The Backstory: When Christmas Was About Drinking, Dancing, and Sex

We know all about the Christmas traditions we’ve grown up with, but where did they originate? We celebrate with Christmas trees, cards, lights, visits from Santa Claus, and lots of great food. But our ancestors were more likely to celebrate with drunken dancing, weird games, and street fights. How did Santa Claus, Christmas carols, and eggnog become a thing?

And a reminder… feel free to DM me if you have a story you’d like me to cover. On Facebook it’s Patty Steele, and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Wow, it's amazing how quickly the Christmas season creeps up
on us. There's so much to do, gifts, food, parties, decorating.
But where did all our Christmas traditions come from? Well,
believe it or not, fifteen hundred years ago, celebrating Christmas
meant drunken parties, bar fights, and sometimes orgies. So what's

(00:20):
with the Christmas trees? An eggnog? I'm Patty Steele? How
Christmas did a one to eighty? That's next on the backstory.
The backstory is back. Christmas, at least for the last
couple hundred years, has been all about children, gifts, food parties,
decorating the house, and of course the Christmas tree. In fact,

(00:44):
when you plunge deep into the Christmas season, you probably
have a bunch of traditions you trot out because well
it's just what you've done every year and probably what
your family did before you, Right, But where did all
those traditions come from? What we do now is so
not the way the celebration originated. Fifteen hundred years ago,

(01:04):
the Christmas celebration regularly included wild dancing, drunken parties, bar fights,
and the occasional orgy. Even two hundred and fifty years ago,
George Washington was sharing his heavily spiked eggnog. Are you surprised, Well,
let's go back and take a look at how Christmas evolved.
We all know that Christmas is based on the two

(01:25):
thousand year old story of the birth of Jesus Christ,
which historians say happened anywhere from two to four BC.
But what did that have to do with Santa Claus,
Christmas trees, stockings, Christmas cards, as well as the aforementioned
festively spiked egnog, and don't get me started on Black Friday?
And why does it happen on December twenty fifth when

(01:47):
historians agree Jesus was most likely born sometime between April
and September, and most likely in four BC. Well, the
celebration of Christmas on December twenty fifth began in the
fourth century on the tail end of Roman and other
European pagan festivals marking the end of the harvest as

(02:08):
well as the winter solstice. The Roman emperor Constantine was
the first emperor to convert to Christianity, and he thought
having a Christian holiday at the same time of year
would weaken those pagan holidays. Well he nailed it. It
eventually did, but it wasn't till ten thirty eight that
the holiday was given the name Christ's Mass or Christmas.

(02:30):
In Europe. Right up through medieval times and into the Renaissance,
it was a twelve days celebration filled with way too
much drinking, food, gift giving and partying. There were wild,
sometimes erotic dances and plays, which is actually where Shakespeare's
play Twelfth Night originated. Later on, and this sounds fun,

(02:50):
there were crazy Christmas games, including one called hot Cockles,
where blindfolded victims had to guess who had slapped them
on the butt from behind. If the guests was right,
the slapper became the next victim. Yes, so probably not
a holiday for kids. Queen Elizabeth the First, who ruled
England for forty five years in the fifteen hundreds and

(03:12):
early sixteen hundreds, was called the Virgin Queen. She never
married and had no children, but she was actually a
pretty festive chick. She loved really wild dancing. She was
a really great dancer, and she loved it so much.
At Christmas she held dance parties in her private dancing
chamber at one of her castles that would be quite

(03:33):
the invite. Right. Her Christmas feasts were legendary. She ordered
most of England to have a Christmas goose on the table,
But at her table there were also roasted swans, peacocks
and suckling pigs, and plenty of wine to wash it
all down. After that it was off to the dancing chamber.
So all this celebration, dancing, and feasting was Christmas in

(03:57):
Europe for hundreds of years, right up through the seventeen hundreds.
But it's a whole different scene once we get to
colonial America. In the early days, there were literally no
holidays here, no Christmas, no Easter or anything else. It
was a stuffy conservative place. In fact, in New England,
where the Puritans called the Shots, celebrating Christmas was illegal

(04:20):
for decades. I guess they were referencing the wild drinking
and lude dancing when they made that edict. In Massachusetts,
they had a law called penalty for keeping Christmas. You
would be fined if you celebrated because they said festivals
dishonored God and were offensive. They felt they were only
for commoners. Wow, excuse us now. That early Puritan attitude

(04:43):
eventually began to ease but Christmas still wasn't a family
or kid centric celebration. It actually became a big time
for weddings. Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson got married
during the Christmas season, and George Washington allegedly introduced his
famous spiked eggnog during the late seventeen hundreds. It was
definitely a party drink. The recipe calls for brandy, rum, whiskey, sherry, sugar,

(05:09):
lots of eggs, cream, milk, and nutmeg. That's going to
get the party started. But as we get into the
eighteen hundreds, things change in America a lot. Christmas is
no longer illegal, but early on in the century it
still isn't about family or kids are giving presents. There
are no Christmas trees, no cards, no Santa Claus, no
kissing under the mistletoe. It's similar to what had been

(05:32):
going on in Europe for centuries. There were some really
raucous sort of street festivals, almost similar to marti Gras,
lots of drinking, brawling, vandalism, even public sex. In fact,
a Christmas celebration in New York City in eighteen twenty
eight got so violent it led to the formation of
the city's first professional police force. So as we approach

(05:56):
the eighteen thirties, England's Queen Victoria, along with Evangelical Protestants
in New York, decided Christmas needs to be a shorter,
more refined, more family centric celebration now. At the same time,
Christmas trees, which were first popular in Germany, became a
thing decorated with ornaments and candles with gifts piled underneath.

(06:18):
Before that, greenery in the form of wreaths and garlands
was popular since in the midst of winter it symbolized
eternal life, but the trees here were new. Also helping
to invent our modern day Christmas was Washington Irving, the
author who wrote Rip van Winkle and the Legend of
Sleepy Hollow. He also, by the way, came up with

(06:38):
the story that Columbus discovered the earth was round, another
construct to promote America. But most importantly for this story
at least, Irving was pretty much the inventor of Santa Claus.
In his book The History of New York, Irving speaks
of the Dutch saint Nicholas riding his wagon over the
tree tops bringing presents to children. Then in eighteen twenty two,

(07:02):
the author Clement Clark Moore gave us the first definitive
description of the Santa Claus that we know today. His poem,
written for his own children, begins with the words twas
the night before Christmas, and all through the house not
a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. He turned
Saint Nicholas into jolly Santa Claus, a plump, sweet guy

(07:24):
with a slave full of toys and eight flying reindeer.
He also chose December twenty fourth, Christmas Eve as the
knight Santa brought toys to children by dropping down their
chimneys and tucking presents into stockings hung on the mantle.
He borrowed all of those traditions from various European legends.
Funny enough, someone published the poem without telling him, and

(07:47):
he claimed he was embarrassed by it. Moore didn't actually
publish it under his own name until eighteen forty four,
over twenty years later. Finally, in eighteen sixty three, the
political cartoonist Thomas Nast gave us the visual image of
the Santa Claus we know today, although it wasn't until
the eighteen eighties. Somebody dressed him in a red suit nast,

(08:09):
though gave us his chubby cheeks and fluffy white beard.
With a twinkling smile. He drew Santa Claus arriving at
a camp of Union soldiers in his slag, bringing a
little joy to the guys. During the Civil War. As
Christmas began to commercialize, a store in Massachusetts introduced the
first department store, Santa in the eighteen eighties, and soon

(08:32):
every big store had to have one. By the nineteen thirties,
the Coca Cola Company refined Santa's look into what we
see today. As for other traditions, Christmas cards arrived in
eighteen forty three, but they didn't actually catch on until
the beginning of the twentieth century, and most of the
Christmas carols we know have only been around since the

(08:53):
early to mid eighteen hundreds. Finally, back to one of
our favorite traditions, that eggnog, which has a bit longer
history than just George Washington's concoction. It first appeared in
medieval times, made with hot curdled milk and wine oh yuck.
But it got really popular in America when George and

(09:14):
other colonists made it with eggs, cream and all that booze.
In fact, George Washington's recipe and his words said, stir
the cream and milk with a dozen tablespoons of sugar
and a dozen eggs with all that liquor, mix well
and leave in a cool place, tasting frequently. Now I'm
with George on that one. So despite two thousand years

(09:38):
of religious belief, Christmas as we know it is mostly
less than two hundred years old. We realize that traditions
aren't carved in stone, and they mostly aren't permanent. We
invent them. They're an outgrowth of what we feel, and
that joy is what we actually pass on to the future.
That's the real tradition. So have a wonderful holiday season.

(10:00):
Hope you're enjoying The Backstory with Patty Steele. Please leave
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On Facebook, It's Patty Steele and on Instagram Real Patty Steele.
I'm Patty Steele. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,

(10:25):
the Elvis Durand Group and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
is Doug Fraser, our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
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at real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele, the

(10:45):
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.