Sometimes familiarity can blind us.
For many people, the Christmas season is the warm, fuzzy time in the darkest days of winter. Holiday decorations, mistletoe above a doorway, cards, presents under a glittering Fraser fir, the carols and songs playing 24/7 on the radio, Santa in the mall, office parties, the Salvation Army bell ringers, the good old classic movies on television, eggnog and candy canes, a family feast, midnight Mass or church services: all blend into the rich confection some call the Christmas spirit.
Many of us accept this messy blend of ingredients without batting an eye because of familiarity. Yet it’s instructive—and fun—to consider the means and ways our culture cooked up this recipe to make our particularly American Christmas.
A Quick Survey of Long Ago
If we wished, we could start an exploration of Christmas traditions with a child born in Bethlehem or even earlier, with the Roman celebration of Saturnalia. We could haul in the Yule customs of the pagan Germans and Scandinavians. We could cover the practices and observances of the early church, and then leap forward a millennium into the Middle Ages when Christmas became a raucous affair of drinking and feasting, as seen in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Incongruously, it was also the season of charity, when the rich shared meals with the poor or gave them gifts.
The Christmas tree was a tradition established by German and Scandinavian influences. This tree in Fredrikstad, Norway, decorates the town's historic square. Thomasmh/CC BY-SA 3.0
Cross the Atlantic to early America—the colonial period, the 18th century—and there are still only hints of our modern Christmas. For a time, the Puritan fathers banned Yuletide festivities in Boston. The English settlers in the Middle and Southern colonies did make merry, but their celebrations in no way matched our own. Not until the 1820s did German immigrants introduce the Christmas tree. Another 50 years or so passed before the custom of a decorated tree really took hold. Only in 1870 did the U.S. government declare Christmas a federal holiday.
Yet it was in the 19th century that popular culture—literature, music, and later film—first began shaping Christmas as we celebrate it today.
Literature Led the Way
Four years after a trip to England in 1815, Washington Irving published “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.” In it, he included four sentimental sketches of Christmas celebrations that roused readers’ interest. In fact, throughout his life Irving wrote so much about Christmas that, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities, “he’s often credited with creating Christmas in America as we know it.”Following on the heels of Irving’s book was the 1823 poem “A Visit From Saint Nicholas,” more popularly known as “'Twas the Night Before Christmas.” While its authorship remains a subject of debate, it’s today one of the world’s most widely read verses. The idea of Santa coming down a chimney and delivering Christmas presents remains an image of Christmas Eve, and the opening lines “'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house/ Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse” are surely as well-known as any from Shakespeare.
“The Night Before Christmas,” 1915, by Arthur Rackham for Clement C. Moore’s famous poem. Public Domain
Charles Dickens was wildly popular in America during his lifetime, and his 1843 “A Christmas Carol” was an immediate hit with the public. After hearing Dickens read from his holiday novella in Boston on Christmas Eve 1867, writer and philanthropist Annie Fields wrote: “Ah! How beautiful it was! How everybody felt it! How that whole house rose and cheered!”
Like a snowball rolling down a hill, this union of literature and Yuletide gained momentum and weight. Louisa May Alcott wrote nearly 20 Christmas stories. Best known for “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” Kate Douglas Wiggin published a book of Yule tales and the still-popular “The Birds’ Christmas Carol.” O. Henry’s 1905 “The Gift of the Magi” has become a classic American short story.
In the 20th century, Christmas-themed novels, short stories, and poems became their own literary genre. I visited my local public library’s website, for instance, entered “Christmas” in the search bar, and up popped the titles of 3,717 books and DVDs, a list that ranges from classics for children like “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey” to today’s ubiquitous holiday romance novels.
‘Here We Come A-Caroling’
Beginning in the late 19th century, popular music followed this literary trend. In many cities, carolers became a common sight at Christmas time, taking music from their churches into parks and neighborhoods.But it wasn’t until American technology advanced that Christmas carols and songs boomed. The invention of the phonograph first brought famous singers and composers into American homes. By the 1930s, radio ushered in popular Christmas songs, a tradition that continues unabated today.
Like literature, this music helped shape the American Christmas. Even today, the songs and singers of the 1940s and 1950s, which might be called the Golden Age of Christmas music, make the radio and online playlists. “White Christmas,” “Frosty the Snowman,” “It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas,” and “Little Drummer Boy”: These songs and more came out of World War II and the Eisenhower era. Even “Jingle Bells,” written in 1857 as a Thanksgiving song, became famous only when singers like Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra added it to their Christmas repertoire.
"Sleigh Ride" by Cornelius Kreighoff. Oil; 13 1/12 inches by 18 1/12 inches. PD-US
An excellent example of the effects of these holiday tunes on our culture is found in “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” It was written by Kim Gannon and Walter Kent for soldiers overseas, and sung by Bing Crosby in 1943. But the BBC banned this melancholic song for being detrimental to morale. It had the opposite effect. British and American troops and civilians flocked to it like children to a decorated tree on Christmas morning.
With its signature lines “I’ll be home for Christmas/ If only in my dreams,” the hit song was the most requested number at USO shows overseas. The military publication “Yank” opined that Crosby and his then-trademark song did more for morale than anyone else. The GIs fighting around the globe found a singular deep meaning in this song, and it was more than “snow, and mistletoe and presents on the tree.”
To them, Christmas meant home.
Christmas, Culture, and the Cinema
Perhaps even more than literature and radio, Hollywood has given us Christmas as we know it today.The first Christmas movie ever made was George Albert Smith’s 1898 “Santa Claus,” a 76-second production that dazzled audiences by having Santa appear as if by magic outside of a fireplace while delivering presents. Of the few Christmas movies made in the next decade, we again find a literary influence. Several were based on Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” and one was based on “'Twas the Night Before Christmas.”
Then, just as happened with the recording industry and radio, the mid-20th century saw movies about the holiday season take off. “It’s a Wonderful Life,” “White Christmas,” “Miracle on 34th Street,” and other films of that period remain perennial hits in the 21st century.
Rosemary Clooney (L) and Vera-Ellen in "White Christmas." MovieStillsDB
The last 50 years have added many more family favorites to this list. There are the book-based productions for kids like “The Polar Express” and this year’s “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” comedies like “A Christmas Story” and “Home Alone,” romances like “The Christmas Card” and “Christmas at the Plaza,” and even action thrillers like “Die Hard,” which despite terrorists, explosions, and shoot-outs is considered a Christmas classic by many of its fans. In this 21st century, the Hallmark Channel has already created 307 Christmas-themed TV movies, producing up to 30 such shows in a single season.
All of these movies carry the cultural markers—the ornamented trees, the background holiday songs and carols, and more—that stamp and reinforce our Christmases as particularly American.
‘Deck the Halls’
To many people, Christmas seems like a strange mishmash of customs and practices. Many Christians, for example, dislike the commercialism of the season. Others want to cut out faith altogether and celebrate Christmas as a sort of feel-good holiday. The occasional Grinch and Scrooge—Christmas literature gives us both of these now-common words—give a “Bah! Humbug!” to the entire enterprise.But after 200 years of adornment, the American Christmas doesn’t come wrapped up in a decorated box. It’s more like a family room after the presents have been opened. Ribbons and wrapping paper litter the floor. The kids in their pajamas are playing with their new gifts or rummaging for a treat through their stockings. Mom sits smiling and pleased, sipping her coffee, while Dad dozes in his chair, having spent half the night putting together some gizmo for the 6-year-old.
Dec. 25, 1925: A happy boy in bed on Christmas morning with toys he has received. Kirby/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
In short, literature, music, and film have assembled for us a Christmas that’s disheveled, shot through with sentiment and yet beautiful in its own special way, a mix of the human and divine all at the same time.
Of Scrooge at the end of “A Christmas Carol,” Dickens wrote: “He knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us!”
Our gloriously messy American Christmas allows us the scope and the freedom to do likewise.
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