Christmas in the Colonies

"[A]s a connoisseur of Colonial and Revolutionary American history, and a lover of Christmas, this writer seeks to combine these two interests for you, as this Christmas season ushers us into the celebrative cycle."

From One Peter Five

By Charles Coulombe, KC*SS, STM

Christmas is come, hang on the pot,
Let spits turn round, and ovens be hot;
Beef, pork, and poultry, now provide
To feast thy neighbors at this tide;
Then wash all down with good wine and beer,
And so with mirth conclude the Year.
—Virginia Almanac (Royle) 1765

December of 2024 finds us gearing up to celebrate the Semiquincentennial of American Independence in 2026.  Of course, the American Revolution – our first civil war – extended from 1775 to 1783.  The Bicentennial – which I survived as a teenager – actually extended from 1975 to 1983.  Although, as Americans have spent the last several years in an orgy of division, wokery, and self-hatred, not much has been said about it thus far.  But as a connoisseur of Colonial and Revolutionary American history, and a lover of Christmas, this writer seeks to combine these two interests for you, as this Christmas season ushers us into the celebrative cycle.

The European colonies that made up what are now the United States in say, 1760 – French, British, Spanish, and Russian – were not only different according to their homelands; the British colonies were themselves very different.  Puritan New England, the heavily Dutch and German Mid-Atlantic, and the Anglican South might as well have been different countries themselves, due to the immense diversity of their settlers.  In accordance with this, their methods of keeping – or not keeping – the Christmas feasts varied wildly.  As with other colonial folkways, these have left remnants that continue with us to-day – and in some few spots, people try to relive them.

What we shall attempt in this article is to take you on a tour of the colonies, give a bit of information on how each celebrated Our Lord’s birth and Epiphany, what has survived to the present, and where – if we know – you might get a taste of the colonial experience in that region to-day.  We’ll have to be a bit foggy with the timeline: when New France fell to the British in 1760, Spanish settlement in California would not begin for another nine years – and so on.  But don’t let that bother you.  Relax, sit back, and enjoy Christmas “in the old colonial day, when men lived in a grander way.”

Speaking of New France, one might object that its centre was the St. Lawrence Valley of to-day’s Canadian Province of Quebec, and so outside our boundaries.  While that is true, it also encompassed settlements in our States of Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, and for all that the city of Quebec was the capital.  The Indian tribes who made up the bulk of the inhabitants had been evangelised, and so had adopted customs from the French or created their own various Christmas customs.  Similar was the neighbouring French province of Acadia – the modern Canadian Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island.  The Colony of Louisiana was much larger than the modern State of that name, reaching up the Mississippi to encompass Arkansas and Missouri.  What distinguished Christmas customs in these various regions from each other – especially as regarded cuisine – was not religion, but climate.

Since they were Catholics, these Frenchmen kept Advent as a time of penance.  Christmas Eve was devoted to Midnight Mass and singing the old French Christmas hymns.  But many in New France believed – and the practise still continues, despite the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s – that reciting one thousand Aves in silence on Christmas Eve would infallibly deliver whatever one was praying for – especially a suitable spouse.  Midnight Mass was the highlight of the observance, and many would attend all three Masses of Christmas.  But coming home from the first after exchanging greeting with the neighbours, there would be the first meal of Christmas – the Réveillon.  In New France this might mean meat pies, in Louisiana, gumbo; but either way, it was the beginning of the break-fasting that characterised the season.

But Christmas day itself was rather quiet – especially if one attended the Masses at Dawn and in the morning, although there would be a huge dinner.  Gifts were not exchanged, although parties began.  New Year’s Eve saw another Réveillon.  In many towns groups of young men woud go from house to house singing an old song – the Guinannee or Gignolee – in return for food and drink.  Before the children went to bed, their father would bless them.  When they woke in the morning on New Year’s Day, the Christ Child would have brought them gifts.  The celebrations would continue until the Epiphany, when the Galette des rois, the King Cake was served at a final Réveillon.  A small object would normally be hidden inside the galette, such as a bean, ring, coin, or tiny Christ Child.  Whoever found this received a small gift.  After the meal, friends, family and neighbours would gather to sing, dance and play music with violins, accordions and harmonicas.  The Epiphany was also the very beginning of Carnival season, and in Quebec City, Montreal, New Orleans, the balls and dances would begin.

To-day, one can still find traces of these customs all over what was once French America.  The gift-giving has shifted to Christmas day – and Père Noël or Santa Claus brings them.  The Réveillon is still served throughout French Canada and in dozens of restaurants in New Orleans.  Destrehan Plantation outside the latter city offers a reenactment of an old Creole Christmas.  The Guignolee is not dead in Quebec or what was the French Midwest: Ste. Genevieve, Missouri and Prairie du Rocher, Illinois still retain it.  Father still bless their children – even as my French-Canadian father blessed my brother and me, and my brother Andre does his children to-day.  King Cakes are likewise still found in French Canada, Louisiana, and the Gulf Coast on Epiphany.

As is well known, however, New France’s longtime Puritan enemies in New England were likewise enemies of Christmas, as in Old England where Cromwell not only banned Christmas but also mince pie, on the off chance someone might celebrate it on the sly.  But as in Narnia, Christmas forced its way through when Charles II, the “Merrie Monarch” forced his New England colonies to legalise it.  But it was not a legal holiday; those who celebrated it were primarily Anglicans (not unlike the denizens of Merry Mount, who earlier scandalised the Pilgrims with their Yule-tide celebrations) and could be fired if they did not show up for work.  Even for them, thusly, the celebrations were muted, and primarily confined to church services in places like Boston’s Old North Church and King’s Chapel – and in compensation, “greening” these sorts of establishments in preparation for the feast became a sort of celebration in itself.  It would only be in the 19th century that Christmas would really invade New England. When it did, it would claim major victims like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Phillips Brooks, authors respective of “I heard the Bells on Christmas Day” and “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.”  But about the only contribution to the modern Christmas celebration made by colonial New England was the “Greening of the Church” – which is a widely celebrated Advent observance in many Protestant churches across the country.  Even though “Old style” Christmases offered in places like Old Sturbridge Village and The Wayside Inn perforce re-enact the 19th century.

His Majesty’s Provinces of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, on the other hand, could not have been more different from their northern neighbours – thanks to the original Dutch settlers in the first two colonies, and the Catholic and various German and other settlers in the last.  St. Nicholas brought the gifts to the little Dutch tykes – and as we all know eventually morphed into Santa Claus, who has conquered the world.  Both the Dutch Christmas customs he encountered as a boy and those he experienced in England made Washington Irving the great propagator among Protestants of the feast – and contributed mightily to Charles Dickens’ work in this area.  Indeed, in some ways New York City might be considered the progenitor and capital of the modern secular Christmas, as Clement Clarke Moore of “Night Before Christmas” fame was a native, it was the New York Sun that assured Virginia that there is indeed a Santa Claus, Rockefeller Center offered the Rockettes’ Show, the Christmas Tree, and much else – while Macy’s excelled in its Santa Claus visits, Christmas displays, and Thanksgiving parade.

But what is left of the colonial Christmas that so inspired Irving in the first place?  Well, throughout the Hudson Valley and New Jersey there are innumerable colonial historic homes that will give you their version of colonial celebrations – as one will in Pennsylvania.  But Pennsylvania also has two major sets of surviving customs from that era.  One of these originates in the above-mentioned German settlers.  Among those customs are belief in St. Nicholas’ nasty companion, the Belsnickel, as well as use of the Moravian Star as an Epiphany decoration, which is now used by many non-members of that denomination.  St. Stephen’s Day is also observed by Pennsylvania Dutch as “Second Christmas,” whereby they continue to visit and celebrate with family and friends.  The English settlers in William Penn’s colony brought over from England the old Mummers’ Plays.  But in Philadelphia these eventually morphed into the current New Year’s Day Mummers’ Parade – smaller versions may be found in adjoining suburbs and even Hagerstown, Maryland.

Indeed, to cross the Mason-Dixon line into the American South is to enter what was the heartland of English-speaking Christmas in colonial days.  Both Catholic and Anglican Maryland celebrated the feast with gusto, as did the latter in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia.  According to Anglican Missionary in Virginia, Philip Fithian, writing on December 18, 1773,

Nothing now is to be heard of in conversation but the balls, the fox hunts, the fine entertainments, and the good fellowship which are to be exhibited at the approaching Christmas… which are to continue til twelfth-day.  Everyone is now speaking of the approaching Christmas—The young Ladies tell me we are to have a Ball, of selected Friends in this Family—But I, hard Lot, I have never learned to dance!

Although both servants and house slaves had to work harder to help the hosts put on these entertainments, field hands were given a lot of time off and the means to celebrate – enslaved or not. There were, of course, the Mummers and their plays.

To-day, a great deal of the colonial Christmas survives in the South – particularly as regards cuisine.  Here too, a great many colonial inns and houses reenact the Christmas of that era – with Williamsburg, Virginia being the capital of such activities – although George Washington’s Mount Vernon does a great job.  In Maryland, such spots as Rackliffe Hall and the Rising Sun Inn do the same, as do North Carolina’s Tryon’s Palace, South Carolina’s Historic Camden, Georgia’s Wormsloe Plantation, and countless other such spots.  But a number of unique traditions still survive outside of reenactments.  In various pockets of Appalachia, Old Christmas (January 6 – Christmas under the Julian Calendar) is still celebrated in different ways – including with Mummer’s Plays.

The Spanish colonised the southern tier of States – Florida, Texas, New Mexico (including Arizona and El Paso), and Alta California. As Catholics, their Christmas celebrations resembled the French – despite the difference in language.  Both centred on the same Mass and other liturgical rites. During Advent there were early morning Masses – the Misas de Gallo, Masses of the Rooster because he was supposed to crow immediately afterwards.  Although the specifics differed from place to place, the late Advent season featured groups going about as the shepherds – Los Pastores – in performances that ranged from singing in return for refreshments to actual plays.  Las Posadas – the Inns – featured a group playing the Holy Family going from place to place seeking a place of the Virgin to give birth.  In some places on the frontier, if there was no priest – Noche Buena – Christmas Eve – might see such a performance take the place of Midnight Mass.  As with the French, the Spanish would have a meal after returning home from Mass, before going to bed.  They too kept the twelve days as days of feasting and joy; but the gifts were brought to the children the night before the Epiphany by the Three Kings.  There was a cake on the feast itself, with a small token in it, as in Louisiana or New France.

A great many of all of these customs continue in the States that were once part of New Spain.  In Santa Fe and northern New Mexico in general, Luminarias continue to light up the Christmastide night – and tamales are well-nigh universal.  Las Posadas, for example, can be found in many places, such as St. Augustine, Florida, San Antonio, Texas, El Paso, Texas, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Tucson, Arizona, and San Diego, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, and Fremont – all in California.  Indeed, the descendants of the Spanish colonists have probably kept closer to their ancestral customs than any other nationality.

The Spanish are matched in continuity by the Russians in Alaska.  Starting in 1784, they began settling Alaska and converting the natives to Russian Orthodoxy.  Maintaining the Julian Calendar, Russian Orthodox Christmas was actually on January 7, and their twelve days ended on January 14.  After Christmas Eve Vespers, they would take an icon of the infant Jesus and a wooden and cloth star from house to house, in a manner similar to Las Posadas.  Orthodox Epiphany would concluded the period with a procession to a nearby lake, river, or the coast in order to conduct the elaborate blessing of the water in commemoration of Christ’s Baptism.  All of this continues to this day in those areas of the State that remain primarily Orthodox: Anchorage, the Y-K Delta, the Southeast (especially the old capital at Sitka), Kodiak, along the Aleutian chain, and the Southern Kenai Peninsula.

What they all had in common is as interesting as what was different, and may be adopted into our celebrations – to include keeping Advent, having Christmas Eve festivities connected to Midnight Mass, Christmas pageants and plays, keeping the twelve days, and marking the Epiphany – to say nothing of blessing one’s children on New Year’s Eve.  Thus, we see that Christmas’ roots in this continent are deeper than the Federal Government’s mere 250 years of existence.  At a time when even Cambridge, Massachusetts’ Revels have replaced “Christmas” in their name with “Mid-Winter” it is as much a patriotic duty to defend Christmas as it is to protect the flag – even more so, in fact.

Above: Christmas Coach 1795 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris  (1863–1930)