Highlights Archives
Ghosts of Christmases Past
Wisconsin residents have observed Christmas for more than 300 years, but usually not like we do today. Different ethnic groups celebrated in different ways at different times, and only recently did the holiday take the form it has now.
To the Jesuit missionaries who arrived here in the 17th century, Christmas was a holy day. Father Jean St. Cosme passed through Wisconsin in 1698 and left this account of his Christmas on the Mississippi River: "On the 24th we camped early, in order that our people might prepare for the great festival of Christmas. We erected a small chapel and chanted a high mass at midnight, at which all our French performed their devotions. Christmas Day was spent in saying our masses, all of which were attended by our people, and in the afternoon we chanted vespers."
When there were no priests on hand, though, the working people of early Wisconsin observed Christmas as the beginning of party season. In about 1820 French-Canadian and mixed-race residents of Green Bay "were strict observers of the seasons of festivals and feasts, from Christmas to Ash-Wednesday. The whole settlement was rife with feasting, dancing, and merry making, but on the approach of Lent it was suddenly suspended till Easter. The Lenten fast was strictly observed by these good Catholics; i.e., they ceased gormandizing ducks, venison, and porcupine only to feast in more epicurean style on trout, sturgeon, and wild rice."
Their bosses in the fur trade always tried to accommodate the French custom of a holiday feast. Thomas G. Anderson, a British trader in northwestern Wisconsin, treated his voyageurs to unsuccessful Christmas dinners of muskrat pie and raccoon.
When Yankee Protestants began to settle in Wisconsin about 1820, they spoke a new language and built new churches but accepted the French tradition of Christmas feasting. In Green Bay at Christmas 1837, when the Protestant service was concluded, the whole town walked three miles up the Fox River to Shanty Town (except for those who skated) to attend the Catholic service, which culminated in a great feast "largely made up of game. There was venison, bear meat, and porcupine; a dozen varieties of the feathered tribes from the waters, as geese and ducks; and of fishes an almost endless list, headed by that king of all the fish tribe, the sturgeon. ... Excellent appetites and good nature joined to the good cheer made this rousing Christmas dinner one long to be remembered. This happy company rose from the table at six o'clock and dancing commenced soon after; the revelry lasted to the small hours."
The European tradition of partying on Christmas made perfect sense to the neighboring Indian tribes, who had feasting and dancing traditions of their own, and who often worked as cooks and servants for the French and Yankees, and they often joined in. At Kaukauna, where the Stockbridge Indians settled in the 1820s, Presbyterian missionary Cutting Marsh thought his flock had forgotten the true meaning of Christmas and tried to put religion back into it:
"25th. Christmas. he noted in his 1832 annual report. At a council previously called, the nation of their own accord resolved to spend the day in a religious manner. It has usually been a day of mirth & festivity amongst the young people. We met at the usual hour of meeting on the sab[bath] and had religious exercises, and devoted the afternoon to the cause of temperance. There was a general attendance at meeting all day and I returned home rejoicing that God had put it into their hearts to spend the day so differently, and profitably, too, from what it had been spent in years previous." In fact, only about a third of the Stockbridge were members of Marsh's church, so presumably he did not convert most of the community to abandoning mirth and festivity.
As the 19th century unfolded, immigrants from other lands brought unique Christmas traditions into Wisconsin. Cornish miners made saffron cake in the Lead Region, and an English settler near Racine startled his neighbors by caroling in 1844. "We had a first rate Christmas," Edwin Bottomley wrote home. "We went down to Rochester and got there about 2 o'clock in the morning. Every house was in darkness and all the inhabitants asleep. ... We commenced singing at a Mr. Godfrey's, who is the oldest settler in this part, and then we went through the [village], the inhabitants of which wondered what ever there was to do. One man thought it was the Indians that was coming to drive them out of the town, and at the tavern the boarders tumbled downstairs one after another, some of them half dressed, wondering what there was coming." [Wisconsin Magazine of History: Volume 22, number 4 (June 1939): 396-397.]
By then, the first German immigrants had arrived in the Milwaukee area. Thousands more followed on their heels, bringing with them Santa Claus and the Christmas tree. Here is how a poor rural German family celebrated Christmas shortly after the Civil War: "The event began with Christmas Eve when the Santa Claus Lady appeared dressed in a long white robe — for this occasion my grandmother's burial robe was used — carrying a tiny stick in her hand. Touching the smaller children gently with her willow twig, she asked if they had been good children. Since we children were afraid of our own voices, our parents replied in the affirmative which relieved us greatly. The Santa Claus Lady gave us a few nuts and a stick of horehound candy or a few peppermint balls, saying that she would speak in our behalf to Santa Claus and tell him what good children we had been, and that he must try to come to our house and bring us a few things." [Wisconsin Magazine of History: Volume 29, number 1, (September 1945): 82-83]
A Christmas tree in a prosperous German home might take a long time to erect and decorate: "For days the preparations had been going on behind locked doors, with much pounding of hammers and giggling by the hired girls, as the maids were then called, who helped wholeheartedly. The tree was about ten feet high, not counting the stand. At its base was a tiny village made of cardboard with grass of real moss, streets of sand, and a lake of glass. The tree stood well away from the wall and was beautifully trimmed all around. A lot of baking had been done for weeks before Christmas and some of the cookies were made in such large quantities that they lasted till the following Christmas. I have never tasted anything so good as those German Christmas cookies on Christmas Eve. After the tree was lighted we all went into the parlor. After the exclamations of delight had subsided, grandfather read the story of the birth of Jesus from the Bible and then accompanied us on the piano while we sang Ihr Kinderlein Kommet, Stille Nacht and Luther's Vom Himmel Hoch da Komm Ich Her. Then the presents were distributed."
Some German families opened their presents on Christmas morning: "We could look at the Christmas tree all we wanted," one girl recalled, "but it must not be touched till after breakfast. Christmas breakfast was a feast of stollen made in wreaths, braids, or other designs. They were on the table in abundance and vanished without delay. It is much richer than coffee cake and the dough is filled with nuts, citron, and lemon peel; the top is spread with sugar and nuts and rose water. ... Breakfast over, we went into the parlor. The table, on which the Christmas tree stood, and the floor beneath were covered with piles of candy graded in size according to the age of the child, and also a cup cake for each of us. We felt sure that Mrs. Santa Claus had spoken so well of us that Santa Claus had not been able to forget us." [Wisconsin Magazine of History: Volume 29, number 1, (September 1945): 82-83]
The story of Santa Claus putting Christmas presents under a decorated evergreen had first come to New York with Dutch immigrants and was popularized in Clement Moore's 1823 poem, "A Visit from St. Nicholas." But Christmas was also celebrated this way by Germans, and became fashionable when England's Queen Victoria and Prince Albert (who were mostly raised by German relatives) introduced it at Buckingham Palace in the middle of the 19th century. It quickly became the cutting-edge way to celebrate the holiday, and in England and America a blend of German and English Christmas customs swept the land after 1850.
The narrative of gifts appearing under a tree on Christmas morning opened the way for widespread gift-giving, which required widespread shopping, complete with the making of lists and checking them twice. By the end of the century, most middle-class Wisconsin kids found on Christmas morning a decorated tree surrounded by store-bought consumer goods wrapped in special paper — a far cry from the horehound candy and single cupcake that had greeted their grandparents.
But Christmas shopping as we know it today, accounting for up to 40 percent of many businesses' annual sales, only began with modern mass media. Cheap printing and delivery of newspapers and magazines, followed by the spread of motion pictures, radio and television, enabled advertisers to reach millions of potential gift-givers. Merchants issued Christmas catalogs, printed Sunday supplements, and broadcast commercials that encouraged shoppers to spend. These advertisements were reinforced by popular songs and films such as "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" and "White Christmas." As the American economy expanded after World War Two, a generation of parents raised during the Great Depression eagerly transformed Christmas into the season of conspicuous consumption. Even the tree itself became a manufactured item, as Wisconsin became home to the famous aluminum Christmas tree industry.
Visit our online Toy Stories exhibit to see presents from your own Christmases past and read what toys Wisconsin celebrities found under their trees when they were little.
:: Posted December 22, 2006
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