Christmas, perhaps more than any other holiday, reminds us
of how complicated life has become. There are the cards to write, cookies to
bake, gifts to buy, school plays to attend, “must-see” entertainments to take
in, trees to decorate, and so much more. What happened, we ask, to the peaceful
Christmases of the past, the time for reflection, the slower pace of life where
hot cider and sleigh rides weren’t simply a treat or a precious image, but a
way of life?
Sorry to trample your reverie, but nineteenth century
Christmases were every bit as overwrought as ours.
Starting with Christmas Cards. The lithographer Louis Prang
was a Polish immigrant who first printed Christmas Cards for the American
market in 1875. Dedicated to creating works of art, he perfected the process of
chromolithography and held art contests to draw out the finest artists of the
day. By 1881, Prang was printing about five million cards per year. One ad in
the Daily Alta California announced, “Prang’s Xmas cards have been received and
are now on sale at Art and Book Stores.” They would have sold for about $.75 to
a $1.25 each; quite a sum when many people worked for a dollar a day. No laser
printed labels from your saved list, either.
Baking and celebration is of course an ancient combination.
Virginia Richmond writes in a December 1901 issue of Collier’s Weekly,
“unquestionably, we must eat and drink well if we would be merry.” She provides
recipes for “stickies” (sticky buns, it would appear from the recipe), Salem
fancy cakes (made, Richmond declares, “in just this way in the time when the
holidays were clouded by witchcraft and its attendant horror,”) butter tarts
(more lemon than butter), and an interesting fruit dish, orange paniers, which
are orange rinds halved and hollowed then filled with the jellied juice and
topped with “a sweetmeat.”
Gift giving then was no less complicated than it is now. A
Mrs. B. M. Sherman, also writing for Collier’s, helps young ladies trying to
shop for “Some other girls’ Brothers.” “Having the matter of gifts on my mind,”
writes Sherman, I determined to make a canvass among my numerable male
acquaintances, and as a result I discovered a deplorable condition of affairs.
The men were unanimous in expressing a desire for something for their dens.
They all had dens, these degenerate men…”
Sherman then describes the various fashionable items,
including “tasteful pipe racks,” (in the form of “Oriental” heads) framed
etchings (“Christ’s heads, and different studies of the Holy Child make most
appropriate Christmas gifts,”), pillows (yes, pillows for lounging about and
smoking), and stylish “burned wood” accessories, such a monogrammed letter
rack.
In fact, wood burning was, at the time, a “new fad [that]
can be learned very easily.” Mrs. Sherman admonishes her readers to consider
hand-making such gifts, since “a present made by the donor is always more prized
than one bought in a shop where hundreds of duplicates can be obtained.” In
fact, hand-making of gifts was common in the nineteenth century and into the
early twentieth. Carvings, needlepoints, clothes, and toys were hand made as
well as purchased. A child of yesteryear would have no trouble believing his or
her toy was made by an elf at a workbench.
Going to our children’s Christmas programs is no new
invention. The Daily Alta California of December 20, 1889 announced the annual Christmas
exercises of the Irving Primary School with a lengthy list, giving the names of
the children and the song or poem presented by each child. It is a very long
list, as every student of the school appears to have been required to
participate. At the end of the program, relates the article, the children were
given bags of candy. Though it does not say, it would not have been unusual for
Santa Claus to have been there giving the candy. The tradition of Santa Claus
was popular among children out west, and there was a Santa-themed publication
that came out every year. ‘St. Nicholas’ ran from the early 1800s to the 1940,
and the 500-page publication included enough stories, poetry, contests, crafts
and games to keep house bound children busy through the winter months.
There were of course, public functions to attend. “The
churches,” announced the December 26, 1890 San Francisco Call, “held fine
Christmas trees last night. Tonight there was a masquerade ball at the Opera
House.” In addition to visiting community Christmas trees, families would go to
Christmas plays and pantomimes, as well as musical events. The Daily Alta
California of December 20, 1890 announces that among the “many preparations for
Christmas,” the Christmas Cantata, “Emanuel,” should “prove attractive.”
Charitable events, of course, were not uncommon. In
Washington, D.C. in 1888, for example, The First Lady, Mrs. Grover Cleveland, a
Mrs. Folsom, and the publisher of the ‘Century’ magazine, Richard Gilder, put
on a “sumptuous” dinner for 2000 orphans. The San Francisco Call describes in
an 1899 issue how the Volunteers of America provided a Christmas dinner for the
city’s newsboys. About 500 were given “a real turkey banquet,” it said. Calls
for donations, too, appeared in the papers. The Tamalpais Centre Women’s Club
announced in the December 20, 1917 Marin Journal the setting up of a manger.
“Each child,” says the announcement, “is requested to bring some gift to be
placed in the manger.”
Decorating the home was every bit as important and elaborate
then as now. Most decorations for the house were handmade, but with time came a
gradually increasing supply of ready made decorations. Boughs of evergreen were
hung about the house, and the tree was decorated with not only ornaments, which
could be costly, but also pictures of loved ones, lace, buttons, paper chains, berries,
strings of apples, and lit candles.
It is easy to think that other times and places were somehow
simpler, but digging a little reveals that there is never a shortage of energy
for elaborating on the holidays and filling every moment with something to do.
Might as well just get on board the Christmas train and right it through to the
New Year!
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