The Spirit of Christmas Past with Ken Turino
Yesterday — December 14, 2023 at 6:30 p.m. — I attended the in-person talk The Spirit of Christmas Past: Four Centuries of Christmas in New England held at Town Hall in Northbridge, MA. The talk was led by Ken Turino, a professor at the museum program of Tufts University and an employee of Historic New England (HNE). Sponsoring the talk was Northbridge Historical Society, Northbridge Historical Commission, Northbridge Cultural Council, and Mass Cultural Council. The talk lasted about seventy-five minutes and included a slideshow with illustrations and photographs of Christmases past.
Turino began by reminding the audience that New England was not the only European colonial settlement in what is now the United States. The Spanish settled in the southwest, so the earliest Christmas celebrations occured at churches such as El Santuario de Chimayó in New Mexico. In New Orleans, LA, French and French Canadian immigrants celebrated Réveillon, a Christmas tradition where families stayed up late and ate together. Other states in the South had some early Christmas traditions, as they were not under Puritan influence.
Like the Grinch, the Puritans hated Christmas, but on the grounds that December 25 was not the real birth date of Jesus, and English Christmas traditions relied on excessive alcohol consumption. English traditions made their way to Philadelphia, where children and servants became “Lords of Misrule”, upsetting social norms by mocking elders and masters, along with causing riots and forcing their way into houses. The first Governor of Massachusetts, William Bradford of Mayflower and Plimoth fame, dissuaded the colony from celebrating Christmas in 1621 and ordered everyone to work as if it were any other day. The holiday was fully banned in 1659, although the first known Christmas church service in Boston, MA attests to 1686. New Hampshire followed suit with bans, as Governor John Wentworth (whose Portsmouth, NH home I visited last year) drafted a law to stop Christmas in the capital city. After the American Revolutionary War, the only acceptable national holidays were American Independence Day (Fourth of July) and the Birthday of George Washington.
The Christmas tides turned quickly in the 19th century. By the 1810s, congregants decorated their churches with bows, a tradition carried over from pagan rituals like the festival of Saturnalia or worship of the Roman god Saturn. The arrival of German immigrants during this time imported a large number of German traditions to the young country, many of which are staples in modern secular Christmas. Decorated trees became an attraction for holiday fairs, and newspaper advertisements listed trees as attractions alongside shopping opportunities. Local charitable organizations, such as churches and women’s clubs, hosted these fairs to raise money for their causes. The largest of these was a Christmas fair in Boston hosted by the Female Anti-Slavery Society (FASS), which happens to be my favorite charitable organization of the mid-19th century. I’m sure the reader can relate. FASS sold a Christmas gift book The Liberty Bell, which contained poems, stories, and essays. Shopping was somehow even worse in the 19th century than the present day. A woman in the Lyman family (whose HNE-owned house I visited last year) reported that she purchased 147 gifts over the course of five days.
Turino elaborated on early tree decorating practices. Families would place lit candles on their tree, keeping buckets of water and sand nearby in case of an incident. Expensive glass ornaments were imported from Germany, where entire villages were devoted to the craft. While tabletop goose feather trees (like the one I saw at HNE’s Roseland Cottage last Saturday) were initially popular, larger trees became the norm in the 1870s. Initially, unwrapped gifts were tied to the tree branches or placed under the tree. Wrapped gifts were covered in plain paper and tied with simple string. Decorative stickers were added for a pop of color. Not until the 1890s did Dennison Manufacturing Company in Framingham, MA invent modern gift wrap. The first National Christmas Tree appeared on The Mall in Washington, D.C. in 1923 thanks to my favorite president, Calvin Coolidge. Also mentioned were metallic artificial trees, an abomination from the 1950s through 1960s.
Santa Claus has been present at Christmas since its early commercialization in the 1820s. The poem “An Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas”, also known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”, was written anonymously by New York City pastor Clement C. Moore in 1823. Depictions of Santa varied widely as artists like Thomas Nast and Winslow Homer created men of varying ages and varying creepiness. Santa’s look was not solidified until 1881, when he received his North Pole address and red suit. Previously, Santa had lived in Spain and taken the boat over. Letters to Santa were encouraged. The HNE collection holds these types of letters written by young Stevie Phillips of Salem, MA (whose HNE-owned house I also visited last year). Of course, it is not good for Santa to be alone, so in 1899, American poet Katherine Lee Bates created Mrs. Claus. (Bates is better known for her song “America the Beautiful”, which was published in 1895.)
The talk was well-paced, conveying a large amount of information without overwhelming the audience. Turino used interactive questions to encourage audience participation. As for the audience, its members had deep history knowledge of New England and the United States, allowing them to ask great questions during the brief Q&A at the end of the session. I look forward to future talks given by Turino, along with events hosted by Northbridge historical and cultural organizations.