a yearly harvest by cutting it and sending it to market. There are, however, several plantations in Yorkshire especially devoted to the growing of Christmas trees, and men are at work on them all the year round to make the trees perfectly symmetrical. The best of these trees are worth as much as £3 apiece.

Near London is a palm “forcer” who has nearly a hundred glass houses devoted to the growing of palms of different kinds, and his market is in the main a Christmas one. Palms are becoming more and more popular for Christmas decorations. Their prices, wholesale, run from a shilling to a guinea apiece.

Toys for Christmas and Christmas cards keep thousands employed from one December to the next, while a brand new business has recently sprung up in the manufacture of artful advertisements masquerading under the guise of Christmas cards.

The proportions of the Christmas cracker industry may be gathered from the fact that between 15,000,000 and 16,000,000 are manufactured each [year] for home use.

There is an ever-increasing number of people who make their living at window decorating, and for these the great harvest of the year comes at Christmastide when every window vies with every other in attracting customers. The butcher’s artist is, perhaps, the most important of the lot. His work is not only to hang up the fat beasts so as to make the best show, but to decorate them with designs cut in fat. So much as a pound or thirty shillings is paid for a portrait of the King and Queen done in this way, and there is a man in Smithfield who will guarantee to copy any picture which the butcher likes for a specified sum.

Penny Illustrated, 23 December, 1905