Friday Five: Christmases Past

Memories of Christmases past include:

1. The Christmas candles pictured above. I remember collecting more each year while I was in elementary school. I would arrange them under the tree with little houses my mother had to make a village scene on sparkly tissue paper. Since I was an only child and there was no extended family living nearby as we lived on military bases, we did not have many packages under the tree.

2.The stocking I always hung up was made of red net like the one below.In contrast to this, my mother made handmade (needlepoint) stockings for my children, which we still get out every Christmas.

3. I excitedly anticipated Christmas when I was 9 years old, but it seemed ruined for me because I began to vomit before we opened gifts. I still remember feeling so ill that I did not care about Christmas at all, not even about presents.

4. I would write a letter to Santa Claus each year to tell him what I wanted and leave the letter on a windowsill outside, because the north wind would take it up to him. When I looked later, it was always gone!


5. When I was in second grade I learned about the reality of Santa Claus. I searched my parents' closet and found the high-heeled bride doll I'd asked Santa for. She was beautiful! I did not let on that I didn't believe in Santa Claus for awhile--at least, not until the new year.

(This is what she looked like in my memory!)

Growing up, Christmas for me was mainly a secular holiday with emphasis on Santa Claus, gifts, and family. My parents did not go to church and did not discuss faith at all.

History of Christmas Part 3: Santa touches his nose

I read in The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum that Clement Moore had St. Nicholas face the narrator (or us as the reader) and place his finger "aside of his nose." "This is a meaningless phrase today, but in the late 18th and early 19th century the gesture seems to have represented the equivalent of a secret wink--a visual way of saying something like 'Shh! I'm only kidding' or 'Let's keep it between the two of us'" (85).

In fact, this is attributed back to Washington Irving's book A Kickerbocker History in his story also entitled "A Visit from St. Nicholas" because he has St. Nicholas appearing in someone's dream, which concludes "'And when St. Nicholas had smoked his pipe, he twisted it in his hat-band, and laying his finger beside his nose, gave the astonished Van Kortland a very significant look, then, mounting his wagon, he returned over the tree-tops and disappeared'" (86).I found it so interesting that the signal of touching his nose meant that St. Nicholas was indicating the understanding that "'We know I don't exist, but let's keep that between you and me!'" (86). I remember seeing various pictures of Santa during my life with him touching his nose, just like this one from a Christmas card:


And remember from yesterday's post about Santa Claus that St. Nicholas turned into an elfin size? Eventually, he grew larger, especially through the cartoons (1863 to 1886) drawn by Thomas Nast (87-88).And here is the famous Nast portrait of Santa that you may already be familiar with (where I think he looks much larger):


Nissenbaum, Stephen. The Battle for Christmas. NY: Vintage Books, 1996.

History of Christmas Part 2: Santa Claus

1810 by Alexander Anderson
commissioned by New York Historical Society

Although many of us believe that the idea of "Saint Nicholas" originated in the New World in New Amsterdam or during the British occupation, this is not true according to modern scholars. A preeminent scholar of Saint Nicholas, Charles W. Jones, states that "nobody has ever found any contemporaneous evidence of such a Saint Nicholas cult in New York during the colonial period" (63). The claim that Dutch settlers, in 1626 introduced Sinter Claes to New Amsterdam (to be New York) is an invention of Washington Irving (A History of New York, started in 1809).

• One of author Washington Irving's most lasting contributions to American culture is in the way Americans perceive and celebrate Christmas. In his 1812 revisions to A History of New York, Irving inserted a dream sequence featuring Saint Nicholas soaring over treetops in a flying wagon—a creation others would later dress up as Santa Claus.

• The New York Historical Society influenced Washington Irving, who helped promote the "new tradition" of Saint Nicholas and Christmas. Further emphasis was brought by Clement Moore with his publication of A Visit from St. Nicholas [or ''Twas the Night Before Christmas]. It was composed for Christmas 1822 in New York and published 1823.

• The image of Saint Nicholas changed from a patron saint of the New York Historical Society to an elf-sized person dressed in fur with miniature sleigh and reindeer in the first two decades of the 19th century. He also changed from a judgmental figure who left good things for good children and a switch for bad ones to someone who gave presents to all (74-78).This illustration appeared in the first book-length edition

of "A Visit from Saint Nicholas" by Clement Moore in 1848.

• In the United States in 1819 and 1820, Washington Irving published a successful book of short stories entitled The Sketch Book, which contained two stories that were destined to become classics: "Rip Van Winkle" and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." This book also included five stories about Christmas, which were set in a big estate in modern day England called Bracebridge Hall. Old customs of Christmas are presented as the norm, even though it was "'the invention of tradition,' as the historian Eric Hobsbawm has dubbed this kind of self-conscious re-creation of ostensibly old-time customs" (58).

• The Bracebridge Hall stories were very popular. They combined with the stories of Charles Dickens to create "the enduring imagery of Christmas" which we still see on Christmas cards and advertisements, where "jovial squires entertain friends and retainers by roaring fires, and stout coachmen, swathed in greatcoats, urge horses down snow-covered lanes as they bring" forth guests (60).

• Until about 1830, Christmas celebrations were celebrated with one's own social class. Slowly this changed to become a child-centered event. This was definitely new, because before the 19th century, "children were merely dependents--miniature adults who occupied the bottom of the hierarchy within the family, along with the servants" (62).

Nissenbaum, Stephen. The Battle for Christmas. NY: Vintage Books, 1996.

History of Christmas Part 1

I just finished reading the book The Battle for Christmas by Stephen Nissenbaum, which is a history of how our present American yuletide traditions came about. Published in 1996, this was a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

I was intrigued to find that worries and preoccupation with excesses in consumption and other forms of behavior have troubled (some) people for centuries.

• "It was only in the fourth century that the Church officially decided to observe Christmas on December 25. And this date was chosen not for religious reasons but simply because it happened to mark the approximate arrival of the winter solstice, an event that was celebrated long before the advent of Christianity (4)."

• "In early modern Europe, roughly the years between 1500 and 1800, the Christmas season was a time to let off steam--and to gorge. . . .Excess took many forms. Reveling could easily become rowdiness, lubricated by alcohol, making merry could edge into making trouble. Christmas was a season of 'misrule,' a time when ordinary behavioral restraints could be violated with impunity. It was part of what one historian has called 'the world of carnival' (5-6)."
  

• The tradition of drunkenness and riot in Great Britain during Christmas time occurred when poor "wassailers" extorted food and drink from the well-do-do. This reversal in roles was permitted at this one time of year, which helped to perpetuate the class system.

• The Puritans came to the New World in opposition to such excess. "In New England, for the first two centuries of white settlement most people did not celebrate Christmas. In fact, the holiday was systematically suppressed by Puritans during the colonial period and largely ignored by their descendants (3)."

• In America, during the years 1730-1800, general opinion was opening to the idea that observing Christmas could be "less obnoxious if the holiday were celebrated with piety and moderation, purged of its seasonal excesses (26)."

• Around 1800, some churches were calling for the public observance of Christmas. For the first time in 1818, five churches in Boston held services on Christmas Day (47). (Previously, none had.)

I will post more tomorrow about the growth of Christmas to include the Christmas tree and Santa Claus.