SYMHC Classics: Washington Irving

This 2021 episode covers Washington Irving, who is often associated with Halloween. But his writing had a significant influence on the way Christmas is celebrated in the U.S.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, everybody. As we're approaching Christmas, it seemed like
the perfect time to revisit our episode on Washington Irving.
Although he's most well known for the tale of the
Headless Horseman that's told in his story the Legend of
Sleepy Hollow, Irving's writing about Christmas is important and deeply
influential to the way the holiday is celebrated in the

(00:23):
United States, probably more than most people are aware. This
episode originally came out on December twentieth, twenty twenty one.
Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a
production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and Welcome to the podcast. I'm

(00:47):
tra C B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Over the years,
we've talked about various influences on Christmas as a holiday,
particularly in the US and the UK. So we've talked
about Charles Dickens, a Christmas Carol, the poem, a Visit
from Saint Nicholas, Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, Joel Roberts
pointset namesake of the Poinsettia, NORAD's tradition of tracking Santa's

(01:11):
progress on Christmas Eve, and then most recently, our episode
on how the Nutcracker Ballet became a Christmas Times staple.
Another Christmas influence might come to mind more in connection
with Halloween, because it's Washington Irving, author of the Legend
of Sleepy Hollow, which became part of Disney's The Adventures
of Ichabod and Mister Toad in nineteen forty nine and

(01:33):
absolutely truly terrified me when I was a child. We
will talk about Irving's work and his Christmas influence today,
including his influence of Charles Dickens. Washington Irving did most
of his Christmas related writing pretty early in his career,
but we're going to save the most detailed discussion of
it for the last third of the episode after our

(01:56):
second sponsor break. Also, if you listen to this show
with anybody who's going to be just truly eagerly awaiting
Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, that part of the episode
might be something to just say for later, like, maybe
listen to it yourself first before foisting it on any
young ears. Sounds like a great plan, all with Washington

(02:18):
Irving was born on April third, seventeen eighty three, in
New York City. That is the same year that the
Treaty of Paris formally ended the Revolutionary War, so he
was growing up as the United States was establishing itself
as an independent nation. Washington Irving was named after George Washington,
and he also attended George Washington's inauguration in New York

(02:40):
City just after he turned six. Irving was the youngest
of William and Sarah Irving's eleven children, nine of whom
survived to adulthood. Both of them had emigrated to North America.
Sarah had come from Cornwall, England, and William from the
Orkney Islands, Scotland. William was a church deacon as well
as being a hardware dealer and a merchant. In seventeen

(03:03):
ninety eight, when he was fourteen, Washington's parents sent him
to Terrytown on the Hudson River, not far from Sleepy Hollow,
to try to protect him from a devastating outbreak of
yellow fever in New York City. He fell in love
with the area, wandering around and exploring and learning the
folklore and heritage of its residents, many of whom were
Dutch immigrants and their descendants. The young Washington Irving seems

(03:28):
to have been really doted on As the baby of
the family, his father insisted that all of his younger
brothers go to college, but Washington was described as kind
of a dreamer and lax when it came to his studies,
so rather than attending college like his brothers, he started
a law apprenticeship at the age of fifteen. First he
was at the law office of Henry Masterson and then

(03:50):
with former New York Attorney General Josiah Ogden Hoffman. Irving
was chronically ill, and in eighteen oh four he went
to Europe with the hope of improving his head health.
He stayed there until eighteen oh six. Then, when he
got back to the US, he was admitted to the
New York Bar reportedly though just barely. He just barely
got past that exam. After he returned to the US,

(04:14):
Irving started a satirical periodical with his brother William and
their friend James Kirk Paulding. Paulding also went on to
become a writer in his own right and later served
as the Secretary of the Navy under Martin van Buren.
They called their periodical Selma Gundy, or the Whimwhams and
Opinions of Launcelot langstaff Esquire It published about twenty issues

(04:35):
in eighteen oh seven and eighteen oh eight. This periodical
has been described as the mad magazine of its day,
and it lampooned a number of targets, but a lot
of its focus was on the political and social life
of New York City. The use of Gotham as a
nickname for New York City was coined in its pages.

(04:56):
This picked up the name from the story The Wise
Men of God, in which the villagers of Gotham Nottinghamshire,
fame incompetence in order to get out of a visit
from King John. So this nickname of Gotham not meant
to be flattering. Don't tell Batman. In eighteen oh eight,
Irving became engaged to Matilda Hoffman, daughter of his law mentor,

(05:19):
Josiah Ogden Hoffman, and about a year later he gave
up any pretense of practicing law. In eighteen oh nine,
Irving published a fictional history of the Dutch colonization of
New York called A History of New York from the
Beginning of the World to the end of the Dutch Dynasty.
This was narrated by and written under the pen name

(05:41):
of Diedrich knickerbocker. That's one of many pseudonyms that Irving
used for different purposes during his career, and one of
the many names that he also seems to have picked
up from somebody that he knew. Thanks to this book,
knickerbocker became a nickname for New Yorkers of Dutch ancestry,
and then an name for New Yorkers more generally. The

(06:02):
New York Knicks, if you're not aware, is short for
the Knickerbockers. Knickerbockers are also baggy trousers that usually stop
just below the knee and are gathered and fastened there
with a button or a buckle. This seems to trace
back to Irving's work as well, and to illustrations in
the book that featured Dutch men in baggy knee breaches.

(06:23):
A History of New York was another satire. It parodied
Samuel L. Mitchell's The Picture of New York or The
Traveler's Guide through the Commercial Metropolis of the United States,
But while it was fictional and comedic, it still drew
from real people and places that Irving had known while
living in New York's Hudson Valley. Irving led up to

(06:44):
the publication of this book with something of a pr hoax.
He posted a series of notices about a missing historian
named Diedrich Knickerbocker, establishing the name and reputation of the
spictitious person before the book hit the stands. The same
year History of New York was published. Irving's fiancee, Matilda,
died of tuberculosis that happened on April twenty sixth, eighteen

(07:07):
oh nine. And she really seems to have been the
love of his life, and Irving's writing about her is
full of loss. He later wrote in his journal, quote,
she died in the flower of her youth and of mine,
but she has lived for me ever since. In all womankind,
I see her in their eyes, and it is the
remembrance of her that has given a tender interest in

(07:28):
my eyes to everything that bears the name of woman.
At another point, he wrote, quote, for years I could
not talk on the subject of this hopeless regret. I
could not even mention her name. But her image was
continually before me, and I dreamt of her incessantly. It
doesn't seem like Irving wrote a lot over the next
few years. He moved to Washington, d c. In eighteen

(07:51):
eleven to work as a lobbyist protecting the interests of
his family's merchant business. During the War of eighteen twelve.
After Britain invaded Washington, DC and set fire to the
Capitol and the White House and other major buildings, Irving
enlisted in the army. He served as an aid de
camp to Governor Daniel Tompkins until the war ended in
February of eighteen fifteen. After the war was over, Irving

(08:14):
went back to Europe. His family had an import export
business called P and E. Irving. The war had been
really hard on most of these types of businesses, but
Irving's brothers had also made a series of missteps in
their efforts to recover. After the war was over, Irving
went to London to try to help them save the business,
something he really felt was just hopeless from the start.

(08:36):
In the end, he was right. The business could not
be saved, and bankruptcy proceedings started in eighteen eighteen Washington.
Irving had been something of a silent partner in this business.
He had been earning an income from it without being
expected to really do any work, but this bankruptcy meant
that income was gone. Poet and novelist Sir Walter Scott,

(08:58):
who had become one of Irving's friends and colleagues, encouraged
him to try to make a living as a writer,
and we will talk more about that after a sponsor break.
While living in Europe Washington, Irving wrote the Sketch Book

(09:19):
of Jeoffrey Crayon gent This was largely a series of
sketches of English life based on what he had experienced
while living there, and it also contained three short stories,
Rip van Winkle, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, and Specter Bridegroom.
Although the sketch Book was published under the pseudonym of
Jeffrey Crayon, Both Rib van Winkle, about a man who

(09:41):
goes off to the mountains to escape his stereotypically shrewish
wife and sleeps for twenty years, and the Legend of
Sleepy Hollow, about superstitious schoolteacher Ichabod Crane and his flight
from the Headless Horsemen, are attributed to Ddrich Knickerbacker. The
two stories are set in Dutch communities in New y York,
but both are rooted in German folklore. The sketch Book

(10:04):
also contained five essays about Christmas in England, and we'll
talk a little bit more about that later. Although many
of the other pieces describe Irving's experiences in England, two
of them are focused on indigenous communities in North America.
There are Traits of Indian Character and Philip of Poconoke it.
The first is a general discussion of North America's indigenous peoples,

(10:26):
especially in New England, and the second is the narrative
of King Philip's War, which took place in the sixteen seventies,
in which we've covered on the show before. In terms
of Irving's racial attitudes, both of these writings are just
a tangle. Traits of Indian Character, for example, starts off
by saying that quote it has been the lot of
the unfortunate Aborigines of America in the early periods of

(10:50):
colonization to be doubly wronged by the white men. They
have been dispossessed of their hereditary possessions by mercenary and
frequently wanton warfare, and their characters have been produced by
bigoted and interested writers. The colonists often treated them like
beasts of the forest, and the author has endeavored to
justify him in his outrages. The former found it easier

(11:14):
to exterminate than to civilize, the latter, to vilify than
to discriminate. The appellations of savage and pagan were deemed
sufficient to sanction the hostilities of both, and thus the
poor wanderers of the forest were persecuted and defamed not
because they were guilty, but because they were ignorant. Irving's

(11:34):
criticisms of Europeans treatment of Indigenous people in North America,
particularly during the colonial period, are very pointed and often
perceptive and astute, but then threaded through that are racist
language and stereotypes, both reflecting the language that was commonly
used at the time and reflecting Irving's own paternalistic attitudes.

(11:56):
Sometimes it is almost whiplash inducing to read, like I
was trying to find a quote to read as an example,
and I was like, man, I just don't even want
to repeat this insulting part on the show for the
sake of illustration. Irving's descriptions of the state of things
as he was writing are also obliviously optimistic at best.

(12:16):
While he acknowledges that the same prejudices against indigenous peoples
all still exist, he frames the federal government's relationship to
them as basically fine. Now here's a quote. American government
too has wisely and humanly exerted itself to inculcate a
friendly and forbearing spirit towards them and to protect them

(12:38):
from fraud and injustice. That's whiplashy in and of itself.
So Philip of Poconoka is similarly striking. Irving's treatment of Medicom,
who English colonists called King Philip, has been described as
groundbreaking and even radical, because it was way way more
sympathetic to Medicom and to the Wampanogu Confederate than the

(13:00):
historical sources that he would have been using for his research.
His approach was probably influenced by the idea of the
noble savage, which had come to prominence among Europeans in
the eighteenth century and beyond. But his treatment of Meticom
seems to really go beyond that and into a more
nuanced view of the war than would really be expected,

(13:23):
with a lot more empathy toward the Wampanogue and more
acknowledgment of all the context that was involved. And we
should also take a moment here to say that Irving's
writing related to people of African descent is similarly tangled.
When Irving was growing up, New York City was at
the heart of the largest slaveholding region of the North,
and it had an established community of free black people

(13:46):
as well. The Dutch communities that Irving was so fond
of in the Hudson Valley were also home to both
enslaved and free black people, who were known as the
Black Dutch, which is one of several meanings that term
has carried. Irving clearly thought their folklore and traditions were
as worthy of documentation as those of white people, and

(14:06):
he wrote about holidays like Pinkster, which was celebrated by
the black community and grew out of Dutch celebrations surrounding Pentecost.
But at the same time, Irving wrote about black people
in a negatively stereotyped and sometimes even fetishizing way. Irving
had essays from the sketch book printed in the US
at about the same time as the whole collection was

(14:28):
coming out in the UK to try to protect himself
and his profits from plagiarists. Its contents were printed on
both sides of the Atlantic between eighteen nineteen and eighteen
twenty three. Was generally well received, especially the short stories,
with later critics describing Irving as the first American short
story writer. It also sold well enough that he was

(14:49):
able to support himself. In eighteen twenty two, Irving was
paid one thousand guineas to write a sequel, Bracebridge Hall
or the Humorists, a medley, also under the Jeffrey Crayon pseudonym.
Then Tales of a Traveler followed in eighteen twenty four.
Tales of a Traveler contains another story attributed to Knickerbacker,

(15:10):
and that is The Devil and Tom Walker. Critics mostly
panned Tales of a Traveler, and Irving seems to have
stopped writing for a while. He remained in Europe, though,
and Alexander Hill Everett, the US Minister to Spain, invited
him to Madrid. Spain had just released archival documents on
its colonization of the Americas, and Everett wanted Irving to

(15:33):
translate them for American use. Irving may have started out
following that instruction, but soon he was using these documents
not to translate them, but to do research on his
own work. The result was a History of the Life
and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, which was published in eighteen
twenty eight. This was a fictionalized biography of Columbus, sometimes

(15:54):
described as a romantic biography. This work is extremely favorable
in its embellish treatment of Columbus, making him almost a
mythic figure. The book also put forth the fiction that
one of the reasons for Columbus's fourteen ninety two voyage
was to prove that the world was not flat, an
idea that has persisted until today, even though people around

(16:15):
the world have known the planet was roughly spherical for
literally thousands of years. Other work related to Spain followed
the Columbus biography, including a chronicle of the conquest of
Grenada from the manuscripts of Fray Antonio Agappita that being
yet another pseudonym. This work is described as having a

(16:35):
quote comically biased narrator. Irving had to leave Spain in
eighteen twenty nine after he was appointed secretary to the
American legation in London. He worked at the American Embassy
in London until eighteen thirty two, and then finally returned
to the United States. Irving had become famous while he
was away, and he returned to find that New York

(16:55):
City had grown tremendously in his absence. In the fall
of eighteen thirty two, Irving joined Henry Levitt Ellsworth on
an expedition to what's now Missouri, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. President
Andrew Jackson had tasked Ellsworth with inspecting land that was
going to be used for the force relocation of indigenous

(17:16):
peoples under the Indian Removal Act of eighteen thirty The
relocation later became known as the Trail of Tears, and
it forced tens of thousands of Indigenous people to leave
their homes and move west, including citizens of the Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, Creek,
and Cherokee nations, among others. Irving was invited to accompany
this expedition, and he saw it as quote an opportunity

(17:40):
of seeing the remnants of those great Indian tribes which
are now about to disappear as independent nations or to
be amalgamated under some new form of government. While on
this expedition, Irving visited Sok leader Black Hawk, who at
the time was imprisoned for his role in the black
Hawk War, which had taken place earlier in eighteen thirty ten.

(18:01):
In a letter to a sister, Irving said of this meeting, quote,
I find it extremely difficult, even when so near the
seat of action, to get at the right story of
these feuds between the White and the Red Man, and
my sympathies go strongly with the latter. At the same time, though,
Irving does not seem particularly critical of Jackson's removal policy,

(18:22):
and that was something that directly led to the deaths
of thousands of people, loss of ancestral homelands, and the
total upheaval of families and social structures. Irving wrote several
books drawn from this experience, including Tour on the Prairies,
which came out in eighteen thirty five, Enterprise Beyond the
Rocky Mountains in eighteen thirty six, and Adventures in the

(18:43):
Far West in eighteen thirty seven. As these books were published,
Irving was living at Sunnyside, which was a farm not
far from Terrytown that he bought in eighteen thirty five,
and he probably would have been content to live out
the rest of his days there, But in eighteen forty
two President John Tyler appointed Irving as Minister to Spain.
He had been recommended by Daniel Webster, then Secretary of State,

(19:07):
who was a fan of Irving's writing and also knew
of his earlier time and experiences in Spain. This is
the precarious time for Spain and for the United States
relations with it. Queen Isabella the Second was only twelve
and there were multiple factions wrestling for control of the
Spanish government. Meanwhile, the United States was in the process

(19:28):
of annexing Texas, which would ultimately lead it to war
with Mexico, and that was something that the United States
really wanted Spain to stay out of, meaning they wanted
Irving to make sure that Spain just stayed put. Unsurprisingly Washington.
Irving found this position extremely stressful and it aggravated various

(19:51):
chronic health conditions, but he held out until James K.
Polk took office, and then he resigned when it just
didn't seem like Polk was going to name a replacement anytime.
Irving was back at home in Sunnyside. In eighteen forty six,
he published The Life of Muhammad and Muhammad and his
Successors in eighteen forty nine and eighteen fifty. These were
books that he had started working on while living in Spain.

(20:13):
This has been described as the first sympathetic biography of
the prophet Muhammad to be published. In North America. I
haven't personally read it. I did read articles about it
by Muslim people, and that was the description was that
they found a treatment of Muhammad to be generally sympathetic
and that that was groundbreaking given the time. Irving spent

(20:35):
most of his last years working on a biography of
George Washington that was published in five volumes between eighteen
fifty five and eighteen fifty nine. This is both a
favorable treatment of Washington and one that humanized him, focusing
primarily on his military career and his personal life. Irving
experienced a series of illnesses as he was finishing this biography.

(20:58):
His health is described as decline throughout the whole process.
He died on November twenty eighth, eighteen fifty nine, at
the age of seventy six, after having had a heart
attack in his bedroom at Sunnyside, Washington. Irving is considered
to be the first American man of letters. His work
also helped establish American literature as worthwhile in its own right,

(21:19):
rather than simply being a minor offshoot of British literature,
because some of his work has preserved Dutch oral traditions
in the Hudson Valley region. He has also been described
as the first folklorist in the US. His home in
Terrytown still stands today, and it is a National Historic Landmark,
especially around November and December. Christmas can seem so ubiquitous

(21:42):
in the United States that it feels almost like it
must have always been this way. But when Washington, Irving
was growing up, Christmas really wasn't established as a holiday,
especially not as a holiday that involved lots of feasting
and merriment and presence and songs. Puritans in New England
outlawed Christmas in sixteen fifty nine, and that followed a

(22:04):
series of laws that had been passed in England starting
in the sixteen forties. These laws in England had designated
the Christmas season as a time for fasting and humiliation
that effectively outlawed Christmas celebrations in England until the restoration
of Charles the Second in sixteen sixty. By the time
Irving was born, laws outlying Christmas in the British colonies

(22:27):
had been repealed, but many denominations and sects still viewed
it with a lot of suspicion. In many places, Christmas
was a day for hard work and penitence not for revelry.
This led to strife between denominations that opposed Christmas and
those like Anglicans, who were more likely to celebrate it.
Dutch colonists in the Hudson River Valley had brought the

(22:50):
tradition of center class or Saint Nicholas, who brought presents
to good children on Saint Nicholas Day or December sixth.
Irving mentioned Saint Nicholas more than forty times in his
History of New York. This includes attributing Dutch colonist's decision
to settle on Manhattan to Saint Nicholas. Irving relates the

(23:10):
tale in which Olaf van Courtland has a dream in
which quote Saint Nicholas came riding over the tops of
the trees and that self same wagon, wherein he brings
his yearly presence to children. In this dream, Saint Nicholas
smokes a pipe, with the smoke from his pipe assuming
quote a variety of marvelous forms. Those forms include palaces, domes,

(23:33):
and spires, and then quote, when Saint Nicholas had smoked
his pipe, he twisted it in his hatband and laying
his finger beside his nose gave the astonished Van Cortland
a very significant look. Then, mounting his wagon, he returned
over the tree tops and disappeared. The History of New
York came out in eighteen oh nine, but this passage

(23:55):
seems to have been added in an eighteen twelve edition.
It may have been an inspiration for the poem A
Visit from Saint Nicholas, which is the poem that begins
twas the Night before Christmas and all through the house.
That poem was first published in eighteen twenty three. This
poem is often attributed to Clement Clark Moore, who was
friends with Washington Irving, which really makes it seem like

(24:18):
the poem's pipe and the flying sleigh and Saint Nick
laying a finger aside his nose that might all have
been inspired by Washington Irving. However, there is a competing
claim that Major Henry Livingston Junior is the person who
wrote this poem, and that that happened all the way
back in eighteen oh eight. And if that's the case,
obviously Washington Irving could not have been the person who

(24:40):
inspired it because it was already written when his book
came out. We talked about this authorship dispute in our
Christmas Triple Feature, and that is going to be our
Saturday Classic on December twenty fifth. So, as we said earlier,
Washington Irving's sketch book contained five essays based on a
Christmas he spent in England. They are titled Christmas the
Stage Coach, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and the Christmas Dinner.

(25:06):
So Christmas celebrations returned to England far more speedily than
they did in North America, and Christmas contains some general
observations about the holiday in England. Here's a sample quote
of all the old festivals. However, that of Christmas awakens
the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone
of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality

(25:29):
and lifts the spirit to a state of hallowed and
elevated enjoyment. The services of the Church about this season
are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell and the beautiful
story of the origin of our faith and the pastoral
scenes that accompanied its announcement. They gradually increase in fervor
and pathos during the season of Advent, until they break

(25:52):
forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought peace
and goodwill to men. I do not know a grander
effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear
the full choir and the pealing organ performing a Christmas
anthem in a cathedral and filling every part of the
vast pile with triumphant harmony. He also repeatedly stresses the

(26:15):
idea that this is a time to be happy and merry.
He talks about being a stranger, no friends around him. Quote,
yet I feel the influence of the season beaming into
my soul from the happy looks of those around me.
He goes on to say, quote, He who can turn
churlishly away from contemplating the felicity of his fellow beings,

(26:35):
and can sit down, darkling and repining in his loneliness
when all around is joyful may have his moments of
strong excitement and selfish gratification, but he wants the genial
and social sympathies which constitute the charm of a merry Christmas.
In the stage Coach, Irving describes traveling by coach on
a tour of Yorkshire on the day before Christmas and

(26:58):
seeing other passengers, all bound for holiday visits with laden
with hampers full of delicious foods. He winds up at
an inn that's quote decorated here and there with a
Christmas green. He runs into a friend who invites him
to stay for a few days, staying with friends being
better than having Christmas dinner alone at an inn. So

(27:19):
for Christmas Eve, Irving winds up at the Bracebridge's estate.
He hears lots of merriment coming from the servants quarters.
They are playing lots of games, some of which sound
familiar today and some which do not. Quote here were
kept up the old games of hoodman, blind shoe, the
wild mare, hot cockles, steal the white loaf, bob apple

(27:40):
and snapdragon. The Yule clog and Christmas candle were regularly burnt,
and the missiletoe with its white berries, hung up to
the imminent peril of all the pretty housemaids. A footnote
explains that young men get to kiss young women under
the missiletoe, removing a berry from the sprig each time,
and when the berries are go on quote, the privilege ceases.

(28:03):
Irving describes the Yule clog, which is an enormous log
burned during the holiday, with a bit of its save
to light the next year's log as well as a
range of superstitions associated with it. He also talks about
Christmas candles being wreathed in greens, and lots of singing
and dancing in general gayety. His Christmas Day account begins

(28:24):
with the household's children going door to door through the house,
singing a Christmas carol to wake everyone up. Then there
are family prayers, followed by another carol, and then a
church service later in the day, and distribution of beef,
bread and ale to the poor. On arrival at the church,
Irving writes, quote, on reaching the church porch, we found

(28:44):
the parson rebuking the gray headed sexton for having used
mistletoe among the greens with which the church was decorated.
It was he observed an unholy plant, profaned by having
been used by the druids and their mystic ceremonies. And
though it might be innocently employed in the festive ornamenting
of halls and kitchens, yet it had been deemed by

(29:06):
the fathers of the church as unhallowed and totally unfit
for sacred purposes. In Christmas dinner, Irving is at first
perplexed when a pig's head is brought out on a platter,
until his host explains that it's meant to represent a
bores head, something that had traditionally been served at Christmas
in earlier years, including at the Oxford College that he

(29:28):
had attended. The family's Christmas dinner also includes turkey, pheasant pie,
and a wastle bowl. After dinner, the family gathers for
the telling of Christmas ghost stories and a quote Christmas
mummery or masking. This has another footnote quote maskings or
mummeries where favorite sports at Christmas in old times, and

(29:50):
the wardrobes at halls and manor houses were often laid
under contribution to furnished dresses and fantastic disguisings. I strongly
suspect masters and to have taken the idea of his
from Ben Johnson's mask of Christmas to someone living in
the US today, where Christmas can feel like a giant
commercial juggernaut. None of this really sounds all that dramatic,

(30:13):
more like a quaint, old fashioned English Christmas. But again,
the holiday really wasn't established in much of the US
at that point. Irving's writing about it comes across as
somewhat nostalgic, emphasizing that he thinks these kinds of traditions
should be preserved. Then, as we said earlier, the sketch
book was really popular, so Irving's fond descriptions of this

(30:36):
English holiday spread across his reading audience in the US.
And it also had an impact on another writer whose
work has been credited with influencing the way Christmas is
thought about and celebrated, and that is Charles Dickens. Charles
Dickens was kind of a Washington Irving super fan. The
sketch book was published when he was about eight, and

(30:57):
he read it over and over. It is like that
Dickens named his own sketches by Boz after irving sketchbook,
and the sketchbook influenced Dickens's eighteen thirty five A Christmas Dinner,
as well as Christmas scenes and Pickwick Papers in eighteen
thirty six. Irving wrote to Dickens in eighteen forty one
complimenting him on his work, and Dickens's reply is effusive.

(31:22):
Here is a sample quote. I have been so accustomed
to associate you with my pleasantest and happiest thoughts, and
with my leisure hours, that I rush at once into
full confidence with you and fall, as it were naturally
and by the very laws of gravity, into your open arms.

(31:43):
Questions come thronging to my pen, as to the lips
of people who meet after long hoping to do so.
I don't know what to say first, or what to
leave unsaid, and am constantly disposed to break off and
tell you again, how glad I am this moment has arrived.

(32:03):
I don't know if Charles Dickens meant this to sound
a little suggestive. It's very romantic. It is extremely romantic.
Irving and Dickens exchanged flattering letters back and forth until
meeting during Dickens's tour of the US in eighteen forty two.
In eighteen forty three, Dickens published a Christmas Carol, again

(32:26):
influenced by Irving, and whose influence on Christmas Time we
have previously discussed on the show. Their friendship might not
have lasted beyond that tour, though if they corresponded after
Irving left for that appointment as Minister to Spain. Those
letters have not survived, and there's also a second hand
report that Irving had found Dickens to be quote outrageously vulgar.

(32:49):
Regardless Christmas became more of an established and public holiday
in the US over the course of the nineteenth century,
and it became a federal holiday in the US on
gu twenty sixth, eighteen seventy. Well, that's a bit about
Washington Irving and his influence on the Christmas season, on
the season of holiday cheer and greenery. And I feel

(33:13):
like he would have an aneurysm if he walked into
like a big box store and saw like the assault
of Christmas everything, which I'm not complaining about, by the way,
but to him, it would feel that way one hundred percent.
I met so thanks so much for joining us on

(33:34):
this Saturday. If you'd like to send us a note,
our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com, and
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