Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Unwrapping Christmas: Holiday’s traditions have storied origins

Bringing a live tree into the home during the winter and decorating it with evergreen is a longtime holiday practice.

St. Nicholas was a real man who became legendary for his goodwill.

Though Dec. 25 was established as Christ's birth date during the fourth century (to replace the day in which a sun god was honored), it wasn't until the 1800s that Christmas, as we know it, began to take form.

These are a just few explanations of today's Christmas traditions that author Jock Elliot discusses in "Inventing Christmas: How Our Holiday Came to Be" (2000, Harry N. Abrams Inc.).

The impressive 127-page look at the origin of Christmas traditions focuses on a 25-year period during the 1800s that Elliot refers to as the "'Big Bang' of our Christmas." It was a time, historians say, when today's social, commercial and highly decorative concepts of Christmas came to be.

"In the second quarter of the 19th century a lot of changes were taking place," Elliot said during a recent telephone interview from New York.

"The industrial revolution had reached its peak in England. It was reaching its peak in the United States. People were (moving) from the country to the city. Slavery was reaching its end. The rights of women were being established at the same time. So all those things were happening.

"The time was right for some changes in Christmas customs."

These changes included the creation of a jolly old man named Santa Claus, the printing of Christmas cards and the revitalization of Christmas carols. Christmas trees, which were a national custom in Germany, would soon be recognized in the United States. Gift giving would flourish.

Countless websites and books (among them Sue Ellen Thompson's "Holiday Symbols; Second Edition, T.G. Crippen's "Christmas and Christmas Lore" and Louise Carus' "The Real St. Nicholas") tell of the religious and secular traditions surrounding the anniversary of Christ's birth.

Some stories, such as Martin Luther placing candles on a tree to show his children how stars twinkle at night, are speculative. Others are historical accounts of mid-winter traditions.

Following is a look at some of the more famous holiday traditions:

Santa Claus

St. Nicholas, a bishop of Myra, is said to have been born in A.D. 280 to wealthy parents in what is now Turkey. He became known in legend as a generous and compassionate man who performed miracles and gave his inherited wealth to the poor.

Stories of his good deeds traveled the lands. St. Nicholas soon became, among other things, the patron saint of children. He was respected in churches and in stories. Tales of altruism eventually spread to Germany and Holland, where he was dubbed Sinter Claas.

In the United States, before becoming the subject of poem and song, St. Nicholas was portrayed as the patron saint of New York in Washington Irving's 1809 "Diedrich Knickerbocker's History of New York."

According to Elliott, in another account Irving mentioned St. Nicholas riding over trees in a wagon to bring presents to children.

It was Clement Clarke Moore, however, who turned St. Nicholas into the jolly man we know today when, in 1822, Moore wrote the poem now known as, "Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Then, in 1863, political cartoonist Thomas Nast drew the modern image of Santa Claus, a caricature that flourished.

Christmas stockings

A common legend of St. Nicholas was that of the three daughters. The story is told that a widowed man had no money to pay his eldest daughter's dowry. On learning this, St. Nicholas one evening secretly tossed a piece of gold into the daughter's stocking that was drying on the fireplace. He later returned to do the same for the other daughters.

When word spread of what St. Nicholas had done, it is said others had hung stockings in hopes of receiving gifts.

Also, Moore mentions stockings in "Twas the Night Before Christmas."

Reindeer

Though not the first person to mention reindeer, Moore in "Twas the Night Before Christmas" was the first to designate eight reindeer and give them names.

More than 100 years later a copywriter at Montgomery Ward named Robert May wrote the poem "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" for a pamphlet designed to generate holiday sales at the store.

The poem was widely popular and "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer" was later reissued as a book. It sold millions of copies and was translated into several languages. It became a popular song and one of the most popular TV specials ever.

The Christmas tree

Bringing trees and greens into the home during the long winters is a practice dating back centuries by people who used them in the home as a way to ward of spirits or as a sign of hope for spring.

During Saturnalia, an ancient Roman festival of Saturn, Romans adorned their homes and temples with evergreen branches. Trees were also decorated. Whether trees were decorated outdoors or brought indoors varies depending on the source.

The Christmas tree as it is known today is traced to the Germans, who are said to have introduced the tree to the United States when immigrating to Pennsylvania in the 18th century. Small trees were set on table tops and decorated with candles.

Prior to that, there was a tradition in which a treelike wooden structure covered with evergreen boughs and decorated with apples (to represent the story of Adam and Eve) were placed in homes.

The idea of the Christmas tree entered the English and American mainstream in the late 1840s and early 1850s after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert appeared in an illustration for the Illustrated London News.

Standing around a decorated Christmas tree with family, the illustration alluded warmth and celebration.

Until then Christmas trees were considered a pagan tradition and not widely accepted in the United States. Then, around 1850, Christmas trees were sold commercially and homemade ornaments (followed by store-bought ornaments), eventually replaced the practice of decorating trees with fruit and candy.

Candy canes, a long tradition, are said to have been created to resemble a shepherd's crook.

Holly and mistletoe

Similar to evergreens, holly (which bears fruit in the wintertime) and mistletoe are said to represent eternal life. In pre-Christian times some cultures used evergreens as a way to keep away witches, ghosts, evil spirits and illness.

The Christmas wreath and its circular shape was considered a symbol of eternity. Some see it as a continuation of the advent wreath.

The story of kissing under the mistletoe is often attributed to the Scandinavian legend that if enemies were to encounter each other under mistletoe in the forest, they would lay down arms and maintain truce for a day. Eventually kissing under mistletoe became a sign of love and friendship.

Gift giving

Christmastime gift-giving is often traced to three wise men who offered gold, frankincense and myrrh to Christ after his birth.

In Elliott's "The Invention of Christmas," there is mention of Romans giving gifts during their midwinter festivals. However, Elliott attributes the origin of today's holiday gift-giving to "gift books," which Elliott says were a fad that "swept England and the United States in the second quarter of the nineteenth century."

He explains that gift books were well-crafted, elegant literary annuals that were designed to be given to women at Christmastime and were also printed for children. Prior to gift books, a side of bacon or molasses was the more common gift to give.

But by the early 1830s, the books had become a craze. Though they had died out by the beginning of the Civil War, Elliott said the books had an "everlasting effect" and combined with Moore's poem of St. Nicholas created the gift-giving tradition.

Christmas cards

Hallmark company introduced its first Christmas cards in 1915. But Englishman Henry Cole, who in 1843 hired artist John Calcott Horsely to design a card to be printed in multiple copies for sending at Christmastime, is credited with beginning the Christmas card tradition.

The first Christmas cards were printed as postcards and later evolved into the folding cards sent today. According the the Greeting Card Association, based in Washington, D.C., Christmas accounts for one-fourth of all cards sold today. Hallmark states that 2.1 billion Christmas cards are sent in the United States each year.

Seasonal spirit

Regarding all the origins of Christmas traditions, Elliott, whose collection of Christmas books exceeds 3,000, says Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," which he devotes an entire chapter to in "Inventing Christmas," is responsible for generating the warmth associated with Christmas.

" 'A Christmas Carol' was the single most important influence in establishing the Christmas spirit," Elliott said. "The conversion of Scrooge is the conversion of a Christian soul. It's a reawakening of a Christian being and of a good being."

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