Odd Wisconsin Archive
Ghosts of Christmas Past
Stressed out by holiday parties, cooking, shopping, travel plans, house cleaning, and the whole annual onslaught of holiday obligations? Relax for a minute, and consider how people used to cope
with the holidays.
Our earliest French settlers devoted Christmas to celebrations at home and piety at church, especially midnight mass. Achille Bertrand, who arrived in Superior in 1857, recalled that the service included three sermons — English, French and Ojibwe. The Yankee descendants of the Puritans who arrived here in the early 1800s tried to replace French customs with English ones. They took a different tack: they observed Christmas, but didn't celebrate it (or much of anything else, perhaps). Other early Christmases in Wisconsin included ritual over-eating, just as today's does.
German immigrants brought the custom of decorating a Christmas tree. A German ship captain, Herman Schuenemann, became affectionately known as "Captain Santa" because for many years he brought Christmas trees from northern Wisconsin to Chicago. His voyage of 1912 was to be his last, however. Fully loaded with 10,000 trees, his ship, the Rouse Simmons, encountered a brutal winter storm and disappeared without a trace; in 1971, its remains were discovered off the coast of Two Rivers.
By then, many of our holiday customs were well-established. Schools held special parties such as this 1891 festivity, in the kindergarten at Gilbert, in Lincoln County. "Christmas is always a happy time for the children," wrote its headmaster. "During December they were busy preparing little presents for papa and mamma, thus learning the lesson of giving. They were delighted when they saw the tree, and their own work on it, and their eyes shone bright as Christmas stars at the sight of the dolls and boats and drums. A bountiful lunch had been provided, to which they did ample justice." In Madison about the same time, a social service called the Attic Angels issued a fund-raising cookbook that included Christmas recipes. With the success of modern department stores at the end of the century, Christmas shopping became an established annual event.
It was all downhill from there. By the 1920s the obligatory office Christmas party, such as this 1928 event ("the second annual Christmas party of the order and distribution department") had become
part of the tradition. Workers spent months preparing holiday gift boxes of candy. Children dressed up in costumes for pageants, sometimes even masquerading as Christmas trees. Santa found his way into not only chimneys but department stores and helicopters. The post office was annually overwhelmed with cards and packages, all but burying employees like Fred Boyle.
:: Posted in Curiosities on December 18, 2005
Did You Know?
The Wisconsin Historical Museum is currently featuring Odd Wisconsin objects in the latest exhibit: Odd Wisconsin. And don't miss the Odd Wisconsin book by author Erika Janik published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
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