Alexander Anderson’s depiction of 19th
century rural winter life. Certainly, many spent this time of year in
such winter pastimes and duties as skating and cutting wood.
We're
breaking with one tradition (waiting three weeks after publication
before sending out the e-version of our KYPP Nugget) for the sake of
another, more important tradition (the holiday season). While you may not all celebrate Christmas, think of this
as a short archeological excavation of sorts in which the shards and
trinkets being excavated happen to be from the 'Christmas culture'.
We hope you all have a good end to the year and a peaceful, fulfilling 2011.
Perhaps
a bit posed, but they look ready to go... (This and all other images on
this page are from the great on-line digital images archive of the New York Public Library.)
CHRISTMAS STEW
by Conrad Vispo.
This small essay is, I suppose, a bit like reaching into a Christmas
stocking and seeing what your hand draws out. In this spirit and with
winter weather ensconced on our doorstep, we plunged into our collection
of old books and publications to see how they alluded to Christmas.
Such an approach is hardly one that leads to a tightly reasoned essay;
rather it produces a happy jumble which, with little effort to tie up
loose ends (after all this is the holiday season), we pass along to you as a Christmas stew.
Late 19th century skating in Central Park, NYC.
One of the first things that strikes a digger for bibliographic
Christmases is the variety of books containing references to Christmas
because of the fact that the date is often used as a convenient mental
milestone in the yearly calendar. In the 19th century,
Christmas was, for example, the recommended date for completing land
drainage or preparing hams; it was the date upon which some manorial
tenants paid their landlord two fat geese in lieu of rent; it was the
date after which one 17th century Albany apprentice was to be
sent to evening school; on this day in 1863, a 60 (!) year old English
pony died; on another farm, it was the day that wolves got into the
pigs. Because of its convenience, Christmas was probably pinned with a
few recollections that occurred only “thereabouts”!
Christmas as a marker dances through historical
accounts of winter weather – one new arrival to the continent and to NYC
in the early 1800s “worried [his] neighbours half to death” in order to
learn about the weather. He was told “there would be no very hard weather
till after Christmas.” He seemed a bit baffled by the nuance between
“hard” and “very hard”. Early accounts from elsewhere in the Northeast
also pin Christmas as the date for the onset of winter weather, the time
when carts were stored and sleighs brought out. Perhaps because we are
more apt to remember the weather of past Christmases, as opposed to that
of less feted dates, 19th century writers describing climate
change (and there were a few) documented it by noting the increasing
mildness of Christmastime.
The composition of our little library (and of our work) is belied by
the fact that it contains more references to the preparations for the
Christmas table than of the Christmas table itself. Farmers went to
lengths (as some still do) to insure that their pigs, beeves, lambs and
fowl were fattened and ready to be slaughtered for the Christmas
markets. Such arrangements required planning ahead not only in terms of
when to introduce ram to ewe and the like, but also in terms of choosing
animal breeds willing to even mate at the requisite times of year.
Botany, another branch of our endeavors, likewise is heavily represented in our pot – one 19th
century botanist bemoaned the destructive harvesting of Club Moss and
Mountain Laurel for Christmas greens while another noted the untoward
effects when a set of trained goats nibbled such Christmas Laurel
finery. If nothing else, botanists took it as cause to review their
local winter greenery. Susan Fenimore Cooper in her book, Rural Hours (well worth reading), described a cart she met in the woods over near Cooperstown on the 19th
of December 1848. It was “well loaded with Christmas greens for our
parish church. Pine and hemlock are the branches commonly used among us
for the purpose; the hemlock, with its flexible twigs, and the grayish
reverse of its foliage, produces a very pretty effect. We contributed a
basketful of ground-pine [i.e. certain kinds of club moss; for more on
club mosses, try the first few pages of this link from the University of Wisconsin],
both the erect and running kinds, with some glittering club-moss and
glossy pipsissiwa.” [For those of you who are botanists, the pipsissiwa
referred to was probably Chimaphila umbellata;
McVaugh recorded it from Columbia County, Claudia hasn't seen it; it's
closely related to Spotted Wintergreen, and both have green leaves in
winter.]
And yet Christmas, and the hallowed days of other
religions and cultures, are, at heart, not a recipe composed of specific
ingredients – be they wind, pigs or holiday plants. Instead, they are a
time of collective feelings that arise from traditions made special in
our own individual worlds. As such, little can connect us as strongly
with past Christmases as recollections of such hearths, real or
figurative. And so we close the serving of our Christmas stew with
quotes describing the spirit of a few past Christmases, candied as they
might be by sweet nostalgia.
Susan Fenimore Cooper continued her account with a
description of Christmas 1848, “There is a saying in the village that it
always rains here on Christmas; and, as if to prove it true, there is a
heavy mist hanging upon the hills this morning, with rain falling at
intervals in the valley. But even under a cloudy sky, Christmas must
always be a happy, cheerful day; the bright fires, the fresh and
fragrant greens, the friendly gifts, and words of good-will, the "Merry
Christmas" smiles on most faces one meets, give a warm glow to the day,
in spite of a dull sky…”
Elizabeth Gebhard wrote (in The Parsonage between Two Manors, a description of early 19th
century days in Claverack) that “good children … stood in a row before
the great roaring fires, and hand in hand sang,[in Dutch] ’Santa Claus,
good holy man, Go your way from Amsterdam, From Amsterdam to Spain, From
Spain to Orange, And bring these little children toys.’ Some of the
gifts on the following morning took the form of seed-cakes, representing
almost every animal on the farm.”
And the “toothsome” food. Mrs. Fred Rundell, describing 19th century Christmas in Spencertown [in the book, And So It Was: Yesteryear in the Punsit Valley],
recounted, “the house was redolent with the odor of spices and the warm
fragrance of gingerbread. On the kitchen table was a milk pan full of
freshly made fried cakes…in round balls and sugar coated. On the pantry
shelf meekly reposed the big rooster which so recently had challenged
the world from the top rail of the barnyard fence. Fires burned in the
chunk stoves in the parlor and settin’ room, and in the fireplace.”
Amid all this plenty, it is perhaps fitting to close
with the words of one 1850s contributor to the Albany-based Cultivator:
“Mother earth”, he said, should get Christmas presents too, after all,
if a lack of presents and of other good treatment should cause “the old
lady” to depart, “what would become of all of you professional men,
merchants, mechanics? …Think of these things, and treat the dear old
lady better.”
So cheers from us to all of you during this holiday
season and at least one ‘raising of the mug’ to the land itself.
The location of this scene is, according to the New York Public Library,
unknown. So, if you recognize the church, let us know...
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