The Battle for Christmas

by Stephen Nissenbaum

  Santa Claus’ Quadrilles. The cover to a piece of sheet music published in New York in 1846. This Santa Claus is beardless and youthful, apparently a merry bachelor. He is playing the fiddle as he dances on a New York chimneytop. (The picture was drawn by an artist who went by the name “Spoodlyks.”) (Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society)

  At the heart of all this disorder, the Tribune reiterated, was the prevalence of alcohol during the Christmas season: “In the Eleventh Ward an unusual number of men were arrested for drunkenness, creating a mob, exciting a riot, insulting females, and other offenses to which men of low breeding, when intoxicated, are addicted.” Such behavior was abetted by certain business establishments; local bars actually served drinks gratis on Christmas Day, in a holdover from the old English custom demanded of innkeepers (which was itself a variant of the tradition by which the gentry held “open house” for their dependents). The results, Horace Greeley reported, were obnoxious:

  The first flash of morning discovered the liquor shops in full operation, with wassail bowls of smoking punch, and “medicine” of all sorts, free as water. This dangerous and wicked temptation was the means of setting a great many young men and boys in a state of crazy intoxication long before noon. As early as 10 o’clock we saw, in Broadway, between the Park and Broome-st., about a dozen parties of boys, each numbering from four to ten persons, nearly every one grossly drunk, and four fellows, in as many parties, entirely helpless, and being dragged along by neck and heels by their hardly less drunk companions.15

  What had changed, then, was not that the rowdier ways of celebrating Christmas had disappeared, or even that they had diminished, but that a new kind of holiday celebration, domestic and child-centered, had been fashioned and was now being claimed as the “real” Christmas.16 The rest of it—public drunkenness and threats or acts of violence, “rough music”—had been redefined as crime, “making night hideous.” In part, this was accomplished through institutional means (in 1828 New York introduced a professional police force to replace the private “watch” that had failed to control the previous year’s callithumpian riot). And in part it was accomplished through the manipulation of language itself. Henceforth, newspaper stories about Santa Claus would appear under the heading “Christmas,” while stories about callithumpian activities would be relegated to the police column. In the terminology of a later age, those activities would be marginalized.

  Belsnickles and Burlesquers in Philadelphia

  Santa Claus came to Pennsylvania, too, in the 1820s. But there he encountered a rival figure, a somewhat scarier personage associated with the Germanic culture that pervaded much of the state. That figure, whose features are already familiar to us, was commonly known as the Belsnickle. (The term is a variant of the German phrase Pelz-nickle—that is, “St. Nicholas in Fur.”) I do not know when or how the term was first used (it may not have come into usage until the 1820s, when Santa Claus himself was emerging). But it was almost certainly based on an older German figure, commonly known as Knecht Ruprecht (that is, “Rupert the Servant”). The British writer Samuel Taylor Coleridge encountered Knecht Ruprecht during a 1798 visit to Ratzeburg, a village in the northern part of Germany. Knecht Ruprecht was a man outfitted in “high buskins, a white robe, a mask, and an enormous flax wig”—in other words, he was burlesquing the dress of a gentleman. On Christmas night this figure

  goes round to every house and says, that Jesus Christ his master sent him thither—the parents and elder children receive him with great pomp of reverence, while the little ones are most terribly frightened—He then enquires for the children, and according to the character which he hears from the parent, he gives them the intended present as if they came out of heaven from Jesus Christ.—Or, if they should have been bad children, he gives the parents a rod, and in the name of his master recommends them to use it frequently.17

  In contrast to Santa Claus, who was never actually seen, the roles of both Knecht Ruprecht and the Belsnickle were performed by real people—generally men of the lower orders, who went around town in disguise. (The disguises varied, but they were always ornate and often involved wearing a wig.)

  What Coleridge encountered resembles only the most carefully regulated form this practice took in Pennsylvania. Here the Belsnickle would offer small gifts (usually of food) to good children and intimidate ill-behaved children by threatening to hit them (or actually doing so) with a rod or a whip as they reached for the gifts he had brought. A Philadelphia newspaper reported one such appearance in 1827—by which time the Belsnickle was already being compared to Santa Claus. It is interesting to note that this Belsnickle was made up in blackface:

  Mr. Bellschniggle is a visible personage…. He is the precursor of the jolly old elf “Christkindle,” or “St. Nicholas,” and makes his personal appearance, dressed in skins or old clothes, his face black, a bell, a whip, and a pocket full of cakes or nuts; and either the cakes or the whip are bestowed upon those around, as may seem meet to his sable majesty.18

  In this form the Belsnickle, although an intruder, would serve to reinforce the authority of the householders he visited. (Indeed, at least one father assumed the role himself.19) But it is clear that Belsnickling, like most rituals, was profoundly malleable. The Belsnickle might snap his whip at a child who had behaved well, or a whole group of Belsnickles might visit a house together. Often the Belsnickle frightened the parents as well as the children.20

  In fact, Belsnickles frequently struck those they visited as unsavory (perhaps because they were frequently played by men of the lower orders). James L. Morris, a shopkeeper from Morgantown, Pennsylvania, described them in his diary in 1831 as “horrid frightful looking objects.” In 1842 Morris recorded his impressions at greater length:

  Christmas Eve—a few “belsnickels” or “kriskinckles” were prowling about this evening frightening the women and children, with their uncouth appearance—made up of cast-off garments made particolored with patches, a false face, a shaggy head of tow, or rather wig, falling profusely over the shoulders and finished out by a most patriarchal beard of whatsoever foreign [material] that could possibly be pressed into such service.21

  Belsnickles could wreak mischief, as they did in Potts town, Pennsylvania, in 1826, where for several nights running one or more of them left a “wreck of lumber that is strewed through our streets and blockading the doors generally every morning”:

  a complete bridge built across the street, principally composed of old barrels, hogsheads, grocery boxes, wheelbarrows, harrows, plows, wagon and cart wheels. It is reported that he nearly demolished a poor woman’s house in one of the back streets a few nights ago….

  Despite the damage this Belsnickle did, the phrasing of this report suggests that he was seen as a mere prankster:

  He performs these tricks incog, or otherwise he would be arrested long since by the public authorities, who are on the alert; but it will take a swift foot and a strong arm to apprehend him while he is in full power of his bellsnickelship, as he then can evade mortal ken….22

  Like wassailers and mummers, Belsnickles often took on the role of beggars, visiting houses (and shops) to demand rather than offer gifts. This may very well have been the reason that four or five of them visited James L. Morris’s store in 1842 and once again in 1844, when Morris noted that “[s]ome 4 or five hideous and frightful looking mortals came into the store dressed out in fantastic rags and horrid faces.” These Belsnickles were probably coming for gifts. In 1851 several “processions” of them in Norristown, “arrayed in all their fantastic costumes, … paid their annual visit to the shopkeepers and citizens, soliciting the ‘good things’ and rendering an equivalent in caricaturing the sable sons of our soil” (in other words, they too were performing in blackface). They were still begging in the 1870s. This was the case in Lancaster, for instance, where “[t]he old custom of playing ‘Bellsnickle’ was renewed in our midst, and we heard perhaps half a dozen parties, dressed in hideous disguise, going about on Chri
stmas eve from house to house, and entering without so much as ‘by your leave’;” or in Carlisle, where in the same year “[t]here were numbers of bell-snickles going from house to house in quest of cakes, wine, apples, or whatever else the good housewife might place at their disposal, large boys and small boys….” (In the latter instance they were dressed in women’s clothes, “burlesquing the ruling fashions among the ladies.”)23

  The examples above make it clear that youths and boys were playing the Belsnickle role themselves, thus reverting to the “original” structure of the ritual. In Reading, in 1851, “juvenile harlequins were running from house to house, scattering nuts, confections, consternation, and amusement in their way.” Or in Norristown, where in 1853 “[s]illy children parade[d] the streets dressed in hideous masks.” Or in Easton, in 1858, where “[t]he ‘bell-snickels’ were … a most attractive feature on the streets … as there seemed to be a general feeling among the juveniles … to participate….”24 But these youthful Belsnickles were frequently a source of annoyance rather than amusement, as in Pottstown, where the local newspaper was not amused in 1873:

  Pottstown was full of “bell-snickles” on Christmas Eve, young chaps with their faces blacked, with masks, and dressed in all kinds of outlandish styles. These fellows, with their ugly mugs, visited the hotels, stores, shops, and in many instances private dwellings, and went through their monkeyish grimaces, and annoyed people with their horrible attempts at singing, making themselves odious throughout the town generally. This “bell-snickle” business, which is becoming more of a rough and rowdyish observance of the Christmas season each year, might as well be omitted altogether.25

  A malleable ritual, as I have said. But there is a pattern behind it all. Whether the part was played by a grown man or a child, and whether he acted as the donor of gifts or as a beggar, the Belsnickle always used his costume and his manner as a means of intimidating those he visited, a way of taking on an air of mock authority over the rest of the community. Young people had traditionally been just another part of the lower orders, so that it was socially natural for them to step outside the constraints of their normal roles by imitating what other plebeians were doing. And it was a thin line—and probably more of a terminological distinction than a historical one—that divided a Belsnickle from a mummer, a callithumpian, or simply a hoodlum. (On the other side of the cultural ledger, Belsnickles were frequently referred to as “Christkindle,” “Kriss Kringle,” or even “Santa Claus.”) The particular term may have been a matter of local or even personal preference. But whatever he was called then, or termed now, the Belsnickle remained a Lord of Misrule.

  There seem to be virtually no records of Belsnickles in Philadelphia itself. But this too may be partly a matter of terminology, since the city (in contrast to much of the Pennsylvania backcountry) was not dominated by German-Americans. And in Philadelphia, as in New York, the disorder that was associated with figures of misrule took on a tone of greater menace.

  Susan G. Davis, who examined this aspect of Christmas in Philadelphia in an important 1984 article, observes that people arrested there for disorderly behavior at Christmas “were uniformly young and male,” and she attributes this to “the breakdown of the apprenticeship system and the decline of craft skills”—the general economic problem besetting youths and young men in a period of rapid industrialization. Rowdy Christmas revelry “crystallized the city’s year-round youth problem.” Davis observes that “In the street Christmas, rowdy youth culture reached its apotheosis; concern over riotous holiday nights was constant from the 1830s on. The mid-1840s were especially uproarious, but tumult and commotion seemed ominous for decades.”26 As early as 1833 the Philadelphia Daily Chronicle reported:

  Throughout almost the whole of Tuesday night—Christmas Eve—riot, noise, and uproar prevailed, uncontrolled and uninterrupted in many of our central and most orderly streets. Gangs of boys and young men howled and shouted as if possessed by the demon of disorder. Some of the watchmen occasionally sounded their rattles; but seemed only to add another ingredient to the horrible discord that murdered sleep. It is undoubtedly in the power of our city police to prevent slumbering citizens from being disturbed by the mad roars of such revelers.27

  The problem, in Philadelphia as well as New York, was that this kind of rowdiness had been transformed in an urban capitalist setting into something that respectable people found threatening, as they did in 1839, when a riot broke out on Chesnut Street, opposite the state capitol. The participants, one newspaper reported with disgust, “could not have chosen a more public place; throngs of persons were passing on both sides of the street, viewing all the sights that were to be seen; but… a street fight was one of the entertainments that did not please a majority of them….”28 Susan Davis reports that gangs of young men from the working-class communities that surrounded Philadelphia were deliberately invading the downtown business and theater districts, “where playgoers and promenaders thronged to view shop-window illuminations.”29

  In Philadelphia as in New York, respectable people placed the greatest measure of blame on alcohol. Drinking itself, as we have seen in Chapters 1 and 2, had been an interclass ritual at Christmas, but now it was becoming a way of distinguishing the classes from one another. In 1839 a newspaper pointed out, in a Christmas Day editorial, that “there are certain modes of rejoicing which are appropriate to Christmas, and other modes of doing the same thing, which are quite unbecoming and reprehensible.” But the editorial went on to acknowledge that this was a recent development, and even to analyze how it had come about:

  Some years ago, every housekeeper thought it incumbent on himself or herself to provide a bowl of egg-nog or spiced toddy for the celebration of this day. Persons who were usually of temperate or sedate habits, seemed to think that the return of Christmas justified a slight degree of intoxication. Friends and acquaintances, who called to tender the compliments of the season, were urged to partake of these liquid preparations, the seductive taste of which frequently overcame the most sober resolutions. On such occasions, it may be supposed that there were many evidences of joy and hilarity; but it was properly questioned by some considerate persons whether that kind of joy and hilarity became [i.e., suited] a day set apart to commemorate the origin of Christianity.

  When this subject was duly considered, the customs spoken of, fell into disuse, and soon became ranked among the barbarisms of a former age. We are happy, therefore, to find that one incorrect mode of celebrating Christmas is no longer general; though particular instances may be noted wherein the relics of these absurd practices are still preserved.30

  By the late 1840s that attitude had come to be backed by force of law. Philadelphia simply banned the sale of alcohol—it became a “dry” community (by that time the temperance movement had gained widespread support). But that did not stop people from buying drinks in the neighboring towns, where, following an old Christmas tradition, “as usual… the proprietors of… groggeries that fill the bystreets on either side of the boundaries of the city … treated their motley customers with egg-nog.”31

  But if geographic dividing lines were hard to draw, so were psychological ones. Even the newspapers themselves sometimes betrayed a lingering ambivalence toward rowdy behavior at Christmas. An 1844 editorial started out by describing the new domestic Christmas as “religion in each mans house … a celebration of the spirit of the universe, humanized and domesticated.” But the same editorial went on to acknowledge that the day also had a long tradition of “high rejoicing, eating, drinking (and getting drunk, we presume …).”32 Or take the headlines that one Philadelphia newspaper employed to report the arrest of men charged with inciting riot and similar forms of behavior. One such report, from 1836, was headed “CHRISTMAS GAMBOLS.” Others in subsequent years were headed “CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES” (1840); “FUN ON CHRISTMAS DAY” (1841); “CHRISTMAS SPREES” (1846); and “CHRISTMAS SPORT” (1850). These headings reveal an acute uncertainty about what to make of such behavio
r. The phrasing may be sarcastic, but it also betrays a residual understanding that rowdy behavior was to be expected at Christmas.

  In Philadelphia the matter was made more complicated by another Christmas ritual, one that seems to have been unique to that city. In Philadelphia, during the late 1830s and 1840s, even respectable people observed Christmas Day in part as a public occasion. Each year thousands of people would spend the afternoon promenading in the downtown streets, attracted in part by the sheer sociability of the proceedings and in part by the prospect of doing their Christmas shopping, an activity that many Philadelphians (in common with residents of other cities) engaged in on Christmas Day itself. (Downtown shops generally remained open on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.)33

  The scene attracted notice nationally. Nile’s National Register reported that on Christmas Day, 1841,

  Chesnut street [the main commercial street] was crowded with a dense mass of human beings. The entire population of the outer districts seemed gathered there, eagerly gazing at the sights in the shop windows and enjoying the excitement of the moving panorama. It is estimated that there were 40,000 people on Chesnut street most of the afternoon.34