Christmas in 19th Century America

[LiberalElite]

http://www.historytoday.com/penne-restad/christmas-19th-century-america

-snip-
The Christmas that Americans celebrate today seems like a timeless weaving of custom and feeling beyond the reach of history. Yet the familiar mix of carols, cards, presents, trees, multiplicities of Santas and holiday neuroses that have come to define December 25th in the United States is little more than a hundred years old.

Americans did not even begin to conceive of Christmas as a national holiday until the middle of the last century. Like many other such 'inventions of tradition', the creation of an American Christmas was a response to social and personal needs that arose at a particular point in history, in this case a time of sectional conflict and civil war, as well as the unsettling processes of urbanization and industrialization. The holiday's new customs and meanings helped the nation to make sense of the confusions of the era and to secure, if only for a short while each year, a soothing feeling of unity.
- See more at: http://www.historytoday.com/penne-restad/christmas-19th-century-america#sthash.Er2Gr9jT.dpuf

[merrily]

1. In colonial days, the war on Christmas was fought between Papists and those who were

Christians, but not Roman Catholic (or heaven forfend, Eastern Orthodox). It was a very complex thing, symbolized at the Paul Revere House by a fresh orange in the fruit bowl on the Revere dining table. (A fresh orange being difficult to come by in November in colonial, America, in Boston.)

It also involved the calendar, power over which had passed from Roman Emperors to the Bishop of Rome. The colonies' New Year began in March, as did the English New Year at that time. The colonies did not switch to the Gregorian calendar (after Pope Gregory) for a long time.

Anyway, I guess I'm trying to say that, when the idea of any formal national holiday began is pretty much irrelevant. Who celebrated Christmas, how and when, has been an issue since the Christians in Rome slunk off to do that while pagan Romans were getting drunk as part of their Saturnalia.

[monmouth4]

2. I did not know the colonies used to observe the new year in March. This is why I love DU, not a day

goes by when I don't learn something new. Don't remember learning that in school or that it was taught.. Thanks merrily.

[merrily]

4. My pleasure. I, too, am always happy when I learn something because of posting on DU.

[Igel]

7. it was messier than that.

Official new year was march. It was an either/or kind of thing. There could be only one.

Yule was popularly celebrated and had been for centuries. Angles, saxons, the danelaw.

So was xmas.

As the calendar changed they moved new years. 1600 in scotland. 1750s in england and the colonies.

Quick: what is the real new year as far as the us government is concerned?

Oct. 1. 2016 has been in full swing for 2 months. The fiscal year that is.

[monmouth4]

8. Love it, new and good info. Thanks...n/t

[LiberalElite]

3. IMO it is useful to know

that this "tradition" that's supposedly under attack according to the right wing was not always a tradition in this country at all, and used to pass pretty much unnoticed. There was a time that Christmas was just another day in the U.S.A.

[merrily]

5. I tried to say in my post that it WAS a tradition in this country, though not a "national" holiday.

All the way back to colonial days, if you were a Papist (aka Roman Catholic), you celebrated Christmas. If you had Papist celebration envy, you also celebrated Christmas, albeit perhaps surreptitiously and primarily by pretending to extend your Thanksgiving celebration into December. And maybe your Christmas celebration consisted of springing for a relatively expensive orange in December. Moreover, if you were not celebrating it, you were doing so to show you were a better, more godly Christian than the Papists.

The issue was always fraught, including from the days of Ancient Rome.

I don't know when America first started proclaiming national holidays, but pegging the whole 2000 year old Christmas celebration mishigoss to when Christmas became a national holiday, or even to when Queen Victoria began idolizing her husband misses quite a few centuries.

[wendylaroux]

6. Good stuff

thank you!