Cookies On Tree Started With Victorians
We honor the Pilgrims at Thanksgiving and follow the feasting ritual they established 380 years ago. But, thankfully, as far as I’m concerned, we pay no mind to how they and the Puritans observed Christmas.
They didn’t.
Conservative Christians at the time argued there are no biblical or historical reasons to tag Jesus’ birth date as Dec. 25th. The Puritans rationalized that if God had intended for the anniversary of the Nativity to be observed, he would surely have given some indication as to when it was, wrote Stephen Nissenbaum in “The Battle for Christmas.”
On the first Dec. 25th in New England, Gov. Bradford, leader of the Pilgrims, the earliest of our European ancestors in this country, was annoyed at a few “Christmas-keepers” who requested the day off to observe Christ’s birthday. But, instead of spending the day in prayer and meditation in the quiet of their homes, Bradford found them in the street playing stool-bar, a game resembling cricket.
Most early staunch Christians thought bringing greenery into their homes, with the poignant scent of pine, and lighting candles to help brighten the dark days of December were merely redesigned pagan rituals.
But trying to stem remembrance of the event of Christ’s birth on any particular day was an act of futility; it’s been celebrated on Dec. 25th for eons.
During his Christmas Day sermon in 1712, Puritan Cotton Mather scolded his Boston congregation with: “Can you, in your Conscience think that our holy Savior is honored by Mirth, by long Eating, by hard Drinking, by lewd Gaming, by rude Revelling, by a Mass fit for none but a Bacchus or Saturn?”
Benjamin Franklin was a little more relaxed. In a 1739 almanac, he wrote: “O blessed Season’ Lov’d by Saints and Sinners/ For long Devotions or for longer Dinners.”
In 1759, George Washington gave the children in his life such gifts as a bird on bellows, a cuckoo, a turnabout parrot, a toy Prussian dragoon and a dressed wax baby.
I say, hooray for Mr. Franklin and President Washington, and bless our Victorian ancestors who popularized the creche, Christmas cards and revived the singing of carols.
Christmas in America is an amalgamation of the customs of the homelands of our ancestors. We adopted England’s wassail, holly and Father Christmas; mistletoe and the Yule log from the Norsemen, and the Christmas tree and creche from our German ancestors.
Christmas trees caught on in America after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were portrayed with their elaborate tree in Windsor Castle.
In America, conservationist President Teddy Roosevelt was a wet blanket, refusing to have a Christmas tree in the White House, maybe thinking it a waste of potential lumber. So, the next year, the first Christmas tree farm was planted in Trenton, N.J., and from then on, trees have been grown for the sole purpose of decorating homes.
Wealthy Victorian families decorated 10-feet-tall trees with home-baked cookies and handmade ornaments, such as cotton-batting Santas and cornucopias fashioned from silver paper. The trees’ candles were lit only twice during the holidays - once on Christmas morning and again on New Year’s Eve.
However you observe the holiday tonight and Monday, may the spirit of Christmas be with you. And Happy Hanukkah to our Jewish neighbors. (Other sources for this article came from “A Victorian Christmas - Joy to the World,” by Cynthia Hart, John Grossman and Priscilla Dunhill, and “The Great American Christmas Almanac,” by Irena Chalmers.)