Christmas-Then and now

[captdougofky]

To All
For those, that have a research base approach to reenacting what is the difference between Christmas now and then. I don't know, but we all know there are those here that do. Having ask that, I want to wish Everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Always
Doug Thomas
Lyons Battery CS
1st. Ky. Vols.
Shepherdsville

[flattop32355]

Are you looking for in the field, in the winter camps, back home, or all three?

There were some very elaborate Christmas parties thrown in winter camps, with buildings being erected and ladies being brought in. Of course, these were reserved for the officers....

[indguard]

Well, for one thing, Christmas was not the major holiday during the Civil War that it is today. For most people Christmas was a nice evening dinner with the family and not much else. In some parts of the country there was no gift exchanging custom. It was celebrated somewhat differently in some parts of the country compared to others. More focus, less... it was not the universally recognized holiday across the country that it is today. Business was not shut down for the most part, for instance. It was beginning to gain more interest by the Civil War, though. Just not what we give it today.

Previous to the Civil War era (I'm talking 1700s, etc.) Christmas was almost like Devil's Night (without the satanic focus)! People would go out carousing, drinking, partying. There were pranks, drunken fights and general uproar. It was a bit of a mess, really. For many years the State of Massachusetts had outlawed the holiday.

Our particular traditions didn't really take hold until long after Charles Dickens self-published "A Christmas Carol" in 1843.

So, while Christmas didn't have the national significance it does today, you would still find a lot that you'd recognize.

[pvt t a white]

I'm positive that for the man on picket duty then and the man in the fox hole now, the difference is very little; lonely and dirty. Yes there will be some attempts by the troops to make the most of it. Unlike our forefathers on both sides who traveled across lines to trade and shared good times, food and fellowship just for one day; (this tradition was done in Europe up to and including WWII) our men and women today in the fox holes and on the picket lines do not enjoy that opportunity.

As we enjoy our Christmas festivities today, remember those who have gone before us and those who are still out there giving us the freedom to do so.

Merry Christmas

Pvt T A White

[captdougofky]

Well, for one thing, Christmas was not the major holiday during the Civil War that it is today. For most people Christmas was a nice evening dinner with the family and not much else. In some parts of the country there was no gift exchanging custom. It was celebrated somewhat differently in some parts of the country compared to others. More focus, less... it was not the universally recognized holiday across the country that it is today. Business was not shut down for the most part, for instance. It was beginning to gain more interest by the Civil War, though. Just not what we give it today.

Previous to the Civil War era (I'm talking 1700s, etc.) Christmas was almost like Devil's Night (without the satanic focus)! People would go out carousing, drinking, partying. There were pranks, drunken fights and general uproar. It was a bit of a mess, really. For many years the State of Massachusetts had outlawed the holiday.

Our particular traditions didn't really take hold until long after Charles Dickens self-published "A Christmas Carol" in 1843.

So, while Christmas didn't have the national significance it does today, you would still find a lot that you'd recognize.

Thanks Warren this kind of information, was what I did not know.

Always Doug
Lyons Battery

[OVI]

Christmas during the American Civil War

This is one of Thomas Nast's depictions of a heartsick separated family's Christmas during the third year of the American Civil War. The woman looks longingly at the winter's moon while the lonely soldier gazes sadly at his family's pictur

According to historian Ronald Hutton, the current state of observance of Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival of the holiday spearheaded by Charles Dickens. In A Christmas Carol, Hutton argues, Dickens sought to construct Christmas as a family-centered festival of generosity, in contrast to the community-based and church-centered observations, the observance of which had dwindled during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The holiday, remade as a family-centered rather than community-centered festival, carried its own set of contradictions: the practice of gift-giving created the possibility of commercialization, and the shift from community to familial focus further eroded the traditions of communal religious observance.


Historian Stephen Nissenbaum contends that the modern celebration in the United States was developed in New York State from existing Dutch traditions in order to re-focus the holiday from one where groups of young men went from house to house demanding alcohol and food into one that was focused on the happiness of children. He notes that there was deliberate effort to prevent the children from becoming greedy in response.


For a nation torn by civil war, Christmas in the 1860s was observed with conflicting emotions. Nineteenth-century Americans embraced Christmas with all the Victorian trappings that had moved the holiday from the private and religious realm to a public celebration. Christmas cards were in vogue, carol singing was common in public venues, and greenery festooned communities north and south. Christmas trees stood in places of honor in many homes, and a mirthful poem about the jolly old elf who delivered toys to well-behaved children captivated Americans on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.


But Christmas also made the heartache for lost loved ones more acute. As the Civil War dragged on, deprivation replaced bounteous repasts and familiar faces were missing from the family dinner table. Soldiers used to "bringing in the tree" and caroling in church were instead scavenging for firewood and singing drinking songs around the campfire. And so the holiday celebration most associated with family and home was a contradiction. It was a joyful, sad, religious, boisterous, and subdued event.


Christmas was an especially difficult time for soldiers and the families they left at home. . On the home front, many women and children widened their responsibilities and suffered hardships caused by the absence of their Husbands, Fathers and Sons.


It was not until Christmas 25 days afterwards (after the Battle of Franklin Nov. 30th 1864) that I was enabled to borrow a yoke of oxen, and spent the whole of that Christmas Day hauling seventeen dead horses from this yard. Moscow Carter "Carter House resident”-Speaking about Christmas Day 1864.


The Same year in Central Virginia, young William Nalle hurried to his grandmother's farm, which Union Cavalrymen were ransacking. Arriving, the boy witnessed "a spectacle I shall not shortly forget." All the stock and forage were snatched up by the Union troopers. Doors were ripped off during the greedy search for provisions and some of the troopers grabbed his grandmother's collar demanding money. Christmas had come to the barren Virginia countryside, one that young William and many others in the region would never forget.
Elisha Hunt Roads - "This is the birthday of our Savior, but we have paid very little attention to it in a religious way... It does not seem much like Sunday or Christmas, for the men are hauling logs to build huts. This is a work of necessity for the quarters we have been using are not warm enough.


Most southern children endured meager living during the war, and Christmas only accentuated the hardship.


Three year old Robert Martin said he was "...tired of the war because Santa Clause forgot to come to the Shenandoah Valley."


Many southern children were told that "Santa was a Yankee" so Confederate pickets would not let Santa through.

By contrast though, many northern children still received gifts and treats because the northern economy actually flourished and expanded as the war dragged on.

One soldier described Christmas 1862 in the union Iron brigade: "…two men from company f provided a temporary diversion on Christmas Day. The two got into a fight that ended with one struck the other over the head with a musket bending the barrel so badly as to render it unserviceable.”

Many of the holiday customs we associate with Christmas today were familiar to 1840s celebrants. Christmas cards were popularized that decade and Christmas trees were a stylish addition to the parlor. By the 1850s, Americans were singing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear," "Oh Little Town of Bethlehem," and "Away in a Manger" in public settings. In 1850 and 1860, Godey's Lady's Book featured Queen Victoria's tabletop Christmas tree, placed there by her German husband Prince Albert. Closer to home, in December, 1853, Robert E. Lee's daughter recorded in her diary that her father - then superintendent at West Point - possessed an evergreen tree decorated with dried and sugared fruit, popcorn, ribbon, spun glass ornaments, and silver foil.




Note: Christmas was declared a U.S. federal holiday in 1870.


Some Information for this article was taken from "We Were Marching on Christmas Day: A History and Chronicle of Christmas During the Civil War" by Kevin Rawlings.



Kent Dorr - Ohio Winter Quarters
"Devils Own Mess"

[RJSamp]

One soldier described Christmas 1862 in the union Iron brigade: "…two men from company f provided a temporary diversion on Christmas Day. The two got into a fight that ended with one struck the other over the head with a musket bending the barrel so badly as to render it unserviceable.”


Kent Dorr - Ohio Winter Quarters
"Devils Own Mess"

And that would be called artistic license.....no way that happened to a musket barrel.

[jthlmnn]

Without contradicting anything posted above, I would suggest that our mid-nineteenth century American customs were being heavily influenced, directly and indirectly, by Germanic customs.

Indirectly, through Victorian England, which had begun to imitate various Germanic customs brought by Victoria's ancestors (she was of almost total German ancestry) and her contemporary family.

Directly, through the Germans themselves, who had been arriving in large numbers since the late 1840s. (Thomas Nast, for example, was born in Landau, Germany and his family came to America about 1849, as I recall.)

I would also add the following source for some insight into the topic:

Marten, James. The Children's Civil War. 1998. University of North Carolina Press. pp 120-122, 156

Frohe Weihnachten und ein glückliches neues Jahr!

[Trish Hasenmueller]

Here's an article I recently put together for the Ladies Soldiers' Friend Society newsletter:

Christmas in Columbia, 1862
Trish Hasenmueller

In 1976 Jill Garrett, Maury County Historian and member of the Captain James Madison Sparkman Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy transcribed Robert Smith’s war time diary. The information for this article is taken from the published diary.

Robert Davis Smith, born at the Athenaeum Rectory in Columbia, Tennessee on October 9, 1842 kept a quite informative diary of his experiences during the Civil War. We’ll be sharing here a war time Christmas from Robert’s diary.

Robert grew up at the Athenaeum surrounded by the gracious world of feminine education. He eventually took over the operation of the school when his mother died in 1871 and ran it until 1904.

For most of the War Between the States, Captain Smith was a supply/ordinance officer. He started the war as captain of Company B, 2nd Tennessee Infantry (Bates), also called the “Maury Rifles”, a company equipped by the Athenaeum. Later, when our Christmas takes place, he was on the staff of Major General Patrick Cleburne. Even later he was on the staff of General Walthall.

In Captain Smith’s diary are many details of daily life in the Confederate Army. Often family members were able to catch up with him to bring food and needed equipment. Robert would send his faithful servant, John Smith, on various errands around the region or back to Columbia to rest or fetch something he needed. On November 28, 1862 John returned with a fine new horse Robert paid $200 for. On December 9th, Robert’s mother sent “fresh peaches, oysters, cake and other things.”

During December of 1862 Captain Smith became assigned to the staff of Major General Patrick Cleburne. His father, Franklin Gillette Smith, spent December 20 and part of the 21st with Robert in camp at College Grove, Tennessee. ‘Father’ had brought letters and a gray cap to Robert. They went together to visit with Brigadier General Polk who shared newspapers and a “supper of turkey pie, backbones, stewed peaches, biscuits, cornbread, coffee and sugar and peach pies.” Robert wrote: “Father seems to think that I live very well.”

Brigadier General Polk promised Robert a furlough for Christmas but things changed when Major General Cleburne took over. (Preparations for a battle at Murfreesboro had started.) Captain Smith was ordered to have two days rations cooked and to have his department ready for an inspection to take place on the 23rd. The inspection took place and took all day. This leads us to Christmas Eve, 1862:

“Dec.24th (1862) – Maj. Genl. Cleburne refused to sign a furlough for 24 hours for me today. Brig. Genl. Polk gave me a leave of absence for 12 hours commencing tomorrow morning at 8 o’clock. He signed it this evening and made me promise that I would not leave until tomorrow morning. I only expect to go to Spring Hill, as Father told me that Mother and Sister would meet me there tomorrow. I let John go home today.

Dec. 25th (1862) – I left camp this morning at reveille and went to Spring Hill and staid there an hour waiting for Mother just as I was getting ready to leave for Columbia, I saw Mother and Father drive up in the buggy; as I had gone that far I thought it would be bad not to see them all, so I rode to Columbia with them. I arrived there at 1 P.M. & staid until 5 P.M. reached camp about Midnight—I spent the day very pleasantly although I had a very hard days ride. I was very sorry I could not stay longer—I met Miss Clara Peters on the rode to Columbia- I rode about sixty miles to-day.”

So, our soldier had four hours at home, at the Athenaeum in Columbia, Tennessee, on Christmas Day, 1862 and was grateful for his four hours even after riding sixty miles in one day. We can only imagine the festivities crammed into that four hours! The next day, ‘Father’ was back in camp at College Grove:

“Dec. 26th (1862)
Father came to see me this evening – he brot me several things – my visit home seems to have given great satisfaction particularly to Sister. I borrowed some late newspapers from Genl Polk for Father. I received marching orders to-night, the enemy are advancing upon us.”

After Christmastime, 1862 spent in the warm embrace of family and home, Captain Smith and his department marched hard in the cold rain toward the Battle of Murfreesboro.

Source:
Confederate Diary of Robert D. Smith
Transcribed by Jill K. Garrett
Index and Additional notes by Virginia Alexander and Elaine Davidson
Captain James Madison Sparkman Chapter, UDC
P.O.Box 702, Columbia, TN 38402
Copyright 1997
Library of Congress Card Catalog No. 96-71663

[jthlmnn]

You might find this article interesting. Common features of Christmas in this era are Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and, especially for the soldiers, packages from home.
http://www.historynet.com/christmas-...es-feature.htm