While Puritans and Pilgrims can take credit for Thanksgiving, they get no credit for our modern celebration of Christmas. They considered December 25 a workday and any slacking or celebratory drinking was punished. So where and when did we get the vision of sugar plums, Santa, the tree, and the rosy-cheeked children breathless with anticipation?
Christmas as we know it is a 19th-century invention. Draw a line on a map from New York City through Poughkeepsie to Troy and then Stockbridge to Cambridge, and you can trace the accumulation of symbols.
Clement Clarke Moore was a major landowner in New York City. He was president of Columbia College and donated the land in Chelsea for the General Theological Seminary. His writings were on ancient subjects and academic. He is known for none of them; however, he is famous to this day for 56 lines printed in the Troy Sentinel on Dec. 23, 1823. Called “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” it begins:
“Twas the night before Christmas…And all through the house…”
This record would not be complete without mentioning Henry Livingston Jr., a farmer from Poughkeepsie. He was a poet who published exclusively in newspapers. His children remember him reading the lines “Twas the night before Christmas…” aloud to them years before they appeared in the Troy newspaper. Their father was of Dutch descent, and his children pointed to the similarity between the lines of the poem and Dutch tradition.
Consistent with Dutch tradition, gifts were given on the eve of St. Nicholas’ birthday (Dec. 6). Furthermore, the names of at least two reindeer, Donner and Blitzen, were Dutch for “thunder” and “lightning.”
Whether the Livingston family ever proved authorship, we are indebted to the Dutch for Santa — that jolly old man and lover of children. The Dutch are credited with bringing the story of Sinterklaas to the New World. Sinterklaas was Dutch for Saint Nicholas (270-343), the Greek bishop of Myra and patron saint of children. The eve of his birthday was the beginning of the Christmas season, celebrated with gifts and feasting. Sinterklaas appeared in a red cape over a bishop’s white alb. There were differences: Sinterklaas was a dignified and serious fellow, riding a horse, not a sleigh. Nonetheless, Sinterklaas was the model for our jolly fellow in the red suit.
A German immigrant and Harvard professor, Charles Follen, introduced the Christmas tree. In 1832, Follen and his wife, Eliza, delighted his guests with a Christmas tree. That year his son was 2 years old, and that, they say, was the impetus for the tree. Remembering the Christmases of his youth in Germany, Follen wished to recreate it for his son.
He selected a tree in the woods, cut it down, set it in a tub and hung on it little dolls, gilded eggshells and paper cornucopias filled with candied fruit. It was lit with candles.
One guest described it: “It really looked beautiful; the room seemed in a blaze, and the ornaments were so well hung on that no accident happened, except that one doll’s petticoat caught fire.”
Follen tied a wet sponge to a stick and placed it nearby in case of fire “and no harm ensued.”
When the children “poured in … every voice was hushed. . . . all eyes were wide . . . all steps arrested.”
Follen’s was not the first Christmas tree in America, and certainly not in the world, but it was, as far as anyone knows, the first in Massachusetts.
It was in Stockbridge that the indelible pictures of Christmas were drawn, first in word by Catharine Sedgwick and then in image by Norman Rockwell.
For the rosy-cheeked children, their eyes alight with happiness on Christmas morning, Catharine borrowed from her experiences on Christmas morning in New York City and from her Stockbridge celebrations of New Year’s Day. In New England, New Year’s Day was the holiday that included parties, food, presents and children’s games. Sedgwick used those memories from her youth to create her fictional Christmas. Together, Moore (or Livingston), Follen and Sedgwick transformed the image of Christmas from one of adult carousing into one of innocent joy. In 1856, Christmas was made a legal holiday in Massachusetts.
One hundred years later, in his iconic image “Stockbridge Main Street at Christmas,” Norman Rockwell captured the images and feelings that are a New England Christmas.
Through three residents, Massachusetts played pivotal roles in creating the modern American Christmas. The symbols we treasure today were gathered up and incorporated into our modern celebration of Christmas: the tree from Germany, songs from England, the jolly gift-giver from the Netherlands, and recipes from all over the world.
With those symbols came the joy of giving and the anxiety about gift selection; feasting and the fear of excessive caloric intake; drinking and the designated driver; and the never-ending commercials. Still, it is a treasured family affair and a vast improvement over the disreputable excess or dreary nothingness of the past.
To each and all of you, may your Christmas be cheery and bright, filled with all that we now associate with Christmas.
