CHRISTMAS cheer probably isn’t the first thing that springs to mind when you think about the Victorian workhouse. Poverty and hardship, yes. Poor orphan boys, probably. Quite likely Oliver Twist asking plaintively ‘please, Sir, can I have some more?’ 
But Christmas?
Well, we know that York workhouse tried to get in the Christmas spirit at least once in the early years of the 1900s. Because we have a picture to prove it.
The photograph was brought in by reader Philippa Plitt. Philippa’s grandmother Sarah Ellen Ward was a young woman who had come to York from Derbyshire in the 1880s as a teenager to train as a nurse.
She then got a job at the York workhouse in Huntington Road – and Philippa’s photo shows her standing front right, in her stiff nurse’s uniform, holding a little boy by the shoulders while posing for a photograph. 
There are a couple of other nurses or matrons in the picture, plus a second boy. And a genuine effort has been made to cheer up the workhouse’s stark dining room, with Christmas decorations and sprigs of what may be holly or yew hanging from the ceiling.
True, the little boy standing with Philippa’s grandmother doesn’t look all that cheerful. But full marks to the workhouse staff for at least trying...
Since Christmas is almost upon us again, we thought this would be a good time to bring you a few more photos of Christmases past in York.
Perhaps the best story dates to Christmas 1944.
A French air mechanic based at RAF Elvington, Sous Lieutenant Lemarchand, had happened to see a charity Christmas tree at York railway station. It gave him an idea: he and other French mechanics from Elvington would make toys for sick children in York.

York Press:

York Press:

French air mechanics making toys for York children, Christmas Eve, 1944


Working night and day, and using tools as crude as razor blades, the French mechanics handcrafted more than 200 toys in all – including a model of a liner complete in every detail and even able to float – and delivered them to York’s Mansion House. From there they were given to sick and needy children in hospitals and other institutions across York. A kind of wartime version of The Press’s own Toys and Tins Appeal, with a bit of extra Gallic flair thrown in...

We've dug out a few other photos from Christmas past for you. Here they are...

York Press:

The Queen giving her first-ever Christmas Day broadcast to the Commonwealth from Sandringham House in 1952

York Press:

1961: staff at the GPO sorting office in Leeman Road deal with the rush of Christmas mail

York Press:

1963: a young man makes his way home along Shambles with a Christmas tree slung across his shoulder. You can almost hear him whistling...

York Press:

1967: The Christmas decorations at Leak & Thorpe in Coney Street

York Press:

1968: A policeman standing quietly in the archway that leads through to the Guildhall looks out over St Helen’s Square at the Christmas tree lit up with more than 300 bulbs

York Press:

December 24, 1985: The nuns of the Poor Clare’s Monastery prepare to break their silence for Christmas Day.