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December 24, 2024 8 mins

On this replay episode of The Backstory: We all have our Christmas traditions, but how did Santa Claus, Christmas trees, and George Washington’s recipe for heavily spiked eggnog rule the season?

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Christmas is based on the story of the birth of Jesus,
which historians say was anywhere from two to four BC.
But then, where did Santa Claus, Christmas trees and Christmas
cards and the extra festive eggnog come from? I'm Patty
Steele the evolution of our very festive Christmas next on
the backstory. The backstory is back when you plunge deep

(00:27):
into the Christmas season, you probably have a bunch of
traditions you trot out just because it's what you've done
every year and your family before you. Right, But where
did all those traditions come from? Christmas is based on
the two thousand year old story of Jesus's birth. But
Santa Claus, Christmas trees, Christmas cards and stockings, not to
mention Black Friday? What's all that about? And why does

(00:50):
it happen on December twenty fifth when historians agree Jesus
was most likely born sometime between April and September in
four BC. Well, the celebration of Christmas on December twenty
fifth actually began in the fourth century, on the tail
end of Roman and other European pagan festivals, marking the

(01:10):
end of the harvest as well as the winter solstice.
The Roman emperor Constantine thought it would weaken those pagan holidays,
and he nailed it. It eventually did. It wasn't until
ten thirty eight, though, that the holiday was given the
name Christ's Mass or Christmas. In Europe. Right up through
medieval times and into the Renaissance, it was a twelve

(01:31):
day celebration filled with too much drinking, food, gift giving,
and partying. There were wild dances in plays, which is
where Shakespeare's play Twelfth Night actually originated. And there were
crazy Christmas games, including one called hot Cockles, where blindfolded
victims had to guess who slapped them from behind. If

(01:52):
the guests was right, the slapper became the next victim.
It was so not a holiday for kids. Queen Elizabeth
I loved read wild dancing so much at Christmas she
held dance parties in her private dancing chamber at one
of her castles. That would be quite an invite. All
this was Christmas in Europe for hundreds of years, right

(02:13):
up through the seventeen hundreds. But it's a whole different
scene once we get to Colonial America. In the early days,
there were no holidays here, no Christmas or Easter or
anything else. It was a stuffy conservative place. In fact,
in New England, where the Puritans called the Shots, celebrating

(02:34):
Christmas was illegal for decades. In Massachusetts, they had a
law called the 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.
Excuse me now. As that attitude began to ease, Christmas

(02:56):
still wasn't a family or kid centric celebration. It was
actually a big time for weddings. Both George Washington and
Thomas Jefferson got married during the Christmas season. The eighteen hundreds,
though changes everything. Christmas is no longer illegal, but it
still wasn't about family or kids are giving presents. There
were no Christmas trees, no cards, no Santa Claus, and

(03:18):
no kissing under the missiletoe. But 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, as they called it in New York
City in eighteen twenty eight, got so violent it led
to the formation of the city's first professional police force.

(03:42):
Now Around the same time, England's Queen Victoria, along with
evangelical Protestants in New York, decided Christmas should be a shorter,
more refined, more family centric celebration. At the same time,
Christmas trees, which were first popular in Germany, became a
thing decorated with ormen's and candles with gifts piled underneath.

(04:03):
Before that, greenery in the form of wreaths and garlands
was popular since in the midst of winter it symbolized
eternal life, and that went back to Greek and Roman times.
Also helping to invent our modern day Christmas was Washington Irving,
who wrote Rip van Winkle in the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.
Irving also came up with a story that Columbus discovered

(04:24):
the earth was round, and he was also the inventor
of Santa Claus, which he based on the Dutch Saint Nicholas.
But in eighteen twenty two, the author Clement Clark Moore
gave us the first definitive description of Santa Claus that
we know today. His poem, written for his children, begins
with the words twas the night before Christmas when all

(04:46):
through the house not a creature was stirring, not even
a mouse. He turned Saint Nicholas into jolly Santa Claus,
a plump, sweet guy with a sleigh full of toys
and eight flying reindeer. He also chose December twenty fourth
Christmas Eve, as the knights said had brought toys to
children by dropping down their chimneys and tucking presents into

(05:08):
stockings hung on the mantle. He borrowed all of those
traditions from various European legends. How funny enough, someone published
the poem without telling him, and Moore claimed he was
embarrassed by it. He didn't 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

(05:30):
us the visual image of the Santa Claus we know today,
although it wasn't till the eighteen eighties somebody dressed him
in a red suit. Nast, 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 sleigh, bringing a little joy to the guys
during the heat of the Civil War. As Christmas began

(05:53):
to commercialize, a store in Massachusetts introduced the first department store, Santa,
in the eighteen eighties, and soon every big store had one.
By the nineteen thirties, the Coca Cola Company refined Santa's
look into just what we see today. As for other traditions,
Christmas cards arrived in eighteen forty three but didn't fully
catch on until the beginning of the twentieth century, and

(06:15):
the Christmas carols we know and love today have only
been around since the early to mid eighteen hundreds. Finally,
one of our favorite traditions, eggnog, has a bit longer history,
first appearing in medieval times made with get this hot
curdled milk and wine. Yuck, But it got really popular
in America when colonists made it with eggs, cream and rum.

(06:38):
That's more like it. Even George Washington evolved the tradition
with his own special recipe. In George's words, mix one
court cream, one court milk, a dozen tablespoons of sugar,
one pint brandy, one pint rye whiskey, one pint Jamaica
rum and one pint sherry along with twelve eggs mix well,

(07:01):
leaving a cool place tasting frequently.

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
George was a partier that had knocked you out right. So,
despite two thousand years of religious belief, the less religious
Christmas as we know it is mostly less than two
hundred years old. We realize that traditions aren't carved in stone.
We invent them. They're an outgrowth of what we need
and what we feel, and that joy is what we

(07:24):
pass on to the future.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Ss we frame Ssie.

Speaker 1 (07:59):
I'm Patty. The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis Durand Group and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer
is Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new
episodes every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out
to me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram
at Real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele.

(08:22):
Thanks for listening to the Backstory with Patty Steele. The
pieces of history you didn't know you needed to know.
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Patty Steele

Patty Steele

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