How many days and weeks until December 19th?

A Christmas Carol was published on December 19th 1843 in crimson cloth with gilt edges and four hand-coloured etchings by John Leech, price five shillings. Six thousand copies were gone by Christmas Eve. Dickens had written it in six weeks that autumn, walking fifteen and twenty miles about London at night while he worked it out, and he was in urgent need of the money.

He got very little of it. He had insisted on the crimson cloth and the hand colouring and had taken the production costs on himself, so the first edition cleared him about two hundred and thirty pounds rather than the thousand he had counted on. When a magazine brought out a condensed version in January he sued for piracy and won, whereupon the defendants declared themselves bankrupt and left him with the costs.

On December 19th 1783 William Pitt the Younger kissed hands as Prime Minister at the age of twenty-four, and remains the youngest ever to hold the office. Opponents gave his administration a few weeks and called it the mince-pie administration. It lasted seventeen years.

Every retelling of the singer Edith Piaf’s arrival prefers the pavement of the rue de Belleville, beneath a street lamp. The birth certificate names a hospital, in Belleville, on December 19th 1915.

Born on December 19th: star sign, birthstone and birth flower

Edith Piaf and Ralph Richardson — both named above — share this star sign with everyone else born in the same window.

None of this is settled fact in the way the history above is — zodiac dates, birthstones and birth flowers are conventions rather than laws, and different sources hedge them slightly differently. The birthstone is the most standardised of the three (set by the trade in 1912 and revised since); the birth flower is the least, resting on Victorian tradition rather than any governing body.

Gift ideas for a December 19th birthday

A small, themed starting point rather than a shopping list — turquoise or lapis lazuli for the stone, Sagittarius for the sign, and the sky itself on the day.

December birthstone necklace

A simple pendant in the actual December birthstone colour, from a long-running UK jewellery brand.

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Sagittarius constellation necklace

Stainless steel, sign selectable at checkout — choose Sagittarius for a December 19th birthday.

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Personalised birth flower & birthstone disc

Engraved with a name, the December birthstone and the narcissus or holly — both in one pendant, in a gift box.

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Personalised star map print

The actual night sky over a chosen place on December 19th, whichever year — a print rather than jewellery.

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