The image you see below is of the very first Christmas tree decorated with electric lights. This picture was taken December 22, 1882 in the parlor of Edward Hibberd Johnson’s home in New York City.
Edward Hibberd Johnson was a friend of Thomas Edison as well as business partner, working as Vice President of the Edison Electric Light Company. In 1880, Johnson got the idea for miniature colored light bulbs to be strung together for decorating Christmas trees. At this time, candles acted as lights in Christmas trees and were the cause of numerous house fires every holiday season.
Though electric Christmas lights captured the public’s imagination, it was not a successful business venture. People were still wary about electricity, being that it was so new. Thomas Edison had only invented the electric light bulb three years earlier, in 1879.
Over time, people gradually began decorating their Christmas trees with electric lights, but it wasn’t until 1895, when President Grover Cleveland electrically lit the Christmas tree in the White House, that people fully embraced electric Christmas tree lights. The tree in the White House contained more than 100 multicolored lights. The public felt if electric Christmas tree lights were safe enough for the President to use, it was safe enough for them.
Below is an image of the very first Christmas card, printed and sold in London in 1843. Over the next 30 years since since then, all Christmas cards within the United States were shipped in from England. In 1873, Louis Prang, a printer from Boston, began manufacturing his own Christmas cards, which were sold throughout the country. Within five years, he had annual sales surpass $5 million. Prang is known as the “Father of the American Christmas card”.
Of the 1,000 very first Christmas cards printed in London in 1843, only nine are known to still exist, which are in museums and private collections.
Games were a popular tradition to partake in with family and friends at Christmas during the 19th century. A popular game at the time was Snap-Dragon. How was this once popular, and dangerous, game played?
A shallow bowl was filled with brandy, and raisins were dropped into the bowl. The brandy was then set on fire. Lights were dimmed or turned out completely so that the flames provided the only light in the room, creating an eerie shadow on the face of players.
Though Snap-Dragon had been around for centuries (Shakespeare mentions it in several of his plays), it didn’t become popular (specifically at Christmas) until the mid-19th century. It is likely a combination of injuries and house fires which led to the interest in this game dying out by the late 19th/early 20th century.
Look on your Christmas tree. Do you have a pickle ornament? If so, you are one of millions of people across the country to have one. Many people buy it due to it being a bizarre ornament, but there is actually a history behind that pickle.
In the late 19th century, parents told their children that Santa, upon delivering gifts Christmas Eve while they were asleep, would place a glass pickle ornament somewhere on the tree. The first child to find the pickle in the morning would receive an extra gift from Santa himself, as Santa rewarded observant children. The parents, uh, I mean Santa, would place the pickle ornament deep in the tree so that the children would have to work to find it.
The history of the pickle ornament is somewhat shrouded in mystery. For years, people believed it was an old German Christmas tradition. After all, glass ornaments in the 19th century were manufactured in Germany and shipped to the United States, so it was easy to assume that’s where the tradition originated. Others believe the pickle is in honor of an American Civil War soldier who was saved from starvation on Christmas Eve by eating a pickle. Still, others believe the tradition stems from a story about St. Nicholas saving two boys who were trapped in a barrel of pickles.
Historical evidence, however, supports another theory. The theories previously mentioned were likely the result of tales told by Woolworth’s department store salesmen. Woolworth’s began selling glass ornaments in the 1880s, which again, were manufactured in Germany and shipped to the United States. One of these ornaments was the pickle.
Woolworth’s salesmen across the country likely fabricated stories to promote the sale of German glass ornaments in American stores. As it turns out, some of those stories stuck, giving this unique ornament its rightful place among Christmas lore.
“Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus”. This famous line is known from books, movies, television and a number of publications over many years. Now a part of Christmas folklore, this line originally appeared in an editorial in the September 21, 1897 publication of the New York Sun. The editorial was written by the Sun’s publisher and editor, Francis Pharcellus Church, in response to 8-year old Virginia O’Hanlon’s letter as to whether Santa Claus is real.
Louisa May Alcott is best known for her popular classic Little Women, published in 1869, but did you know she also created what were the precursor to Santa’s elves thirteen years earlier? In 1856, at age 23, Alcott began working on a book titled Christmas Elves. It was the first time elves and Christmas appeared together in print. This book, however, was never published. The manuscript for Christmas Elves was either lost or destroyed, so it is unknown what the book was about, what the role of the elves were, or even if the elves physically resembled the elves we are familiar with today.
The image of Santa’s elves was popularized by the December 1873 publication of Godey’s Lady’s Book, the cover depicting Santa in his workshop surrounded by elves helping to make toys, seen in the photo below.
In 1876, Louisa May Alcott returned to the subject of Christmas elves in a poem titled Merry Christmas:
In the rush of early morning,
When the red burns through the gray,
And the wintry world lies waiting
For the glory of the day,
Then we hear a fitful rustling
Just without upon the stair,
See two small white phantoms coming,
Catch the gleam of sunny hair.
Are they Christmas fairies stealing
Rows of little socks to fill?
Are they angels floating hither
With their message of good-will?
What sweet spell are these elves weaving
As like larks they chirp and sing?
Are these palms of peace from heaven
That these lovely spirits bring?
Rosy feet upon the threshold,
Eager faces peeping through,
With the first red ray of sunshine,
Chanting cherubs come in view:
Mistletoe and gleaming holly,
Symbols of a blessed day,
In their chubby hands they carry,
Streaming all along the way.
Well we know them, never weary
Of this innocent surprise;
Waiting, watching, listening always
With full hearts and tender eyes,
While our little household angels,
White and golden in the sun,
Greet us with the sweet old welcome, –
“Merry Christmas, every one!”
With the American Civil War raging by 1863, the Union blockade made it difficult for the south to receive supplies. This difficulty wasn’t just felt by Confederate soldiers and civilian adults but by children as well, especially around Christmas. No supplies coming into the south also meant no toys coming in.
As Christmas neared in 1863, parents were unable to buy their children presents and therefore had to come up with an explanation as to why they would receive no gifts that year. Some parents told their children that Union soldiers had shot and killed Santa as he tried to enter the southern states. This may have been a tactic by parents to instill the same hatred in their children toward the Union as they themselves held.
Other parents took a softer approach, explaining that Santa couldn’t get through the Union blockade. Diary entries exist from this time, where it is documented that children in southern states would look at a map or globe and trace out an alternate route for Santa to take to get around the blockade, then would write him a letter informing him of this route. The children’s letters to Santa, once written, would be put in a burning fireplace. According to early Santa folklore, as the letters burned, the message on them would be carried in smoke out of the chimney and all the way to the North Pole, to be received by Santa himself.
