The Battle for Christmas

by Stephen Nissenbaum

  For many people living in America (and Western Europe) in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, that seasonal rhythm was less powerfully imposed, less all-defining, than it had once been. Urbanization and capitalism were liberating people from the constraints of an agricultural cycle and making larger quantities of goods available for more extended periods of time. But that change was very recent; and memories of the behavioral rhythms of the old seasonal cycle were still fresh. Late December was still associated with letting go, with splurging, with overindulgence in luxuries that were hardly available at all during the rest of the year.

  In early-nineteenth-century America, however, Christmas had to contend with another countervailing force. This had to do not with seasonal rhythms but with cultural predisposition. Most Americans of the Jacksonian period were predisposed to distrust luxury and excess. Even where buying luxury goods was economically possible, it was ideologically suspect. During and after the War for Independence, Americans had been taught that indulging in luxury was frivolous—that it was a vice associated with the decadent aristocratic nations of Europe. The American Republic had to be more abstemious than that if it was to survive and prosper. Buying luxury goods amounted, therefore, almost to a subversive political act, the kind of small gesture that could jeopardize the future health of the Republic. Consumer capitalism and civic virtue were not commonly associated with each other in early-nineteenth-century America.

  Once again, Christmas came to the rescue. For this was one time of the year when the lingering reluctance of middle-class Americans to purchase frivolous gifts for their children was overwhelmed by their equally lingering predisposition to abandon ordinary behavioral constraints. Christmas helped intensify and legitimize a commercial kind of consumerism.

  Producers and merchants were not slow to grasp these connections. They recognized that it was possible to exploit the season by offering a plethora of “fancy” goods, luxury items of precisely the kind that few people were willing to purchase at any other time of the year: books, toys, jewelry and fancy clothes, candy and cake. After all, one of the defining characteristics of an effective Christmas present was that it was a luxury, not something that satisfied a practical need. As Horace Greeley put it in an 1846 editorial, a Christmas gift should never be “a matter of homely necessity.”

  A commercial Christmas thus emerged in tandem with the commercial economy itself, and the two were mutually reinforcing. On the one hand, the new economy made possible that now-familiar development—the commercialization of Christmas. On the other, Christmas itself served to fuel the general process of commercialization. It was the thin end of the wedge by which many Americans became enmeshed in the more self-indulgent aspects of consumer spending. (To be sure, it has recently become clear that the “consumer revolution” was actually a long process, one whose beginnings historians now place back in the colonial period, even before the American Revolution.16 But the process accelerated sharply around the beginning of the nineteenth century.) Christmas was used to lubricate the “demand side” of a dynamic commercializing economy. Much as Christmas alcohol helped release one sort of ordinarily forbidden behavior, so Christmas advertising helped release another sort. In this way Christmas became a crucial means of legitimizing the penetration of consumerist behavior into American society.

  AFFECTION’S GIFT

  Books as Gifts

  As it happened, publishers and booksellers were the shock troops in exploiting—and developing—a Christmas trade. And books were on the cutting edge of a commercial Christmas, making up more than half of the earliest items advertised as Christmas gifts. (The very first commercial Christmas gift I have encountered was the almanac that Martha Ballard’s son-in-law received from one of his acquaintances. See Chapter 1.) In fact, even before books were actually labeled as Christmas presents in the newspapers, they were being marketed for that purpose.

  Mason Locke Weems (“Parson” Weems), a bookseller and writer who is remembered today for inventing the legend of young George Washington and the cherry tree, distributed his own books as Christmas presents in 1810—including the popular biography of Washington in which the cherry tree story first appeared. That year he advertised that he would offer a deep discount to buyers “who take several copies of Washington and Marion [another biography] for Christmas Boxes to their young relations.”17

  Even in New England, and as early as 1783, the publisher Isaiah Thomas inserted on Christmas Day in his Worcester, Massachusetts, newspaper an ad titled “Books for little Masters and Misses, proper for NEW YEAR’S GIFTS.” A year later Thomas ran a similar ad, headed “CHILDREN’S BOOKS…. Very proper for parents &c. to present to their children as New-years gifts, &c.” (He inserted these ads on December 25, probably because the term “New Year’s” covered the two holidays together.)18 Then, in 1789, Thomas went a step further: He published a little children’s book, Nurse Truelove’s Christmas Box (“Christmas box” was a term for a Christmas gift). The text of this book actually concluded with a promise from “Nurse Truelove” herself—she was something of a cross between Mother Goose and Santa Claus—“to make a present of another book by way of New Years Gift, (which will be published soon after Christmas).” As a parting shot, “Nurse Truelove” added an explicit ad for Isaiah Thomas’s Worcester bookshop: “In the mean time, if you should want any other little Books, pray send to Mr. Thomas’s, where you may have the following” (what followed was a list of children’s books that Isaiah Thomas had on hand). Thomas was using the special associations of the Christmas season with luxury spending to get children (and their parents) into his shop.19

  Gift Books

  It was in the 1820s that publishers began to cultivate the Christmas trade in a systematic fashion. In 1826, for example, the Boston booksellers Munroe and Francis printed a special Christmas flyer—207 children’s books, ranging in price from 6¼ cents to 40 cents each. Two years later the same booksellers circulated another flyer; this one was headed “Christmas and New-Year … Presents for the Coming Season.” Four densely printed pages in length, it listed the better part of a thousand items.20

  But it was not just by heavy advertising that the book trade acted as the shock troops of a commercial Christmas during the 1820s. The most important step it took in that direction was to invent a new kind of product, in the form of a new literary genre that was specifically linked to the Christmas season. The genre was the “Gift Book”—a mixed anthology of poetry, stories, essays, and (frequently) pictures. Gift Books were always published at the very end of the year, just in time for sale as Christmas presents. Whenever one of them sold well, a new number bearing the same title would be brought out a year later (giving rise to an alternative name for the genre, “literary annuals”).

  Gift Books first appeared in Europe at the beginning of the decade and were taken up in the United States in 1825, when the Philadelphia publishers Carey & Lea brought out The Atlantic Souvenir. The preface to this volume defined the new genre as a specific combination of sentiment, season, and content:

  Nothing would seem more naturally to suggest itself, as one of those marks of remembrance and affection, which old custom has associated with the gaiety of Christmas, than a little volume of lighter literature, adorned with beautiful specimens of art.

  Of course, the genre had no more suggested itself “naturally” than was the practice of buying Christmas presents really an “old custom.” Still, within a very few years American Gift Books had proliferated wildly. And their proliferation followed a clear pattern, one that was unprecedented in the history of American publishing. Gift Books were available at every price range and for every conceivable market—demographic, religious, political, and cultural. Some Gift Books consisted entirely of poetry; others were humorous (The Comic Annual). There were Gift Books for children (in fact, for boys and girls separately), young men, mothers, Jacksonian Democrats, proponents of temperance and abolitionism, even members of men’s clubs {The Masonic Offering and
The Odd Fellows’ Offering). In other words, publishers had managed to divide the market for Gift Books into highly specialized niches—identified by class, age, ideology, and cultural temperament. They had managed to achieve an astonishing degree of what modern economists now refer to as market segmentation.

  And an equally high degree of market penetration. From the time they were introduced in 1825, Gift Books were sold in almost every corner of the nation and advertised in newspapers throughout the American hinterland. What was especially remarkable about this market penetration was the way it was organized: Virtually every American Gift Book was published in one of only three places, in the cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. And this was in an era when the publication of other kinds of books was still being carried out on a strikingly decentralized basis. (In fact, books were often printed in towns so small that nowadays they would not even support a local newspaper.)21 Gift Books had a nationwide distribution that was based on a highly centralized mode of production. Here again, they were on the cutting edge of economic change in the United States.

  Many Gift Books were ornate, with gilt edges, lavish bindings, expensive engravings, and colored “presentation plates.” But they came at all price levels. James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald noted in the depression year 1840 that Gift Books “come within the range of the means of most persons, varying in price from $3 to $15;” and it added pointedly: “There are few that would wish to give a lady a present of a less value than $3.”22*

  Gift Books were compiled whenever possible by a popular author whose name on the title page could be expected to guarantee added sales. They could be put together fast, in a matter of weeks if necessary. In 1837, one apologetic editor publicly acknowledged that the decision to compile his Gift Book “only suggested itself to the Publisher a fortnight before the last sheet was put to press,” and that the work had to be completed so quickly because the publisher wished it to “appear at the season when the annuals and other similar publications are most in request.”23 Nowadays such books are called quickies.

  Gift Books have been studied to show their influence in disseminating literature and art to the American public. They have also been studied, more than any other genre of printed matter, as physical objects, examples of the “materiality” of literary culture: to show that books were not only read but also gazed at, fondly handled, and proudly displayed. What I wish to add here is a point that it is easy to overlook: Gift Books were marketed as presents, purchased only to be given away. Indeed, as far as I can determine, Gift Books were the very first commercial products of any sort that were manufactured specifically, and solely, for the purpose of being given away by the purchaser. And, of course, they were to be given away during the Christmas season. The overwhelming majority of Gift Books bore as their subtitle the phrase “A Christmas and New Year’s Gift” (or “Present”). That is why they were often so physically ornate: Christmas was the appointed time for luxury spending. Once again, the case of Gift Books suggests the manner in which Christmas was consciously used by entrepreneurs as an agent of commercialization, an instrument with which to enmesh Americans in the web of consumer capitalism.

  For at least one major publishing house (and probably others), Gift Books represented the single-largest venture of the business year. The Philadelphia firm of Carey & Lea invested heavily in the production of The Atlantic Souvenir. In 1829 and again in 1830, the firm printed 10,500 copies of this very popular Gift Book, at a cost of more than $12,500 each year; in 1830 this sum came to more than 30 percent of their total production costs for the year. (The $12,500 included printing costs and payments to the books editor and its contributors, but the single most expensive item, easily exceeding all the authors’ payments combined, was the book’s engravings.) But Carey & Lea hoped for a substantial return on their investment: if the press run sold out, they would take in $17,386, for a net profit of almost 40 percent.24

  Gift Books were marketed with aggressive new techniques. For example, they commonly contained their own advertisements—not tucked away in the back pages but inscribed within the literary matter itself. (This was especially true of Gift Books that were intended for children.) Sometimes this self-advertising took the general form of a story or poem in which a character insisted that books (and especially Gift Books) made the best presents. Take The Violet for 1837 (edited by Eliza Leslie, whom we have encountered before as the author of the story about young Robert Hamlin’s Philadelphia shopping excursion). This volume contains a poem in which four young siblings discuss the Christmas presents they would like to receive. Three of the four indicate that they are hoping for toys. But the fourth child, an older sister, knows that children will quickly lose interest in toys. What she wants instead are books—and a Gift Book most of all:

  For me, of books I should not tire

  Were hundreds on my shelf;

  I’ll tell you now my chief desire—

  An “Annual” for myself;

  With cover handsomely emboss’d,

  And gilded edges bright;

  With prints to look at, tales to read,

  And verses to recite.

  Often poems such as this named the very Gift Book in which they appeared. The 1840 preface to a children’s Gift Book, The Annualette, contained this typical verse:

  Annuals for every taste, for every age,

  Lie scattered round, decked in their covers gay….

  Then choose, and neither old nor young forget—

  Each child, at least, must have the ANNUALETTE.25

  Sometimes such verse even advertised other volumes on the publisher’s list. For example, The Pearl was published by the Philadelphia firm of Ash and Anners, which also published a periodical named Parleys Magazine. Sure enough, a poem in The Pearl for 1836 has a father who tells his children, as he is handing them their presents:

  Here’s Parley’s Magazine, my boys,

  And for my little girl

  Here is a very pretty book,

  Whose title is “The Pearl.”

  And in the very next number of The Pearl, for 1837, one story ends with a group of children opening their Christmas presents. “‘I am so glad that I have got The Pearl,’ “one says, and a second chimes in after opening another holiday book brought out by the same publishers: “‘I have The Boys’ Week-Day Book—I have wanted it so much.’”26

  Even Santa Claus got into the act. The preface to a Gift Book first published in 1842 as St. Nicholas’s Book conveyed the point that it had been put together directly on the personal instructions of St. Nicholas himself, who desired to have a book “made exactly to his mind for the Christmas of this year” and who therefore “applied to the author to make one, to be called ‘St. Nicholas’s Book for All Good Boys and Girls.’” The preface noted, simply, “Here it is.” And it continued:

  Each of those children whom Saint Nicholas … most highly approves, will be sure to find a copy of this book, with all its stories and pictures, and its nice binding, safely deposited in his stocking in the chimney corner, on the morning of next Christmas, or at farthest, next New Year’s Day.27

  When they were manufactured as presents for adults, Gift Books were often ornate and luxurious to the eye and hand. Commonly, they were named to suggest their resemblance to other kinds of beautiful luxury objects, notably jewels or flowers, both of which were also popular as Christmas presents (the latter were newly available in winter through commercial hothouses). Thus, for jewelry, there were the Amaranth, Amethyst, Amulet, Brilliant, Coronet, Diadem, Gem, Gem of the Season, Jewel, Literary Gem, Lyric Gem, Opal, Pearl, and Ruby. For flowers, there were Autumn Leaves, Bouquet, Christmas Blossoms, Dahlia, Dew-Drop, Evergreen, Floral Offering, Flowers of Loveliness, Garland, Hyacinth, Iris, Laurel Wreath, Lily, Lily of the Valley, Magnolia, May Flower, Moss-Rose, Primrose, Rose, Rose Bud, Violet, Winter-Bloom, Wintergreen, Woodbine, and Wreath.

  Gift Books were probably among the most expensive books many Americans had ever purchased. Tak
e the experience of a rather prosperous man, John Davis of Worcester, Massachusetts. (A future governor of Massachusetts, he was then serving in the U.S. Congress.) On December 26, 1826, Davis wrote to his wife that he had visited a Washington bookstore and bought her a “very beautiful” Gift Book:

  I went into a bookstore to see what was the price of a souvenir [i.e., a Gift Book] that I might send you a new year’s present. I saw them advertised as very beautiful and found them so as you will judge by the price $5. This bookstore is one of the best… the most pleasant I ever saw. The proprietor … seems to spare nothing to get the most rich and costly collections of books, of prints, maps and everything else. The shop is not large but elegant. I saw many things I wanted to buy but they cost too much.28

  Davis admitted here that he had been tempted to buy “many things” that were more expensive than he was used to purchasing. But he did spend $5 on a single book for his wife—and he let her know it (which suggests that he was not used to spending so much money on books).

  IT WOULD be unfair to conclude that these books were purchased and given away simply as a display of conspicuous consumption. Christmas gifts had to be (or appear to be) expressions of personal sentiment, designed to signify or enhance intimate personal bonds—bonds between parents and children, husbands and wives, suitors and those they courted. And that is surely what parents, husbands, and suitors wanted them to be. Such Christmas presents were intended above all to represent an expression of feeling. This meant that they were to be given freely, out of affection, and not as part of an old-fashioned gift exchange offered in fulfillment of an obligation. The Herald’s new rival, Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, put this point quite clearly in 1846: “The season approaches when Good Wishes take visible, palpable form, becoming active in the shape of Gifts…. To give and receive the free will offerings of Friendship and Affection are among the purest pleasures permitted to this state of being….” Greeley stressed that such “free will offerings of Friendship and Affection” had nothing in common with the traditional exchange of gifts for goodwill: