Saturday, December 16, 2017

Comparing Christmases - the not so simple past

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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