The Battle for Christmas

by Stephen Nissenbaum

  In Kriss Kringle’s Raree Show we see in action the battle between the two cultures of Christmas—going out into the loud streets and staying quietly at home. But the battle is not really joined. Reading is presented here not so much as an attractive alternative to misrule as a mini-version of it, one in which the rowdy adventure went on inside one’s head. Here the two forms of behavior, the two cultures of Christmas, seep into each other. Reading the book promised the adventure of theatergoing, and even showed it, and a little of its misrule, led by plebeian Kriss Kringle. It was possible to experience the excitement of the theater without leaving home—and without posing (or risking) any real danger. But that, perhaps, has always been the promise of reading itself.78

  By the 1840s the police in Philadelphia and other American cities were regularly on the lookout for gatherings of unruly boys, and ready to throw them in jail. That was one prong in the assault against Christmas misrule. Kriss Kringle’s Raree Show is a very poor book, but it does show us something of the second prong in that same assault—something that other, better books did far more effectively. One of those was the famous Christmas story “The Nutcracker,” authored by the German writer?. T. A. Hoffmann and first published in 1816. Here a proper young girl has an extended fantasy of misrule in which her world turns crazily upside down. “The Nutcracker” ended up becoming, in the hands of Peter Tchaikovsky, a brilliant and popular theatrical spectacle, while Kriss Kringle’s Raree Show was quickly forgotten. But both the trite Philadelphia book and its far more ingenious German counterpart shared a single purpose: to offer youthful readers a secure yet exhilarating Christmas treat—a carnival of the mind.

  * The term whoreson meant “bastard” (or “coarse fellow”) but, as here, it could be used affectionately between men, as for example, in the modern usage “you old bastard.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Affection’s Gift: Toward a History of Christmas Presents

  “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.”

  —Opening line of Little Women (1868)

  A COMMERCIAL CHRISTMAS

  MAKING CHRISTMAS an indoor family affair meant enmeshing it in the commercial marketplace. As long as the Christmas gift exchange was still a matter of wassailing from peasants to landlords, from poor folk to rich ones, the gifts themselves most often took the form of food and drink—the landlord’s best food and drink, served within his house. Such gifts were not “presents” in the modern sense of being purchased in the commercial market. Oftentimes, indeed, they were manufactured within the household itself, and from grains cultivated by the same peasants who were now receiving them back in the form of “cakes and ale.”

  When the gift exchange was brought inside and limited to the family circle, such gifts no longer made sense. The wife and children of a prosperous man already ate the household’s best food; they were already living in the family manor. What made Christmas special for them had to be a different sort of gift, the sort of gift that soon became known as a Christmas “present.” And that was precisely the kind of gift that could most conveniently be procured through a purchase.

  The actual change was not that simple, of course. In the latter part of the eighteenth century, as we have already seen, ordinary households sometimes held special Christmas dinners, dinners that might include (as they did for the Maine midwife Martha Ballard—see Chapter 1) a few special ingredients—sugar, spices, rum—that were purchased in local shops. Or shopkeepers might provide some finishing touch for a handmade Christmas present: In 1769, for example, Joseph Stebbins paid a shopkeeper in Deerfield, Massachusetts, for “coolering [dyeing] a pare of Mitt[en]s for [his] wife.” Presumably the mittens themselves had already been knitted, probably at home, perhaps by Mrs. Stebbins herself. (We can infer that the newly dyed mittens were probably intended as a Christmas gift because the transaction took place on December 22.)1 We might think of such transactions, in which shops played a small but crucial role, as “semi-commercial.” They may have been commonplace, though evidence on this score is extremely difficult to come by—buried in manuscript account-books. But things would begin to change soon after 1800.

  IT IS COMMONPLACE, nowadays, to hark back to a time when Christmas was simpler, more authentic, and less commercial than it has become. Even professional historians have tended to write about the pre-twentieth-century Christmas in that way. Generally when people muse along these lines it is to associate the noncommercial holiday with the years of their own childhood, or perhaps the childhood of their parents or (at most) their grandparents.

  As it happens, such musings have been commonplace for a long time—for more than a century and a half. Consider the theme of a short story dating back to the middle of the nineteenth century, a story that commented on the profusion of presents bought and sold during the holiday season—and the trouble many comfortably-off Americans had in finding something meaningful to give their loved ones at Christmas. The author of the story was soon to become America’s best-known writer—Harriet Beecher Stowe. When Stowe wrote her Christmas story in 1850, she had not yet written Uncle Tom’s Cabin, although that great novel was beginning to take shape in her mind. But what was also in her mind that year were the problems posed by Christmas shopping.

  “Oh, dear!’ “sighs one of the characters in the opening lines of this story. “Ohristmas is coming in a fortnight, and I have got to think up presents for everybody! Dear me, it’s so tedious! Everybody has got everything that can be thought of.’” This character goes on to declare that even though “‘every shop and store is glittering with all manner of splendors,’” it was impossible to decide what presents “‘to get for people that have more than they know what to do with now; to add pictures, books, and gilding when the centre tables are loaded with them now, and rings and jewels when they are a perfect drug!’” When she was a child of 10, explained Stowe (or the character who stands in for her in the story), “‘the very idea of a present was so new’” that a child would be “‘perfectly delighted’” with the gift of even a single piece of candy. In those days, “‘presents did not fly about as they do now.’” But nowadays, things are different: “‘There are worlds of money wasted, at this time of year, in getting things that nobody wants, and nobody cares for after they are got.’”2

  Just as many people do today, Harriet Beecher Stowe seems to have believed that this change took place within her own generation (she was born in 1811). But the difference is that Stowe was substantially correct. Commercial Christmas presents did start to become common when she was a child, and especially during the decade of the 1820s. This chapter will explore the process by which that came to happen and the implications such a development had for the meaning of the gift exchange.

  Advertising for Presents

  If the domestic reform of Christmas began as an enterprise of patricians, fearful for their authority, it was soon being reinforced by merchants, who needed the streets to be cleared of drunks and rowdies in order to secure them for Christmas shoppers; by shoppers who in turn needed to feel secure in the streets; and by newspaper editors whose success depended on their mediating between other businessmen and their own readers (who were shoppers, too).

  Advertisements for Christmas presents actually began to appear as early as the first signs of interest in St. Nicholas emerged, although they did not become common for several more decades. The first explicit ad for Christmas presents I have found anywhere in the United States comes from a New England community, Salem, Massachusetts. Dating from 1806 and headed “Christmas Gifts,” the advertisement was placed by a local bookseller. (Salem was a major port at this time, and a prosperous one.) Boston and New York had their first Christmas advertising two years later, in 1808, when two such ads appeared in the New York Evening Post. One of these was for a shop offering “four hundred and fifty kinds of Christmas presents and New-year’s gifts, consisting of toys, childrens [sic] and school books, Christmas pieces, Drawing books, Paint, Lead Pencils, Conversations and Toy
cards, Pocket Books, Penknives, &c.”3

  The advertising began to proliferate after 1820. By 1823 Christmas was already becoming so commercial that one Boston magazine was able to make a joke of it:

  “[There] is a time to give,” says Solomon, and had [that] preacher lived in these days, he would have acknowledged, that there was no time like the present, and never a better assortment of gifts. Could he [just] peep into the Bookstore of Munroe & Francis, … he might find a book for each of his wives [and] concubines, and each of their children, without purchasing duplicates.4

  A decade later, in 1834, a letter printed in a Boston Unitarian magazine suggested that the available choice of presents, and the aggressiveness with which they were being advertised, had reached the point where Christmas shopping was becoming a source of confusion. “The days are close at hand when everybody gives away something to somebody,” this letter began:

  All the children are expecting presents, and all aunts and cousins to say nothing of near relatives, are considering what they shall bestow upon the earnest expectants…. I observe that the shops are preparing themselves with all sorts of things to suit all sorts of tastes; and am amazed at the cunning skill with which the most worthless as well as most valuable articles are set forth to tempt and decoy the bewildered purchaser.

  The same letter warned shoppers to “put themselves on their guard, to be resolved to select from the tempting mass only what is useful and what may do good,” and to avoid “empty trifles, which amuse or gratify for the day only.”

  The very multitude bewilders most purchasers; and often have I been pained to observe the perplexity of some kind parent or friend, who wished to choose wisely, but knew not how, and after long balancing took something at random, perhaps good, perhaps worthless.5

  Only too familiar. Even in a small town in rural New Hampshire, in 1835 a local newspaper printed a cautionary tale titled “Reflect Before You Buy”—a story written for young children!6 Similar examples abound from following years. By the time Harriet Beecher Stowe published her 1850 lament, the sentiment she expressed had become a commonplace.

  Most commercial presents were manufactured for children. The very first advertisement I have found for Christmas presents, the 1806 one from Salem, Massachusetts, was for “a large assortment of Youth’s and Children’s Books.” The first ad from Boston, in 1808, was for “Books for Children.” The first New York ad, also in 1808, was for children’s books and toys.7 Over the years, children remained the primary target of Christmas ads, but they ceased to be the exclusive targets. In 1809, for example, four of the five ads for holiday presents that appeared in one Boston newspaper were for the entertainment of children, but the remaining one focused on the decoration of women: “a general assortment of elegant and fashionable JEWELLERY [sic], consisting of Fine pearl set Brooches; Ear Rings; Finger Rings; Bracelets, &c., with rich carnelian and topaz Centers; … carnelian Necklaces; Ear Knobs; Tops and Drops; tortoise-shell Combs of all descriptions; gold Watch Chains….” (Women, like children, were dependent members of the household. Only later were adult men included as appropriate recipients of Christmas presents.)8

  A thorough examination of early-nineteenth-century American newspapers might well yield slightly earlier dates for such minor milestones as the first complaint about consumer confusion or the first Christmas advertisement. But the pattern itself seems clear enough: Commercial Christmas presents were first publicly advertised in the first two decades of the nineteenth century, and the advertising became pervasive during the following decade, in the 1820s. And through the “country editions” printed by many urban newspapers for their rural readers, word that Christmas presents were available (and fashionably appropriate) spread throughout much of the United States.

  In the early 1840s advertisements for Christmas presents became more numerous, ornate, and sophisticated, and newspapers began to organize them into a separate category titled “Holiday Advertisements.” These columns were typically placed on the front page, at the very beginning of the advertising section (one New York paper noted in 1841 that they held “the post of honor”).9 Christmas advertisements began to appear earlier and earlier, into the second week of December.10 On December 23, 1845, Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune announced that the paper would be “compelled to issue a [special] supplement” the following day so as “to make room for the matter which the pressure of Holiday Advertisements has crowded out for a few days past.” (“By the way,” it added, “our readers who think of making Christmas Presents will find our advertising columns unusually interesting. Almost every thing worth buying is offered there. Read and make your selections.”) Finally, Santa Claus himself began to be used in advertisements, and of course in shops themselves, as a way of attracting the attention of children (more about this later).

  It was probably no accident that these aggressive advertising tactics were devised in hard economic times. The depression that set in at the end of 1839 was the deepest the United States had yet experienced. But merchants, abetted by newspapers, openly used Christmas as a way to attract shoppers even in the depths of the depression. One Philadelphia paper announced on December 24, 1841, that “Christmas is at hand,” and tried to persuade its readers to ignore economic conditions for a while by opening their purses to buy holiday gifts. The newspaper represented the depression as “Old Hard Times,” an unpopular monarch. But readers were assured that he “has abdicated for the present,” to be replaced by a more benevolent figure: “Old Santa Claus is expected tonight, and gaily are the windows of the fancy, fruit, cake, and other stores decorated to receive him—and puzzled will the old fellow be to make a selection from the thousand curiosities, delicacies, and elegancies which are spread before him.” The newspaper itself was prepared to come to Santas assistance: “In consideration of the many duties that he has to perform at this time, we will endeavor to lighten his labors; and in order that he may make the best choice to be found in the city, we are determined to send him a copy of the Ledger, where he will find every thing that is worthy of his notice judiciously advertised under the proper head….”11

  Most Philadelphia shopkeepers emphasized the variety of gifts they had in stock and—in a tacit acknowledgment of the hardness of the times—the wide range of prices for which they could be bought. A jeweler made the point as well as anyone: He had rings as costly as $25 each, but also as cheap as 25 cents (the same was true of his earrings, breast pins, gold and silver pencil cases, and so on). This jeweler even offered violins for sale—at anywhere from “$i to $40.”12

  Businessmen went to great lengths to persuade Philadelphians to visit their shops. Beginning with the 1840 Christmas season, a fierce competition developed among the city’s confectioners, who devised the idea of baking immense cakes that would be displayed in their shop windows on December 23—“mammoth cakes,” they were termed. Customers could purchase pieces of the cake to take home. One of these cakes weighed in at 250 pounds; another was twice that size. The following year the stakes went up: One confectioner titled his ad “LARGE AND EXTRA MAMMOTH FRUIT CAKE—NEARLY 1000 POUNDS.”13 Another confectioner concluded his ad with a verse:

  My cake is of a giant size,

  Formel to delight your tastes and eyes;

  Lastly, to name a case in point,

  The Times being sadly out of joint [i.e., the depression] …,

  My Prices shall be very small,

  To meet my patrons, one and all.

  Confectioners also created an even more widespread fad: caramelized sugar and chocolate molded into a variety of improbable shapes, and crafted to appear real. One report, from Philadelphia, referred to lavish Christmas displays of candied “mutton chops, sausages, boiled lobsters, pieces of bacon, cabbages, carrots, loaves of bread, &c. all made of sugar, and colored to the life.”14 More common shapes included various kinds of animals as well as oversize insects such as beetles, spiders, and—for some reason these were a special favorite—cockroaches.

 
; LUXURY AND THE LURE OF CHRISTMAS

  There is a paradox here. Christmas presents were almost by definition luxury items—and luxuries are the first things that people give up when times are hard. But there was also another side to the same coin, a countervailing impulse that made many people vulnerable to splurging at Christmas, even in hard times. Businessmen knew that Christmas was the one time of the year when people had long expected to buy and consume things they did not need, even if they could not really afford to. A New York newspaper, the Herald, had played on this point two years earlier, when the depression was just coming on. Despite the state of the economy (what the writer of one article coyly termed “the rumored hardness of the times”), Christmas presents were readily available, and everyone should purchase something—at the very least, a present for the “one being that they love.” Forget the depression for a little while, this writer counseled: “Who is there, that is not ground into the very dust by biting poverty, that would hesitate, at this hallowed season, to bestow a souvenir upon this one beloved object—this cherished flower of affection?”15 This writer was well aware of how vulnerable his readers were to the call for spending even beyond their means “at this hallowed season.”

  It was potent fuel. Christmas had long been a special ritual time when the ordinary rules of behavior were upended. It was a time when people let strange things happen to their sense of what was acceptable behavior, their sense of limits. Christmas was (and still is) a time to let go of ordinary psychological restraints, to shift into an inner state in which it became possible to do what was otherwise unthinkable. What made that sort of indulgence objectively possible in an agricultural society was, as we have seen, the cycle of the seasons, in which December was a time of leisure and a season of plenty—plenty of food and drink. It was a time when consumption—overconsumption—was expected. It was a time to gorge on the best food and drink—not just bread and beer but “cakes and ale.” It was a time to splurge, until the hard freeze of winter, and with it the constraints of ordinary existence, set in once again.