Today we celebrate Christmas with elaborate lighting displays, gifts and gadgets, and over-stuffing ourselves with Christmas goodies. Of course, those traditions have evolved with the changing culture and technology. Our ancestors, however, brought very different traditions to America.
The first colonists to introduce celebration and merriment to the holiday were the first settlers of Virginia. The traditions they brought would likely have been reflected in a sixteenth century poem by Thomas Tusser:
At Christmas play and make cheer
For Christmas comes but once a year
Good bread and good drink, a good fire in the hall
Brawn, pudding and souse, and good mustard withall;
Beef, mutton and pork, shred pies of the best;
Pig, veal, goose and capon and turkey well drest;
Cheese, apples and nuts, jolly carols to hear,
As then in the country is counted good cheer.
One tradition brought by the English colonists of Virginia was noise-making with horns, drums and fireworks, which had been introduced in England in the fifteenth century. In 1486 the first fireworks display took place in celebration of King Henry VII’s marriage. This tradition continues in the South even today.
In Williamsburg, the Yule log, the foundation of the traditional Christmas Eve fire, was lit and carols were sung. The Yule log offered a respite of sorts for the colonists, since as long as it burned no one had to work. One could imagine them going to great lengths to keep the fire going! On Christmas Day, everyone attended church services, followed by a feast, dances, games and fireworks — all of this merriment sometimes continuing until the new year. Contrast that, however, with the Puritans of Massachusetts.
Merriment was not much on the minds of the Puritans, going so far as to declare the holiday celebration illegal. Christmas, strictly considered a religious event only, was a holy day to be celebrated without pagan rituals. By the time of the Revolutionary War, restrictions began to be loosened, although Massachusetts did not recognize Christmas as a legal holiday until 1856.
When did St. Nicholas introduce himself to America? That would be via the Dutch. On Christmas Day of 1624 members of the Dutch East India Company landed on what we now know today as Manhattan Island and made merry. As more settlers arrived from Holland, they brought with them their customs of St. Nicholas, bearer of gifts, and stockings filled with goodies. The Dutch also believed the celebration was meant to bring families closer together.
Swedes settled in Delaware in 1638, whence came the tradition of hanging a pine or fir wreath on the door of one’s home — a sign of both welcome and good luck. Instead of St. Nicholas, their tradition was gift-giving elves.
The seventeenth century brought some of the first German colonists and with them the tradition of decorating an evergreen tree with ornaments, candles and cookies. As the country expanded its borders beyond the original thirteen colonies, the French and Spanish would put their indelible mark on the Christmas holiday.
The French would attend a midnight mass on Christmas Eve and then partake of a special meal called a réveillon. Children left their shoes by the crèche hoping to find them filled with gifts from baby Jesus the following morning. For the French, Christmas was a time of peace and
reflection, followed by a New Year’s Eve celebration of parades and masquerade balls. Today, the tradition of réveillon is still observed in New Orleans.
The Spanish who settled throughout the Southwest brought their tradition of re-enacting Joseph and Mary’s journey on the first Christmas, called Las Posadas. Included in the festivities was the tradition of children striking a piñata filled with toys and sweets. One of the more beautiful symbols of the Christmas season in the Southwest, seen today especially in New Mexico, is the lighting of luminarias or farolitos. Spanish traders may have originally introduced this custom because of the fascination with a long-time Chinese tradition of paper lanterns, according to Pedro Ribera Ortega, author of Christmas In Old Santa Fe.
Clement C. Moore’s poem, A Visit From St. Nicholas (later named ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas), is thought to have been responsible for introducing the concept of Santa Claus in America, perhaps a melding of several traditions. Moore, a professor of Oriental and Greek literature, is said to have been reluctant at first to acknowledge authorship of something he considered “less than scholarly”. He had written it for his children, but a friend submitted it for publication in 1823.
By the 1860s the celebration of Christmas with gift giving, Santa Claus and decorated trees was common throughout the country, and by the Victorian Age such traditions as kissing under the mistletoe had been introduced. Tree ornaments began to be commercially produced in the 1870’s.
Hanukkah
America is a Judeo-Christian nation and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Jewish tradition of Hanukkah. It is not considered one of the major holidays that people of the Jewish faith celebrate every year, but the history of the holiday in America is interesting. In 1860 two Cincinnati rabbis started a movement to “Americanize” Judaism. Included in their plans was a way to create a fun festive holiday for Jewish children to engender excitement about their faith. The rabbis wanted Jewish children to “have a grand and glorious Hanukkah, a festival as nice as any Christmas, with songs, dramatics, candle lighting, ice cream, candy and candy.”
The holiday had previously been more of an adult observance of the re-dedication of the Second Temple during the time of the Maccabean Revolt of 2nd century B.C. The holiday is determined by the Hebrew calendar and can fall anywhere between late November and late December. Hanukkah is observed for eight successive nights and each night another branch of the menorah is lit, followed by food (preferably fried foods like potato cakes and doughnuts) and games. One tradition especially geared toward children is the dreidel, a four-sided spinning top, each side with a Hebrew letter which altogether spell out “A great miracle happened here.”
America’s year-end holiday season is filled with all kinds of history and meaning. Of course, what we all should look forward to is not the gadgetry and gift-giving, but spending time with family and making memories, don’t you think?
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