THE BATTLE FOR CHRISTMAS
'Twas the night before Christmas,
and all through the house,
not a creature was stirring, etc...
Meanwhile, on the streets outside...
Each December 24, from colonial days until the 1840s, gangs roamed the streets of urban America. Belching, shouting, banging on pans, the rabble scared everyone within earshot. Some stumbled and fell in gutters. Others broke windows, battered in doors, pelted taverns with rotten fruit. Ahhh, Christmas as it used to be.
Each Christmas morn, newspapers tallied the damage: "The beastly vice of drunkenness among the lower laboring classes is growing to a frightful excess." With police powerless to curb Yuletide cheer, the battle for Christmas was waged by three New Yorkers. One was a celebrated author, another a cartoonist, the third a landlord who fancied himself a poet. Three men creating the modern holiday? Impossible — unless you believe in Sinterklaas.
Christmas has a checkered past. For centuries, those who preferred a reverent observance of Christ's birth were drowned out by bacchanalia. With little work during the dark days of mid-December, peasants drank and drank some more, then whooped it up. Medieval tradition created a Master of Misrule who led the debauchery. Appalled by the excess, early America banned Christmas as "papist and pagan." But the annual anarchy continued into the 1800s, making Christmas more dreaded than devout. And then...
Deep in the Dutch culture that dominated New York lay the myth that civilized Christmas. Dutch tradition spoke of a Sinterklaas who gave gifts to children each December 6. Sinterklaas was based on Saint Nicholas, a kindly Catholic bishop who became the patron saint of children (and of sailors, brewers, and students). But December 6 was Saint Nicholas' Catholic name day. Clearly a holiday in his name needed to be nearer to the winter solstice. Protestant reformers finally settled on December 25. If only the rowdy American Christmas could summon the Dutch Saint Nick. . .
The battle began with fiction. In 1809, Washington Irving, creator of Rip Van Winkle, wrote a satiric history of New York that celebrated the Dutch cult of St. Nicholas. The seed was sown. "Without Irving," one historian wrote,"there would be no Santa Claus." But Irving was outdone by a lesser-known writer.
In 1822, a wealthy Manhattan landowner wrote a little poem. It began "'Twas the night before Christmas...”
Washington Irving's Santa had one pathetic reindeer, but Clement Clark Moore bumped the number to eight and named them. Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen . .. Moore also fattened Santa and put a twinkle in his eye. And the stockings hung by the chimney with care? Visions of sugar plums? That bundle of toys "flung on his back?" All from one man's imagination. The story, creating a Christmas every American could celebrate, soon spread.
"A Visit from Saint Nicholas" was reprinted in 1823 -- in one newspaper. The following year, four almanacs picked it up. Then in 1826, the poem appeared in the Saturday Evening Post. By 1828 it was a classic. Christmas "cheer" continued in the streets but now the revelry had a rival -- a homey, child-centered Christmas. By 1848, diarist George Templeton Strong noted, Christmas had become "essentially an indoor and domestic festival." Then a cartoonist gave Santa his own portrait gallery.
Thomas Nast, born in Bavaria, grew up in New York hearing German stories of Woden, a bearded holiday gift giver. During the Civil War, Nast got a job with Harper's Weekly. When Christmas rolled around, Nast put pen to paper. For the next two decades, Nast's annual Santa sketches created the St. Nick we still know. The red suit. The full beard. Checking on children to see if they've been "naughty or nice." All were the cartoonist's creation. And the rest is, well, tradition.
In 1902, L. Frank Baum, fresh from writing The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, wrote The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. As major department stores opened, merchants jumped on Santa's sleigh. During World War II, a Jewish immigrant named Irving Berlin dreamed of a "White Christmas" while Jewish jazz singer Mel Torme wrote "chestnuts roasting by an open fire..." Soon jingle bells rocked. The little drummer boy rump-pa-pa-pummed. Christmas was here to stay.
So when you hear it said that there is a "war on Christmas," light the tree. Order another round. Drag out not just Dickens but a more amazing Christmas tale -- the story of how three New Yorkers, stirred by an old Dutch myth, made a merry Christmas for all, and to all a good night.
