Happy New Year!

Happy New Year

The Battle for Christmas
by Stephen Nissenbaum

Happy New Year faithful blog readers (or am I talking to myself?)! As the new year begins and the Christmas season winds down, I want to tell you about a fascinating book I read recently. It's called The Battle for Christmas.

The book chronicles the early history of Christmas, from the 4th century A.D., when the Roman emperor decided that instead of worshiping the sun as pagans were doing in a festival called Saturnalia, Romans would now celebrate the birth of THE Son (Jesus) and that since the Bible doesn't provide a date for the birth of Christ, then they would celebrate on December 25th, the date the solstice happened to fall on that year.

In early modern England, winter was a time of little work and much feasting. The crops were harvested, animals slaughtered and beer and wine fermented. The Christmas season was filled with wild, Las Vegas Mardi Gras type parties where lower class people would beg money from their betters and if they didn't receive it, cause trouble. There was LOTS of drinking and some cross-dressing and much excess.

The Puritans of the mid-17th century objected to Christmas for two reasons, 1) there was no textual evidence of the date on which Christ was born and 2)they were disgusted by the "public wantonness" displayed by the lower orders and therefore, they outlawed Christmas. English holiday reveling crossed the Atlantic as did strict Puritan beliefs in early New England. Puritans tried to control the public wantonness but did not object if Christmas was kept quietly in one's own home. Some religious groups in New England celebrated Christmas in the religious sense. Other colonies enjoyed the reveling and feasting and even slaves enjoyed some time off from their labors.

By the early nineteenth century, some people were celebrating the New Year with a family dinner. Then some wealthy New Yorkers helped begin the Christmas that most of us are familiar with. Washington Irving wrote about an idyllic Christmas celebration in old England, something that never actually happened! Clement Clarke Moore wrote his famous poem "A Visit From St. Nicholas" ('Twas the Night Before Christmas) and John Pintard, of the New York Historical Society revived the old Dutch custom of St. Nicholas bringing toys and sweets to children.

The Christmas tree became popular by word-of-mouth, based on one German immigrant's surprise for his son. Christmas trees were small, table top firs hung with candles and fruit and small toys.

By the mid-19th century, many people were familiar with Santa Claus or some other person bringing gifts for good children, but Santa was a far cry from the kindly old man we know today. He sometimes took on the form of a black faced creature or left birch rods for the parents of bad children to whip them. Christmas was a time of fear for the lower class still enjoyed revelling in the streets and the rich feared assault by the party goers and sought to give the lower orders a model for good behavior, thus Christmas became a family centered holiday.

The book also discusses how A Christmas Carol brought about feelings of charity at Christmas town and how the wealthy took a paternalistic attitude towards the poor.

The final chapter deals with African-American traditions in the Antebellum South. Class roles were sometimes reversed and slaves were allowed to beg for gifts and money.

Nissenbaum's overall argument is that as people bettered themselves and became more refined, they sought to distance themselves from the superstitious and wild behavior of the past. The Industrial Revolution made more materials goods possible and created a middle class which contributed to the commercialization of Christmas.

I enjoyed reading this book and I learned a lot from it. It's well-researched and uses many primary source accounts to back up statements. The pictures are fun to look at to see how Christmas traditions changed to the more familiar ones we know today. This book is well worth a look.