Passing on your family’s traditions and rituals is of immense importance. From the way birthdays and name days are celebrated to the particular foods that are served at great feasts, traditions include all “the ways things are done in our house.” These small things will do a great deal to help shape your children’s identities and give them a sense of security and belonging that they will have for the rest of their lives.
My Family Christmas Traditions
The Habsburgs (as a Catholic and central European house) have always taken very seriously family Christmas traditions. In fact, you may be surprised to hear how many Christmas traditions were introduced into Austria through the wife of a Habsburg.
We know exactly when and how this happened: in 1815, when Archduke Charles (about whose happy marriage we have already heard) married Henriette von Nassau-Weilburg. Henriette was much younger than Charles. She was also a Protestant — but that was the reason she brought a German Protestant custom to Austria. For Christmas in 1816, the year her first daughter was born, she set up the first Austrian Christmas tree in her house, in the center of Vienna. There were twelve candles on the tree, one for each of the twelve months of the year, and decorations that she had sent for from home. The custom was observed slightly critically by Charles’s more traditionally minded brother John (of Styria), but the fashion soon swept across Habsburg lands.
By the way, long before the familiar Christmas traditions took hold, the feast of St. Nicholas had been celebrated in the Habsburg household. There is a magnificent painting from about 1745, painted by one of the young archduchesses, depicting a St. Nicholas celebration by the family of Maria Theresia: the emperor sits in his morning coat, the empress sips hot chocolate, “Mimi” (Marie Christine) — the painter — brings gifts, Marie-Antoinette plays with a doll, and Maximilian and Ferdinand are holding the switch used by St. Nicolas to punish bad children.
Across the centuries, Christmas always played an important role in family life, though in different ways. Following is a description of a melancholy Christmas at Eckartsau in Austria, after Karl and Zita’s family was deposed from their throne in 1918. Karl was ill, but they still saw to it that the tradition was carried out. Zita (as quoted by Charles Coulombe) remembered it as follows.
However, we did our best to make it a cheerful occasion. We had a Christmas tree, of course, on the evening of the twenty-fourth and at the foot of it we spread our pile of little gifts. We had found at Eckartsau a trunk we had once used on our official journeys which was nearly full of minor presents and this came in most useful. To the staff I remember we gave mostly the things they wanted most — bits of chocolate and other scraps of food we had saved and wrapped up for the occasion.
The emperor got up for Christmas Eve but was so weak that he had to remain seated in an armchair while the presents were being exchanged. He was quite exhausted afterwards and his temperature went up again. That same night, we heard, there were toasts drunk to the emperor that night all over the capital.
Many families have their own Christmas rituals. In fact, one of the first things my family and I try to find out about potential future sons-in-law is how exactly Christmas is celebrated in their family — and there is always the looming question of how much of “their” Christmas traditions our children will manage to get in their future marriages. (They know that all is fair in love and war and that a compromise with other Christmas traditions is unthinkable. I’m kidding, of course. Or am I?)
Another Hasburg Family Tradition
Another old Habsburg tradition is musical and theater performances presented by children and grandchildren to parents and grandparents. For instance, as early as 1745, the children performed a French comedy, with a ballet, German dances and a minuet. In 1752, young Leopold and his siblings studied and performed a complicated French comedie en trois actes. Many of the children in the play were younger than ten. In July 1756, the Habsburg troupe performed another French comedy, played it twice per week, and presented it regularly whenever guests visited Schönbrunn Castle.
Children also learned instruments and gave little concerts. For Emperor Franz Stephan’s name day in 1759, they put on a show. Archduke Ferdinand performed a solo on drums; the youngest, Archduke Max, could only contribute the felicitations. Maria An- tonia (later Marie Antoinette of France) sang French Vaudeville songs; other children sang Italian arias; Archduke Charles played the violin; and the future Emperor Joseph played the violoncello. They were all accompanied, on the piano, by their sisters Maria Anna and Maria Christine. You need to have a large family to organize an entire children’s orchestra!
These musical traditions have been maintained for centuries. My grandfather, Archduke Joseph, remembered a performance in Schönbrunn Castle in 1908 that featured lots of archdukes and archduchesses. It was for the jubilee of Emperor Franz Joseph and had been prepared and rehearsed for a month. The rehearsals must have been something: my grandfather described improvised battles between several young Habsburgs, who regularly got into wild fights and rolled on the floor. A servant who was bringing cakes during an intermission was attacked by the children and knocked to the floor. “The dynasty with a glorious past,” writes my grandfather, “was transformed into a tribe of savages.”
Even so, the presentation on the evening of December 2 was magnificent. Professionals from the Vienna Opera Ballet had arranged the choreography for the little band of performers. There were recitations and music and dance. The emperor, with his white beard and his gentle eyes, was transfixed by the performance. But the end of the evening was poignant. A beautiful Habsburg arch-duchess told a touching fairy tale about a king that was an allegory about the aging emperor. The king in the fairy tale had many crowns, but one of them was a crown of thorns. It signified all the sufferings that Franz Joseph had endured for his people. The emperor was moved to tears.
Suddenly, a young man lifted his voice in the middle of the performers and called out: “And thus ends our joyous performance!” It was Archduke Karl, the future blessed and emperor.
Performing plays and giving concerts for parents are old traditions. But they are also great exercises in family unity and fun projects to do together. A performance doesn’t have to be a ballet choreographed by professionals from the Hofburg or an entire Shakespeare play. But watching your children perform for you even one scene that they have practiced from A Midsummer Night’s Dream is magical.
Of course, your family life is a play of its own — and birthdays are some of the best scenes. No doubt your family already has its own traditions for birthday celebrations, so I won’t regale you with others here. But I would encourage you to celebrate these feasts sumptuously and always the same way. This gives children security, identity, and a tradition to carry on into their own fami- lies when they grow up. They will remember that the birthday child was always awakened in a special way; that he or she was called into the birthday room; that everyone danced around the lucky child or gave speeches. These rituals are especially important in a large family because they give every child a special moment to be the center of attention and to be celebrated at least once a year. So protocol must be respected! Children love it and feel safe and secure when things are done exactly the way they have always been done.
This article is an excerpt from Building a Wholesome Family in a Broken World: Habsburg Lessons from the Centuries.
Building a Wholesome Family in a Broken World: Habsburg Lessons from the Centuries
Image: Photo by Sergei Solo on Unsplash
