Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:01 Well, uh, it's that time of year Hillary
Speaker 1 00:00:04 A week before Christmas. Very exciting.
Speaker 0 00:00:07 Um, is it this year in 2020? I don't know.
Speaker 1 00:00:11 You know, I'm having a really hard time figuring out what day it is. So I'm really proud of myself that I was able to identify where a week away from Christmas.
Speaker 0 00:00:20 Well, that's good. I have, I have a little thing for advent calendars, so I've got a couple of around me. Um, so that's kept me, I'm like today, it's after today's door, there are only six stores left,
Speaker 1 00:00:35 So we have a calendar right here too, but that doesn't help me know what day it is. Like I know like the date, like I know the number date, you know, today's one eight, you know what I did yesterday? I'm just like, I don't know what day of the week it is. It's terrible.
Speaker 0 00:00:58 Well, uh, I mean it's a week till Christmas and, uh, today's episode is all about Christmas in America should be fun.
Speaker 1 00:01:05 I'm excited about it. I think that this is a new one for us and definitely, I think that there's a lot to cover and I think that there's going to be a lot of things that people can reflect on in this episode.
Speaker 0 00:01:16 Yeah. Well, let's get started. Welcome to an incomplete history. I'm Hillary and I'm Jeff. And we're
Speaker 1 00:01:24 Your hosts for this weekly history podcast.
Speaker 2 00:01:26 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:01:47 So Christmas week, almost, almost. What's the, wait a minute. What's the weather. I think there's a little snow coming out. And what do I hear?
Speaker 2 00:02:02 <inaudible>
Speaker 0 00:02:08 I promise I am not going to drive you crazy with too many of them, but I have a bunch of hilarious ones loaded.
Speaker 1 00:02:17 I've been ready for that.
Speaker 0 00:02:21 Um, so we're, I mean, the weather here in San Diego is gorgeous. It's in the upper sixties, it's clear. It's a little breezy. It's not like a Santa Ana Vettery thing. As far as I know, there's no mudslides, earthquakes, big fires, anything going on right now in the County for the first time in a long time, we have no natural disasters occurring at the present moment, besides the slow moving disaster of COVID-19
Speaker 1 00:02:49 Hey, you guys have no ICU beds. So that seems kind of bad,
Speaker 0 00:02:54 Right? But I mean, we don't have any natural disasters going on. It isn't a, with a natural disaster To this one is completely
Speaker 1 00:03:05 True. It's our fault.
Speaker 0 00:03:06 It's completely our fault. Cause it's, you know, it was bill Gates and George Soros with Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 1 00:03:14 We've really shooted it.
Speaker 0 00:03:17 Well, we are going to, um, we are going to address conspiracies in an upcoming episode. I had a couple more listeners email me. We are doing another conspiracy theory up. So, but today's about Christmas, whether it's beautiful here, how's weather in Mississippi.
Speaker 1 00:03:32 It's beautiful. Um, it's really clear and sunny out. It's a little chillier than I would say comfortable, but just a light jacket. It's nice. It's in the fifties. Uh, but it's, it's really pretty out this morning. There was some snow on the ground. I don't know if there's snow, I'm such again, like I have no idea. It was maybe frost on the grass. It looks snowy, but it was cool. And then it melted by, you know, like eight in the morning and, and now it's just kinda sunny and crisp out. It's it's a nice day. I'm a little bitter, a bitter about,
Speaker 0 00:04:09 You know, where I like to spend Christmas.
Speaker 1 00:04:12 Oh yeah. The happiest place on earth.
Speaker 0 00:04:16 Well, no, I like to know. I don't like to spend Christmas day there. Good God, no. Um, I love to go to Disneyland during Christmas time. We did go one year, we went for Christmas and I was like, never again, um, like Disney could write me a thousand dollar check and I would think twice about going into that park on Christmas day
Speaker 1 00:04:37 To go during Christmas time or, you know, not Mary farm during Christmas, you know, for this episode, I can see some connections between like the decorations in the old West town in Knott's Berry farm and now, so, yeah. Cool. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:05:03 Um, I love Disneyland at Christmas time, but I actually love to go to Hawaii for Christmas.
Speaker 1 00:05:10 That's yeah. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:05:13 Yeah. Malika leaky Maka. There's just something about having a Mai Tai and laying out on a beach on Christmas day is just wonderful. And it sounds perfect to me, but obviously none of that's happening this year. Um,
Speaker 1 00:05:27 No, none of it at all,
Speaker 0 00:05:29 But uh, I mean, Christmas is interesting. I have a lot of friends, um, and I, I would include myself in this. I put my Christmas decorations up November 1st. This year
Speaker 1 00:05:41 That's sick. Um, I sick. I support it this year because it's been such a disaster. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:05:53 Yeah. I would never not. I am a staunch advocate of no Christmas decorations still. The Thanksgiving Turkey has been eaten.
Speaker 1 00:06:01 I, I agree that and for me it was when I was growing up, I felt like we didn't decorate for Christmas until like the first week of December. Maybe even like by the 10th, um, my dad was just ripping Garling down like the night of Christmas. Like it's over put, pack it up, you know? Um, but for me I'm always like, okay, December 1st, I always get my Christmas cards out. Although that didn't happen this year because of delays and everything, um, with Shutterfly lovely card. Thank you. I was, I was so mad. That was a whole situation where they didn't come anyway. I'm glad you got Christmas decorations for me. They come after Thanksgiving. Um, but this year being such a mess, I totally get the November 1st decorating is your all alive. We don't use a living tree. Oh, my tree's been dead for like a week. It's very simple.
Speaker 0 00:07:03 Cause we, you know, we live in a condo and it's a smaller space, so we need like a pencil tree. So we got this great pencil tree. It's it's fine. Um, I grew up with live living trees. Um, and, and today I think we're going to talk about a lot of our personal experiences as well to kind of breathe life into kind of this historical view of Christmas. But um, I mean artificial trees, I used to be really against, and then there are things they just don't do that. I like, like they don't drop their needles all over the floor at the end of the season. You just disassemble them and put them in a box and put them in storage til next year. Um, yeah, there no watering is necessary and usually they're pretty strong. The lights are pretty strong, so you don't even have to deal with like getting lights out and untangling them and decorating them.
Speaker 1 00:07:55 Isn't the untangling part of the fun, particularly if you're married, it's like a real team building exercise.
Speaker 0 00:08:06 I detect, I detect a little bit of a tension there
Speaker 1 00:08:12 Every year,
Speaker 0 00:08:14 This time of year. And it's also the time of year where families just get into these knock-down drag-out argument.
Speaker 1 00:08:21 Yeah. And you know what, I will start here with the episode of like actually talking history. It's like we created this entire burden for ourselves. Oh yeah. We've just slighted kind of suddenly we're just going to do this whole shebang and it's not rooted in anything other than trying to build American culture. Is that fair to say? Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:08:46 I mean, that's, I think that's a thing it's and you know, I know some listeners might be a little offended or might be surprised, but it's, while I said last week, a thing about religion, and I do believe this a lot that you can't understand the conceptualization of early American law and ideas and culture, without understanding Puritans, you know, English, Protestant ideas, specifically period on ones, Christmas as celebrated in the United States today has little to do with religion, um, at all. Uh, and I think it's useful to go back and, and look like even in the first few decades of English presence in North America, the English civil war happens in England in the mid 17th century. And one of the first things Oliver Cromwell who's appeared and does after Charles the first is beheaded. Um, that's, you know, that's a whole other story. And I think that's one of the most important things that ever happened in political history. Um, what are the things that he does is he closes taverns, closes brothels and cancels Christmas
Speaker 1 00:09:56 What a killjoy. Wow.
Speaker 0 00:09:59 Because he says something that is actually true. He says, this is a holiday that has nothing to do with our religion.
Speaker 1 00:10:08 That's true. It has nothing to do with, but you know what I would argue with that all day, because if Christianity is created in the early centuries, right. And I think the beef is not so much with Christmas it's with Catholicism because Christmas was created by the Catholics. Right. And so I think it's the Puritan rejection of
Speaker 0 00:10:37 Right. A little bit. I mean, here's the thing that's, and that's a whole other thing. And this is a recurrent theme. Like you can't understand kind of English history from the civil war on or American history without understanding kind of threads of anti Catholicism. But I think what Luther or what Luther, sorry, not laser. What chrom well does when he's saying we're not gonna have Christmas celebrating anymore, he's recognizing a reality, which is Christmas, the way it was celebrated in England in the mid 17th century prior to its being canceled was much more connected with two specific pagan holidays than it was with anything Christian. And that there had been kind of this Christian veneer put over it. And, and it's really what the Roman Catholic church did as it spread. And the, you know, the first millennia across Europe is it would take long established holidays and celebrations and kind of repackaged them as Christian and tie them to something Christian and mid-winter celebrations are nothing new across the Northern hemisphere. You've got cultures that celebrate some type of mid-winter thing around the winter. Right?
Speaker 1 00:11:56 Well, it's all about repurposing because, um, I don't know, I feel bad. I'm gonna use this quote, but there's this quote don't destroy sanctify. And so the idea was not going to destroy pagan holidays. And this idea comes out of very early Christianity in the first, second, third centuries that we're not going to destroy pagan holidays. What we're going to do though, is try to draw pagans into the religion by repurposing or sanctifying the holidays. They already celebrate by earmarking Christian festivals or days of observation. And so like you said, this winter solstice time, um, it's, it's about, you know, well, let's repurpose this already exciting, happy festival where there's food and friends and dancing and all this. And we'll just say it's Jesus's birthday because there's nothing in the Bible that says specifically when Jesus was born, um, there are some hints in the Bible that it could be with the reference to sheep herders. It could be in the late spring with the reference of the stalks day. It could be, could be right.
Speaker 0 00:13:01 No, I mean, it's, it's the Roman census. Why would they conduct a census in the middle of December? That would be silly
Speaker 1 00:13:09 Traveling. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So they repurpose it though. And it's the, um, Saturnalia I think you mentioned is like the, uh, worshiping of Saturn and then it's right around winter solstice, the 21st and then the 25th is the celebration of the sun. S U N and the Christian, the undying sun. Yeah. Birthdays on December 25th. Right. But they said, well, let's make it the birthday of the son, son, the son of God let's repurpose it. And so it, Christmas began to be celebrated December 25th. For that reason was just to draw new people into the religion.
Speaker 0 00:13:50 Did she know Solon book to smother was a Virgin as well. And that,
Speaker 1 00:13:56 That story is very common. Right.
Speaker 0 00:13:59 And that he died and got better.
Speaker 1 00:14:02 I don't think that the Christian say got better, but yeah. I mean, that's a, that's a common story. Um, mythology that, that goes across many different, um, regions. And I think that there's even like an Egyptian myth about someone who's the son of God who dies and raises. Right. I mean, this is just a common thread in cultures. Um, this story that we say as Jesus's birth, um, is a common cultural myth, right?
Speaker 0 00:14:32 Yeah. And let's talk about myths really quickly. It's funny. I have to tell my students this all the time when I say myth, I am not saying something is true or is not true myth
Speaker 1 00:14:45 True or false. Right, right,
Speaker 0 00:14:47 Right. It's not, it's nothing to do with truthiness as Stephen Colbert would say it has to do with the way it's imagined and the culture that creates it. Right. Um, but I think before we kind of get into the nuts and bolts of how like Saturday alien and mule, these two pagan holidays become Christmas that we celebrate today. Why untangling Christmas lights, how it's connected to those at all. I think it's useful to pause really quickly and bring out a couple of reasons mid-winter festivals happen. I mean, what's going on in early agricultural societies, we're talking about societies more than 2000 years ago. Why would Midwinter be a time to celebrate? Um, and there's a, and it's kind of a perfect storm. And, uh, some of the reasons are very agricultural. So if you're an agricultural society, by the time winter rolls around, especially the middle of December, the middle to end of December, there's not much agricultural labor for you to work on because fields are frozen.
Speaker 0 00:15:49 There may be snow on the ground. So there's not any of that labor for you to do. Second, there was a practice in a lot of agricultural communities as the winter started, you would go through and slaughter a lot of your livestock, not all of it, but you would slaughter a lot of your livestock first, that meant meat would freeze well, so you can actually keep it in the winter. But second, it meant fewer animals. You had to feed over the winter. So you could kind of stretch things like hay and things a little bit longer. They also have all those crops they've harvested in the fall. And then the first alcohol that's been kind of fermented out of late summer and fall crops is becoming available. So it's kind of like you have this perfect storm of a lot of free time, um, a lot of meat and other food available and alcohol and it coincidence not coincidentally happens around the winter solstice, which is the low point of the sun in the sky. And the moment, you know, after the winter solstice, the sun starts coming back. So it's like this perfect storm for a celebration.
Speaker 1 00:16:57 It's a perfect storm for celebration. And it, but it's also a moment where it's a little bit sad and jury and cold and it gets dark, right? Like there's a lot about bringing warmth into the house. Um, having a celebration there's, it's related to alcohol, it's related to bringing trees in it's related to candles and lighting things. It's about making this moment in the winter time, a little brighter and happier because it's literally dark outside and it's actually cold
Speaker 0 00:17:28 Log the Yule log. Right. Um, so, you know, and there's a real kind of fear that lingers from ancient times, anxiety about this, write about this, sign it. And I, and this isn't to suggest that somebody 2,500 years ago literally believes the, is not going to return that it's going to continue to diminish and eventually just go away. But, you know, MIS had been developed over centuries that something had to be done to kind of bring the sun back or celebrate the son's return. Um, Druids would sacrifice somebody to bring the son back. Um, and a lot of Christian symbols surrounding Christmas relate to something of a sacrifice. Right. Right. Um, but I mean, do you want to talk a little bit about, you'll probably want to talk about Saturnalia a little bit more,
Speaker 1 00:18:27 You can go ahead and talk about them. I, I, I have my Saturnalia stuff, I guess, but yeah.
Speaker 0 00:18:32 Let's talk about Sonia then we'll switch to y'all.
Speaker 1 00:18:36 Well, no, go ahead. Go with you all first. Okay.
Speaker 0 00:18:39 Okay. So you'll is, you know, it is the Northern European equivalent of a mid-winter festival of Saturnalia as the Mediterranean and Roman one. This is the one that's practiced by Germanic peoples across Germany, Scandinavia, and then even Celtic peoples and kind of parts of France into the British Isles. And, you know, we don't have a lot of information because all of these were preliterate societies. They didn't write these things down. We get early accounts via Christian missionaries. Um, and a lot of the stuff isn't actually written down until Christianity has already been introduced to the region. So there's a lot of, kind of reworking of what it is. Um, but what it was, um, there was, uh, at its most basic level, it involved a feast where they would pass around a drinking horn. Um, and it would create a connection between one another, as you got drunk and a connection with the gods, and that's kind of its most basic basic kind of view. Um, but it has to do with kind of ancestor worship return of the dead ghost stories. So it certainly sounds a lot more like another holiday. I know it's Hillary's favorite holiday on the calendar than it does Christmas.
Speaker 1 00:20:03 Yeah. A little bit. I mean, I also got like some really, uh, like some real anxiety and COVID vibes and you're like, Oh, they're passing around thing to drink out of. And everybody's drinking out of the same thing. Um, but yeah, I mean it does, it does feel a little more Halloweenish right. With the celebrations and there's a lot of cultures that celebrate Christmas and kind of a dark way. And there's like a discussion of demons, right? Like the Greeks, um, say that there's like a theme running around for 12 days. So there's some interesting things that go on with Christmas and different cultures. Um, but I think that our, our celebration of Christmas and a lot of the traditions that we have come from the Roman festival Saturnalia yes, but I think
Speaker 0 00:20:48 You'll is at least as important because one of the big points of, of UL is up being this use of fire because fire in these big bonfires or candles were perceived as means to ward off spirits of the dead that you maybe didn't want around you. And this is not only the Yule log. Um, and, but it's things like candles and why candles. I mean, I've got a little candle thing, it's got five candles on it and it's from Sweden and it's, it's, it's a descendant of this, um, fireplaces. People love to get special wood to burn in their fireplaces around Christmas, the lights on your trees. These are all this light, those lights were originally intended to ward you from the dead.
Speaker 1 00:21:41 That's interesting. That's really interesting about the light and bringing light into the house during this time of darkness. Um, I think though that though, and we don't even think about those things, obviously when we're like lighting our candles or putting our lights on our trees, but that they do have this connection to death and trying to ward off, it's also trying to ward off cold and darkness too. Is that fair to say? Yeah. So it's about like welcoming winter, but also trying to like keep winter away. And, and I think that that's where this worship of the sun comes, um, around this time. And um, so like ancient celebrations and traditions are really intricately woven into what we do now.
Speaker 0 00:22:26 Yeah. Well, and then we've got Saturnalia and we've got Yule and then there's a pretty lengthy gap. Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about Saturday Alya. Then we'll talk about that gap because it's not till the fourth century that we start to get some hint of Christmas being celebrated by Christians. Right.
Speaker 1 00:22:45 And then there's a really long gap between that. And then you have Francis of Assisi come along and talking about nativities, which that's another tradition that we can get into. And then it's not until the mid 19th century that you really start to see Christmas celebrations take off in any sort of way that we, that we recognize. So it's Christmas celebrations are American, um, that we have now and they're kind of an invention, but they, they really kind of harp on these traditions from a very, very long time ago. So, um, Saturnalia was a mid December festival, an ancient Roman pagan festival and it honored the agriculture God, uh, Saturn. Um, so Saturnalia the traditions that STEM from Saturnalia celebrations are really kind of tied up in what we do now in a lot of ways. Um, so work would come to a complete stop.
Speaker 1 00:23:39 During this time there would be a week long celebration. People would party and drink and eat. And, uh, one of the major components of this was that masters would serve their servants instead during this whole week. Um, and because everybody had come to a halt work, so even servants weren't supposed to work during this time, um, schools, courts, everything was closed and people would decorate their homes with wreaths and Garland and greenery. Um, they would, they would wear a colorful clothing during this time. Um, they would gamble seeing they would just have huge, a huge party, a huge giant festival. Um, they would give gifts. Candles were also a big part of this and it was just a giant week long soiree. Right. And it would always kind of fall mid to late December for that whole week. Um, this was repurposed though, around the fourth century, right by Christians who were trying to create, um, I dunno, some distance from pagan festivals and traditions to try to say, you can still do those things, but we're going to call it something different now. Right? So the Pope at the time, was it Julius who said that? So Pope Julia says, um, that December 25th, the day of Saturnalia will now be, um, the date for Jesus's birth. We're just going to completely take over this holiday. And we're going to say we're celebrating Jesus on this day.
Speaker 0 00:25:22 Well, I mean, it's a shrewd move on his part too, because this is, I mean, this, the Roman God, we mentioned previously solid <inaudible>. He was a relative, it was a relatively new religion as well. And it was gaining a lot of adherence. And this was one way for the Catholic church, which now enjoyed official recognition and, and was officially the church of the Roman empire. This was a way that they could come in and actually tamped down on these competing religions is to like take over their major holidays,
Speaker 1 00:25:54 Take over the holidays and say like, Hey, this whole, you know, you can have fun in this religion too. You know, we've got this really quality here. I mean, it's, it's kind of funny when you think back on how it was. So it was so strategic and politicized and it had absolutely nothing to do with say the Bible or anything. I mean, it was just all kind of created in order to create a hype and publicize. That's what it was. It was like publicity for this new ish religion that they wanted people to adhere to and to follow. Um, and it was a really good way to get people, Hey, come to our Christmas party.
Speaker 0 00:26:34 So we, I promise we with, you know, this episode, we're going to talk about Christmas and American. I want to kind of fast forward a little bit because I want to get, I want to make some things clear. Beginning of the 19th century, Christmas is not celebrated in the United States.
Speaker 1 00:26:50 Well, and as a matter of fact, let's rewind a little bit. It was illegal to celebrate Christmas in the 17th century in Boston. And this is, you know, a Cromwell situation as well. And the Puritans between 1659 and 1681, it was illegal to celebrate Christmas in Boston. And that stems from what I had mentioned earlier. Now, hopefully it's a little more clear based on our previous discussion that this was a Puritan rejection of Catholicism of Catholic tradition of a Catholic creature, because they're saying, look, there is nothing in the Bible about celebrating Christmas on December 25th. This is pagan. We reject this, we reject Christianity or we reject Catholicism and we're the ones who do it, right. We're just going to go about our business. And they worked on that day. I mean, nobody
Speaker 0 00:27:43 Elizabeth Cady Stanton said she recounted that when she was growing up, the only great festivals celebrated in that early 19th century period by children, by youth. So she called them where the 4th of July Thanksgiving and see our Thanksgiving episode, just to see that, to hear a little bit about that Thanksgiving, she may have celebrated and training day, um, as the only great festivals like that. There were no others that Christmas Eve you imagined. And you would think for use that would be mentioned, but you can actually look at things like boarding school records and boarding school shows. There were only two week long vacations, um, in the entire year, along with 4th of July and Thanksgiving, just like Katie Stanton, Elizabeth Cady Stanton said, but Christmas and new year's were just ignored. They weren't even, they weren't even a blip on the radar, which is interesting because at the same moment, early 19th century, it's being celebrated in England. Christmas is being celebrated,
Speaker 1 00:28:45 Not in the same way, but it is gaining some traction there.
Speaker 0 00:28:50 The bank of England has an official holiday for Christmas day by the 19th century in England.
Speaker 1 00:28:56 And it States is still ignoring it. And in the very beginning, um, of, you know, our, in our founding in the late 18th century, um, Congress would meet on Christmas day. You can go back and look through records. And I remember being in the archive a couple times and seeing records from Christmas or right around Christmas and just being like, why are they meeting at this time? But it's because it's not even a holiday. It's not, again, like it's not a blip on the radar. People may go to church. People may know it is Christmas day because it was, it has been that way for so many centuries, but it just wasn't celebrated in this way. Um, it is interesting to see that it's gaining traction in England by the early 19th century and then the mythology around Christmas and Santa and reindeer and all that kind of stuff starts through.
Speaker 0 00:29:48 There is one of the most popular sites in the Greek, as well as the Latin church. So scarcely anything historically certain about him, except that he was Bishop of Myra in the fourth century. Some of the main points in his legend are as follows. He was born at Patara city and Lisha and Asia minor and his youth, he made a pilgrimage to Egypt and Palestine shortly after his return, he became Bishop of Myra cast into prison during the persecution of Diocletian. He was released after the session of Constantine and was present at the council of Nicea in 10 87, Italian merchants stole his body at Myra bringing it to Bari in Italy.
Speaker 1 00:30:23 So that's what it's about. St. Nicholas
Speaker 0 00:30:25 At St. Nicholas. And that's all there is basically,
Speaker 1 00:30:28 Well, he's the patron Saint of children though. And that there was myths around his generosity and that he was always like a secret gift giver to children. Like he would just, he was very generous with kids. That's why that myth around Santa comes about.
Speaker 0 00:30:45 Right. And I mean, this is the, the, the entry is what's known about him. Everything else is stuff that's kind of contested. Right. And that's, it's interesting that this guy, who's pretty much that this minor figure is the face of Christmas.
Speaker 1 00:31:01 We can thank the Coca Cola company for that.
Speaker 0 00:31:04 We, sir. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's interesting. So there are not as many good books, historical kind of well researched and peer reviewed books about the history of Christmas as I expected there to be. Um, but you know, a couple of them make the same argument that it's actually the rise of a national consumer culture does more than anything else to create Christmas as we understand it today. And that's, that's predicated on lines of commerce lines of communication industries that span the country, roads, railroads, uh, mail network. That's able to deliver mail consistently and efficiently the rise of, um, newspapers, books, magazines, as well as the immigration of a couple of specific communities that have very strong Christmas traditions, including Germans,
Speaker 1 00:32:02 Germans, and the Moravians, right? The Christmas tree has come. A lot of the Christmas traditions that we have now come out of Pennsylvania, come out of German communities. And the idea of bringing a tree into the house has those really deep ancient pagan roots about bringing life into the home. And Germans had been bringing Christmas trees inside, um, during the month of December for centuries. And so this gets carried over, but yes, yes, but arguably why it becomes really, really popular cause there's Germans who are doing it in Pennsylvania, um, in the 18 hundreds. I mean, before we really start to celebrate Christmas, but a lot of scholars have pointed to the, uh, public, uh, the publicized Christmas happening, um, in queen Victoria's reign. So queen Mary's a German, right? He, she marries Prince Albert he's German. So he comes to, um, you know, the monarchy and the, you know, the British crown with all of these traditions that are coming from Germany.
Speaker 1 00:33:07 And so the first photo of a Christmas tree and the description of the tree was, um, publicized and then distributed in the United States, um, right around 1850 ish. And so then you start to see Christmas trees everywhere. It's not just in German homes, although they had been there for a long time, it's Victorian, it's the Victorian rain. Um, she has so much influence on culture and people see, Oh, there's beautiful Christmas tree queen Victoria has, and then boom, it just takes off. And it's interesting, you mentioned the mail because that is so tied to all of this. That was one of the very first Christmas traditions that we picked up that we still have today. And it's the distribution of Christmas cards.
Speaker 0 00:33:53 Well, and it's interesting too. So the mid 19th century, this starting to become this national holiday, that's celebrated with some regional variations, but generally celebrated in very similar ways across the country. Also coincides with the rise of a new focus on children and childhood. Is that fair to say?
Speaker 1 00:34:18 Yes. And, but it's also a focused on destitute children. It's a, it's a focus that's also on, you know, children who are needy or who are orphaned or who need extra help. And I think that that's directly correlated to the number of orphans in the wake of the civil war.
Speaker 0 00:34:35 Yeah. All right. Well, I think it's, it is, it is very much a middle-class driven celebration, right? I mean, it's it's, which is why it ties into the things of like newspapers and magazines is the middle class. This is a way to check to see, are you dressing? Are you having the food you're supposed to have, um, to have a good Christmas, are you getting, providing the right stuff for your children and your family? Are you doing it correctly? But at the same time going in and helping children who are in worse situations and you know, a lot of this ties in with kind of industrialization. This makes me realize we should probably have an episode where we talk about industrialization and children in the United States, because it's, it's an interesting conversation, but this is the moment where we start to get real critics that children should not be employed. That child's job is to go to school and be a child,
Speaker 1 00:35:38 But it takes a long time for that to actually fire, right?
Speaker 0 00:35:43 It has taken a long time. But if you look at who's growing up in this period, it's people like Teddy Roosevelt, it's people who are real advocates for getting children out of the workplace,
Speaker 1 00:35:53 Right. And also like the idea of childhood in general starts to develop during this time. And that's also an interesting conversation that there is such a thing as a period where you should be carefree and you know, not worry about money, new, or taking care of the family or doing any sort of labor. And the idea of childhood in and of itself, doesn't develop until around this time. And we're talking about the late 19th century now about while the second half of the 19th century, 1850 onward, where this idea of having a childhood even exist. And, and this isn't even cemented until well into the 20th century, that the idea of childhood and that somehow children shouldn't be responsible for anything. And parents are this kind of a new idea. And Christmas has a lot to do with that. You know, this celebrating Christmas and the mythology and Santa and the gifts and the, this, and that. It's all rooted in this idea that childhood should exist or as something called childhood should exist, um, and be joyful and carefree.
Speaker 0 00:37:03 Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, it's hard. I think a lot of time for people to understand that prior to the mid at 19th century children weren't celebrated or the focus of gatherings like they are in contemporary America, even, even like Christmas is celebrated in England at the beginning of the 19th century, you know, we had talked about how it was being celebrated there. It was definitely not a child-focused celebration at all. Um, it was actually a pretty Rawkus
Speaker 1 00:37:40 RD, right? It was coming with the kids to bed. This isn't about them. We're getting drunk and eating and dancing all night. I mean, we'll do that, but
Speaker 0 00:37:53 Pause a little bit about kind of the historical background of all this. Cause I wanna, I wanna compare notes about what, what a traditional Christmas means to each of us. We can kind of pick apart a few of those and point to where they come from. So what does a typical Christmas day-to-day typical Christmas when you grew up, what was it like?
Speaker 1 00:38:14 I've had lots of conversations with my husband about this because his Christmas looked very different than my Christmas. Um, and not surprising, not surprising. There's a lot of differences there. Um, for me, I mean, and this is sound like Christmas for me was just like piles and piles and piles of presence. Like more presence than you could possibly use or enjoy or whatever. I mean, you were so overwhelmed with gifts and it was great. I mean, I, Christmas for me was awesome. We would go from like house to house, to house. We'd go to my, my mom's mom's house. Um, so my grandmother and my mom's side's house, we'd on wrap a pile of presents. We got to my grandmother on my dad's side, we don't wrap a pile of presents. We'd wake up in the morning and Santa had left presence and then we would open more presence.
Speaker 1 00:39:08 And then there was food and presents and food and presents, and the whole month was consumed with baking. We would bake everything, my grandma and I would bake. And that's the tradition I've kept and held on to the baking. But for me, I mean, it was just so much about gifts, but I also, I went to a Catholic school. So in, when I was in school in Catholic school, it was all about advent, advent, calendar, singing, Christmas carols, um, having a Christmas play, doing a knit, living nativity. Um, and, and the, the nativity is interesting because that can be traced back to the 12th century, right. With Francis of Assisi. Um, when he was trying to explain Jesus's birth, he used live animals to show what happened in the manger scene. And so that's where we come up with the manger scene and the nativity that's from St. Francis. So we would do that. Um, and we would have a Christmas pageant, you know, stuff like that. So what are kind of sound like your Christmas? Just like presence, food, presence, foods.
Speaker 0 00:40:15 I mean, it's, it's so Hilary grew up in Southern California. I grew up in the South. Um, my family was Protestant and religion was completely absent from our celebration of Christmas. Like there was a, there was a crash, like a nativity scene, a nativity set. And, you know, that's, we did advent stuff at church on Sundays, but like as far as Christmas itself went, it was, um, I grew up with two brothers. It was definitely about the piles of presence, but I mean, food and travel was a big thing. So we would travel wherever we lived. Uh, we would travel to my aunts and South Carolina and be there for about a week or two weeks. Um, how that poor woman put up with all of us for two weeks
Speaker 1 00:41:11 Scene three young boy.
Speaker 0 00:41:14 Yeah. But it was like for two solid weeks, we would get there before Christmas. And I'm pretty sure we would stay till new year's. Um, like we would, the day we got off from school, we would leave. And this was back when we actually got about a week off before Christmas, but we would get there and there'd be a lot of food. There are still foods that I like associate with Christmas that even though kind of adult may finds kind of repellent I'm drawn to on some level, um, cheeseballs, I was going to say, please describe these foods. What is it like a port wine, cheese ball? So it's, it's this kind of soft cheese, um, that's rolled in nuts and this is South. So it's usually pecans and you serve it with crackers and stuff. So there would be that, um, we did not have traditional fruit cake, but we add something called icebox fruit cake, which was made with which it's actually, I've got the ingredients out.
Speaker 0 00:42:12 I'm making it today to take some, to mail, to some friends. Um, it's got Graham Cracker crumbs because it's the South and Graham Cracker crumbs are and everything it's got sweetened condensed milk because it's the South and sweet and get into smoke as in everything mini marshmallows and usually the dry, the candied fruit that you put in fruit cake, or if you want to be like not so gross, you can use like raisins and things and then Supercars and you mix it all together and you make these logs out of it and you let them cure on their refrigerator for a week or so. And they, they are very interesting. It's an acquired taste. I think that sounds delicious. The taste, the taste is really good. The texture, some people find very odd because it's, it's hard to describe. I think it's more like a candy.
Speaker 0 00:43:04 It taste it, the texture is more like a candy, but we would do that. Um, I mean, there were dishes that we just expected to have. Another was, um, cheese, cheese crackers, which nobody knows anything about the Southern United States knows that cheese straws are a hugely important thing. Have you encountered cheese straws in your time in Mississippi yet? I don't know what a cheese straw is. No. Okay. So it's a, it's a super simple, um, dough that's made with butter, self-rising flour and a lot of shredded sharp cheddar cheese, and you mix it together and it's kind of, it's almost like a cheese shortbread and you bake it and you might add a little bit of cayenne pepper to it for a little seeing. You also might put a pecan half on top of it. Um, but there are these savory little cheesy cookies and they're just great.
Speaker 0 00:43:56 And always growing up those things as fast as they could be made, those things would be. Um, and then there was the last kind of specific thing. I'll talk about our chocolate peanut butter balls, um, which growing up, I thought was just peculiar at our house, but it turns out it's, again, a pretty wide thing in the South, which is kind of peanut butter, Graham crackers, sweetened, condensed milk coconut, and chopped up pecans. And you roll it all together and you roll them into balls and then you dip them in chocolate. So they're kind of like some kind of truffle a little bit. Um, but they're very similar to Buckeyes from Ohio. Um, and they're very similar to kind of some candies and things like bourbon balls they have in Kentucky. But, um, those things had to be around if they weren't, it was like what's going on, but we would, you know, food was definitely very important. Um, ham, I mean, it's the South, so there wasn't a, a Christmas Turkey. It was the Christmas ham. Um, but I mean, presence. Yeah. We only had two specific times to open presents. Christmas Eve. The whole extended family would get there. They were with my, my aunts, uh, my great aunt, uh, my uncles, their families, all of us would be there and you would open presents each other, gave each other, everyone gave each other, but then Christmas morning you would open presents Santa Claus, scratch here.
Speaker 1 00:45:33 That's I mean, besides some of the foods that you're talking about, I mean, that sounds kind of familiar to me of what we would do. Um, just having family over and eating specific things like, so in the sweetened condensed milk is interesting because just today, I mean, I've been baking all day and that's why I lost track of time this week. It's just been like baking central, but I make like seven layer bars that have crushed Graham crackers, sweetened, condensed milk, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, coconut, right? Like the whole thing. I mean, Canada, those are from Canada.
Speaker 0 00:46:07 They're called the Nymo bars are Nanaimo bars. And my grandma was in Benton and Canada.
Speaker 1 00:46:14 Huh. Let's see my grandma. And I don't know why she got those. I have no idea.
Speaker 0 00:46:18 What's interesting. I think Australia also claims credit for inventing that I'll have, I would have to do a little more research on that.
Speaker 1 00:46:24 See, I should research these things and I mean, I'm in making fudge, that's a huge thing to make as fudge. And that's a really old dessert. I mean, it's been around for a long time. Um, but it's, for me, it's only around on Christmas. Like you're not just making fudge throughout the year. I mean, I hope not my goodness. Um, so the baking is really important and I mean, I think that that kind of connects to the banquets and the feasts and everything, you know, everyone's just kind of packing on weight. And if you think biologically speaking, like in the winter time, people do eat a lot. Um, so it's, it's kind of connected to our biology or at least our brains of what we think should be happening. Um, even though we have heating in our houses and we're not going to be needing the blubber to keep warm, but it's all kind of connected in that way.
Speaker 1 00:47:14 Um, new traditions that I've taken on since getting married is now, um, Christmas Eve is more celebrated, which for us, it really wasn't so much when I was growing up. It was more Christmas day, Christmas dinner, Christmas, and we'll have all those still. But Christmas Eve is a really big deal for my husband and his family. And that's when they would open presents and they would get one present one and I'm like, Whoa. So he looks at my, my Christmas and just thinks it's so excessive. Um, but he would get one gift and then, um, they would eat tamales on Christmas. It would be like a really big feast and celebration. So this year he says, he's going to go to Memphis to try to find tamales. I'm like, those are not,
Speaker 0 00:48:00 Those are different.
Speaker 1 00:48:03 And they're not like what we grew up with in Southern
Speaker 0 00:48:05 California. You have many grabbed some down at the Mercado and FedEx them to, you I'll do that.
Speaker 1 00:48:15 I tried to do it. And like, he's like, no, no, it's okay. I'll just go to Memphis. I'm like, have you looked at the picture?
Speaker 0 00:48:20 Those are, yeah, those are Delta tamales. They are very, very different. Um, I think he's going to be disgusted. Fine. We're like stopping.
Speaker 1 00:48:31 They're really weird looking.
Speaker 0 00:48:33 Right. Well, I mean, the great thing is in San Diego, like I can't, I can't walk more than 20 feet without being able to get a decent tamale somewhere at Christmas time. Like every place has tamales, Walmart parking lot and like buy amount of the back. What's your, what's your favorite tamale for Christmas now that she's in jalapeno? Yeah. Anyway, I like, I like the corn, just the plain corn, but I love the pineapple one. See, I'm not there. Oh, I love that pineapple tamale. I can only one. Whenever I get them, I always get like two and I'm like, I think I get two of these. And when I finished the one I'm like, that was good. I can't eat anymore. Um,
Speaker 1 00:49:18 I'm by the dozen and I'll just like defrost them for weeks and just see tamales for weeks. But they're so good. Um, so that's a new tradition that I have and, um, you know, that of course has roots in Mexican culture. Um, and what I think is so interesting about Christmas and from what you're saying and like how you celebrated and how I celebrate and how everyone celebrates. It's like, this is just a uniquely American thing that we tried to create in order to create culture. I mean, obviously we've talked for a long time, like it has all of these different roots, but the commercialism, the huge amount of like gift giving and Santa and, um, all of this, I mean, it's just a very American thing to be doing. It's um, it's part of our culture, kind of how we talked about Thanksgiving. We were trying to create culture and it's in the 1870s, um, that it becomes finally declared as a national holiday, as we'll refer to our Thanksgiving episode, Thanksgiving was declared during, um, Abraham Lincoln's administration and that was connected to civil war stuff, but it's not until the seventies that Christmas is declared an actual national holiday.
Speaker 1 00:50:31 And I think that that's weird for people to think about, you know, just 150 years ago was when Christmas was declared a holiday. Um, but it is, it has roots in a lot of different places, but the way that we celebrate it now, I mean, we've kind of created this whole shebang where we kind of think like, Oh, well it goes way back, but I mean, we just created this whole mythology, um, and commercialized it in the way that we have and people from all denominations celebrate Christmas. So, um, I found a quote in,
Speaker 0 00:51:07 And just not just that, but people who aren't religious at all celebrate Christmas
Speaker 1 00:51:12 Because it's, it's a pretty secular thing now. I mean, it doesn't really have a lot to do with celebrating the birth of Christ and that's for a lot of different reasons. Again, we mentioned early on that, like, Jesus probably wasn't even born in December and when we pray, we move that almost I can say without a doubt, we don't know exactly when it was, but I can tell you with almost certainty it wasn't in December. Um, so I found a quote from a newspaper in Philadelphia in 1877, and this is for our Jewish listeners. It says, quote, even in the home of the Hebrew brother and Christmas trees bloomed, they also said the little ones of Israel, whereas happy over them as Christian children. And so the idea is that this is an American celebration. This is how Americans celebrate this moment in December. And it's not really created, or it's not really, it doesn't have to be about Christianity and it's actually not. And that by 1900, about one in five homes had a Christmas tree in it. So it just becomes something to celebrate, you know, being American, um, and having the celebration in December rather than being about something rooted in religion.
Speaker 0 00:52:23 So, so let me ask you this. Um, do you have, what other, do you have any other traditions you developed, like as far as movies, books that you read during Christmas thing? Anything like that?
Speaker 1 00:52:39 Yeah. I mean a lot of books, especially kids books now for Christmas. Um, the night before Christmas, a Christmas Carol, um, the night before Christmas was actually written, um, in the 19th century. Right.
Speaker 0 00:52:55 As well as Christmas, Carolyn Christmas, Carol hearkens back to those ghost stories.
Speaker 1 00:53:00 Yeah. And, um, had a lot of meaning from some of the earlier writing in the 1820s by Washington Irving. So again like the mythology being created as a lot of authors who, who create a lot of these stories. Um, but I, you know, I always watch elf is one of my favorite ones to watch for peanuts Christmas. I'm home alone, Christmas vacation, the natural improvement one. Yeah. You know, you watch different things. It's when you think about it, it's like a super lazy time. I mean, you're busy all the time because you're like wrapping presents and buying this and buying that. And it's a frantic time, but it's also just kind of, you're eating a lot and watching more TV and more, I don't know. What about you? Do you have like essential viewing or reading or,
Speaker 0 00:53:51 Um, elephants entered into the rotation? Uh, Christmas vacation has been on the list for a long time. It just kills me. Um, it's also one of the reasons I don't want a live tree in my house. Um,
Speaker 0 00:54:06 Uh, but I mean, the one that we always watch, uh, is Christmas story. Um, we usually watch it a couple of times, in fact, so I have to make an admission. Um, some of our decorations are a Christmas village from a Christmas story. So we have like, Ralphie's house. We have the school, we have the Chinese restaurant they go to after the has had bupkis hounds eat their dinner. And then we have Higbee's department store and we've even got like the flagpole with a Flix tongue stuck to it. Um, we love that movie. Um, so we watch it. I mean, we, we watch our own copy of it, but then during the holidays, inevitably, I think it's TBS or somebody like plays it 24 hours a day, Christmas day, inevitably some point or Christmas day it'll end up, just turned there and we'll watch it for a little while we watched that nightmare before Christmas is a big one. We love to watch. Um, uh, and then there are some other things that are a little more esoteric, uh, is diehard or Christmas movie. That's always a big debate. I love to watch it at Christmas.
Speaker 1 00:55:20 I've heard so many people. I know, watch diehard at Christmas. It's some central viewing. Um, I'm not one of them, but I have friends. Yeah.
Speaker 0 00:55:27 I mean, it's set in Christmas, but by that, by that logic, then the French connection is also our Christmas movie. Um, and then this is from my youth. I love hate to watch the star Wars holiday special. It is, it is so delicious, really awful. Um, you can find it on YouTube. You have to, you don't even have to be very creative to find it. Drudge Lucas tried to destroy all copies of this thing, cause it is a big stinky pile. Um, one thing it does really, it does have in it as the first appearance of Boba Fett, it's in an animated short, but it's got, um, art, Carney, Bea Arthur, Diahann, Carroll, Jefferson Starship, who else is in it? I'm leaving a couple of people out. Um, it's if you've not inflicted this on yourself, you need to, because it's just so it's so bad, it goes around and almost becomes good again.
Speaker 0 00:56:37 It's just so incredibly awful, but I always love to watch that. And then my favorite thing ever, and I would suggest anybody who has not seen this to watch it. Um, Jim Henson in the seventies did this great adaptation of a book that when I was a little child, when I was a child, I loved it's called Emmet Otter's jug band Christmas. Um, and it was a special for HBO back in the late seventies. And you can actually get it. You can get digital copies of it now, or you can get Blu-ray or DVDs copies of it. It is wonderful. And I love it. And it just, to me, it means Christmas. Um, it's basically a retelling of, it's a combination of a couple of traditional Christmas stories, not the Christmas story, but traditional Christmas stories, um, kind of like gift to the magic. It's kind of like a retelling of that. I love it. I don't know that one. It's so you need to, the girls will love it. They will.
Speaker 1 00:57:39 Julian Christmas movies. We've been watching a lot of Christmas movies every day.
Speaker 0 00:57:44 I know you can get it on Apple, Apple. I think you get an on Google play as well. It's really good. It's so wonderful. And it seems sweet and it's just like, it's not crass and it's not overly commercial or anything. It's just like a sweet movie. Um, which, I mean, in many ways it's a lot like elf, like elf, if you don't pay attention, seems like a really crass commercial thing. But when you get to it, that's not really the point at all.
Speaker 1 00:58:12 I love that movie so much. It's Canon now that like, Oh, there can't be a good Christmas movie anymore, but man, that one it's, it's one of my favorites now. I'm also, there's a big divide in our house over the real life Grinch. Like the actual people like Jim Carrey in the Grinch. Is it Jim Carey? No,
Speaker 0 00:58:35 Carrie was the first one. They just did a live action racer when they got really bad reviews. Yep.
Speaker 1 00:58:41 Well, we don't like the one that's like the live action. I like just the animated. How the Grinch stole Christmas.
Speaker 0 00:58:49 The one that, um, the one that Boris Karloff. No. Is it Lon Cheney or bores? Carl? I forget. Which of them narrates it. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:59:02 Anyway, that's, that's a good one. I mean, I think that the live action one's kind of funny, but um, I don't know the costumes and stuff. It's, it's a little creepy.
Speaker 0 00:59:13 Well, I mean, no matter how you celebrate the holidays, um, I mean, it's,
Speaker 1 00:59:22 You know, I think there's a way to approach it where it's not grossly commercial. Cause a lot of the things we've talked about at the end of the day, it gets back to kind of family being together. And I know that's going to be tough for people this year. Um, it's going to not be able to care. Yeah. I mean, see our pandemic episode, it's, it's a hard, hard, right? And so if it does give you a lot of comfort to just bake and eat and watch TV, like let's do this, you know, we're at the finish of this year. It's not the finish line of this pandemic, but I'm hoping as we welcome in this new year, that things will just start on an upward trajectory for us as a country. Um, and we can continue, you know, celebrating in the ways that we're, we're used to celebrating maybe just without so much family around.
Speaker 1 01:00:08 It's a bummer. Yeah. Well celebrate virtually with your family, zoom Christmas zoom mess. And then you can have a second Christmas in July. You can have Christmas in July with your family. I'm all for that. I mean, hallmarks celebrating Christmas in July. That's when they roll out their Christmas ornaments, it crushes me every year. You walk into a hallmark and it's like a Christmas explosion in July. I just get, this was fun. Mischievous was great. Well, I, I, you know, I hope people had some fun listening to us, you know, drop us a line, share in the comments, share your favorite Christmas traditions. Um, but uh, happy holidays. Have a good one. Thanks for joining us. Bye-bye
Speaker 2 01:01:07 Oh, <inaudible> so 10.
