STILLWATER OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE / 15
In his book“ The Battle for Christmas,” historian Stephen Nissenbaum describes early American Christmas as involving drinking, feasting, public revelry and social disorder. Due to the disorder associated with the holiday, Puritans in Massachusetts Bay banned Christmas celebrations from 1659 to 1681, making observance punishable by a fine.
“ Christmas was more like Mardi Gras than it was like the family-centered holiday that we know it to be now,” Pereira said.“ It was under pressure from the English crown, who wanted to advance the holiday, that they finally made the holiday acceptable, but resistance to Christmas among Puritans continued until the 19th Century.”
18th and 19th CENTURIES
The transformation of St. Nicholas into an American Christmas character continued, with Washington Irving helping to popularize a whimsical version of St. Nicholas in 1809 in“ A History of New York,” which described
St. Nicholas as“ flying through the air in a wagon.” In December 1823, an anonymous poem called“ A Visit from St. Nicholas” appeared in the Troy Sentinel newspaper, describing a small, magical St. Nicholas arriving at night in a sleigh pulled by flying reindeer and entering through the chimney.
This transformation of Santa Claus continued through books, newspapers, illustrations and children’ s literature, with Thomas Nast’ s illustrations in the 1860s establishing the larger, bearded Santa and contributing to the development of the North Pole tradition. Christmas was becoming increasingly more domestic and family-centered.
The first commercial Christmas cards appeared in Britain in 1843, and a famous illustration of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert around a Christmas tree appeared in“ The Illustrated London News” in 1848, helping popularize the Christmas tree in Britain.
In 1870, Congress established Christmas as a federal holiday for government employees in the District of Columbia and later extended the holiday to federal employees across the United States, with Santa becoming an increasingly standardized part of Christmas in the early 1900s. SwOk
STORY BY: Alisa Boswell Stillwater Oklahoma Magazine
STILLWATER OKLAHOMA MAGAZINE / 15