Host

Welcome back to Creating Christmas. This is part two of our series, Creating the Holiday the World Needed. If you haven’t listened to part one, you missed the.

Bruce David Forbes

Early Christians did not have a Christmas.

Host

I suggest you go back and give that a listen first or this…

Judith Flanders

The most important and the most long lasting tradition was that believing Christmases of the past had always been better.

Host

…isn’t going to make as much sense.

*Audio*

We are on our merry way.

Host

I had a history teacher assign a weekend project in middle school that I’m still working on now. Over 20 years later. I think about it, wrestle with my answer every week, and I don’t like that this question is stuck in my head because I know if it’s there now, it’ll probably always be there.

It wasn’t so much a project as just a single question :

What’s the most important invention of all time?

I really racking my brain, revising, changing, reworking my answer.

Host Thinking

Not fire, too obvious weaving. What was he looking for? Maybe the toilet. Was this a trick question?

Host

What I kind of know now that I could in no way wrap my head around back then was that there is no perfect answer.

There is no A-plus response.

At the same time, only a few guesses could ever really be wrong.

Our history is everything that happened at the same time. It can’t be whittled down to one thing, and neither can Christmas.

Sitting back and trying to find just the one catalyst. We get to this point where there’s sort of a societal avalanche where every segment of the world changes, and when the snow settles, we have Christmas again.

Now I’m going to say something controversial this Christmas that we’re about to encounter. It’s new. It’s a new holiday. There I said it. I did.

Some people might say I’m wrong, but just wait.

*Audio*

We’ll be telling and having.

Host

This is creating Christmas. The Holiday The World Needed Part two.

*Audio*

Doesn’t matter if the snow is falling. in the rain in Christmas. In my heart. But with my friends and family making angles in the sand you left me. Doesn’t matter because it’s Christmas in my heart.

Host

If you’re someone who doesn’t think that our Christmas just began in the 19th century, well, you don’t have to look too far to prove me wrong. Part one of the series is all about laying out the long history of winter festivals and their conversion to Christmas. So without a doubt, secular and religious holidays, which were called Christmas, existed prior to the 19th century.

What I’m getting at, though, is that this holiday is about to go 180 degrees away from any version of Christmas that had existed before.

Up to this point, Christmas was an adult community celebration where food and especially drinking were the main focus. What we have now, though, is a kid and family based domestic celebration with an emphasis on presents.

So here, right at this point, this is when everything changes.

Our holiday is about to be forged in the world of industry, and maybe all the history that led up to this was just the raw materials. Let’s pick up where we left off. Around the early to mid 1700s. Christmas wasn’t exactly knocked out by the Puritans, but it probably wasn’t going to get in the ring again.

Bruce David Forbes

I’m Bruce. I’m a professor emeritus of religious studies at Morningside College, although now it’s known as Morningside University.

For about 150 years, Christmas almost goes away. And I’ve heard that. But the most striking example, there’s a book by two authors, and they decided to test this. So they wanted to know how far had Christmas fallen. So they read every December issue of the Times of London from 1790 to 1835.

And in that 45 year period – in 20 of the years, there’s not a single mention of Christmas. Is that stunning? And in the others, it’s mentioned in passing like this is something that people used to do.

Host

The traditions that have become a part of Christmas didn’t just disappear at the holiday. Instead they sort of shifted around in the season; presents may have moved to New Year’s or earlier in the month of St Nicholas Day. While winter festivities may have moved to as late as Valentines. The version of Christmas that did resume later in the 18th and into the 19th century looked a lot like the over-the-top, indulgent celebrations of the past.

Judith Flanders

I’m Judith Flanders. I’m a 19th century social historian. I’m the author of several books on Victorian social life as well as of Christmas A History.

The Christmas period was a period then, rather than a day. You had this sort of holiday for really until the Industrial Revolution and factories mean that they have to cut down on the holidays.

It was really rowdy and it was rowdy well into the 19th century. And you have various kinds of events. You had things in the country called Wassailing, where the working people would go house to house with really, you know, the equivalent of a bucket. And they would sing songs and offer, you know, toasts of good health in exchange for a drink or bread and cheese or maybe money, depending on the house they were at, but they were drinking all the way as they went.

Host

Even the traditional custom of a door to door present bringers, such as Saint Nicholas or Belsnickel, returned a bit rougher. Now their forms and interactions differed from place to place, but in general, they fell somewhere between the religious based, Saint Nicholas, that visited to check on children’s biblical studies and just holiday monsters. Each balanced punishment with presents, and in many situations, the role was played by a beggar or someone of the lower class dressed in rags with a blackened or dirty face.

One urban custom that arose during the same time was Callithumpian bands.

Now we’ve actually managed to recreate one of these bands to authentically represent the sound of the times.

*audio – banging pots and pans*

This is part Christmas, and if it’s a bit less than pleasing to your ears, you might have something in common with a new class of people that wouldn’t set out to cancel Christmas.

Actually, the opposite.

They wanted to change Christmas. This new group of people were the middle class, and they’re something that’s almost brand new to the time in which we’re entering : the Industrial Revolution.

Period Audio Voice Over

A greater change in ways of living than had occurred in all time previously was to take place in an astonishingly brief space of time.

Host

The time when the world was changed from what we had, into the first draft of the world we now know.

So really, what was the Industrial Revolution?

Angela Platt

Hi, my name is Angela Platt. I am a PhD students at Royal Holloway University of London, currently investigating love in religious families in the 18th and 19th centuries. And I’m also an associate lecturer and tutor in the humanities.

So in effect, the Industrial Revolution sort of proper in its first iteration began around the mid-18th century and continued until the mid-19th century, and that’s where you see so that this first iteration, the expansion of the economy, agricultural services and transport, growth of factories, mass production. So it became easier and cheaper to make things and to transport them. And also you could transport people from one place to the next. Very quickly.

Host

Okay. That’s the Industrial Revolution proper. And when I hear that description, I think smokestack assembly lines, old timey metal forges. But instead, let’s look at life : the collateral effects of the Industrial Revolution, the way our understanding of how we lived together changed. It’s amazing to think that fundamental parts of our daily lives now were basically created during this time.

Things you may never have even thought how to start date, began here. The idea of a home life. Kids being kids. Even the emotion nostalgia they all trace back here.

Now, all these changes not only made our modern Christmas possible, but they also made reimagining the holiday essential. It had to happen because the cornerstones of the celebration from before were sort of gone.

Real quick, as we talk about these shifts that took place. I need to underline that this wasn’t one sudden overnight change across all people on Earth. The Industrial Revolution and its impact were gradual and didn’t affect all of society at once. But by the mid 1800s, it had significantly changed our world. And importantly for us, it changed how we saw our world.

An exact order to the changes of society is beyond my grasp. So let’s look at it in a way that seems linear. A mass migration causing home life and work life to split, families turned inwards, which leads kids to be kids, and for the first time we get to feel like we miss all this.

So let’s get.

Period Audio Voice Over

The beginning of a great movement of rural population to the cities that would eventually change the basic pattern of life.

Angela Platt

As mass production was happening and factories were erecting and cities were growing, at the same time you have people en masse moving to cities in a way that’s quite unprecedented. Not to say that people didn’t move to cities before, but they’re doing so in a way that’s much greater.

Host

This migration If you just look at New York City, it began the 19th century with roughly 60,000 people. By 1830 there were 185,000 people, an increase of 208% in 30 years. And by the turn of the 20th century, New York City boasted 3.8 million people. That’s a 6,233% increase. To put this in perspective, think about your home. The average block has between seven to ten homes, so let’s say eight homes.

If your street had this same increase before you paid off your mortgage, you’d have 17 more families living on your street. And within 100 years there’d be roughly 500 families living there.

Whatever culture or lifestyle you have on your block right now, I guarantee an influx of over 500 people is going to change that. And this is exactly what happened.

Judith Flanders

People now live in communities of stranger hours. That means that they withdraw. They make their homes the primary unit of their non-work life, rather than going to the marketplace, the inn, the tavern, as they might have done if they lived in small villages.

Host

To build cities, we gave up our longstanding reliance on communities, and, the speed in which this growth happened, means we didn’t have time to carefully weave all these different backgrounds together. In regards to Christmas, a holiday that relied heavily on community celebrations, if you’re used to going wassailing, essentially door to door singing and drinking, how does that look to someone who’s never encountered it before?

*audio*

Drunken Chanting

Host

Or to someone you’ve never met? With that in mind, let’s think back on Callithumpian bands…

*audio*

Bang pots & pans, whistling

Host

Is this a celebration or noise or maybe just harassment?

At the same time that our idea of community was changing, our idea of family was changing. Urban family life had to be different from our rural farming family life.

Angela Platt

The family is moving from a laboring unit to a laboring individual. So instead of the whole family contributing to the economy, one member of the family would contribute to the economy. The whole family couldn’t necessarily get up and go to the office. So it went down to one individual, and that tended to be the husband and the father.

So you see the rise of the sole breadwinner father / husband who left the home and went into what might be called the public world of work. And so you see this as changing spaces. So you have the public space of work and you have the space of home the space of the domestic sphere. But very interestingly and thinking about the dynamics in the home then, the home was meant to be the space presided by over the woman, over the wife and mother, and it was meant to be a space that was spiritual and virtuous. A place where her children could be reared in religious morality and a place where her husband could come home from work and expect to find rest and spiritual encouragement away from the chaotic worldly sphere.

Host

Stepping to the side really quick. The husband leaving home was new just as this division of home life and work life. And that helped give rise to a new emotion.

Angela Platt

So nostalgia became this new – or at least this revised sentiment – in which somebody would think about or long-for their home and their family. And as you can imagine, this was especially important for men who were expected to do this on a daily basis, when they went to work. And so this longing would take place in the imagination, as one might imagine the ideal situation of returning to a happy home with your wife and family waiting for you to return.

But this idea of nostalgia was also really importantly linked to a child.

Host

So you have the man who’s supposed to go work, the woman who’s supposed to take care home. Where does that put kids?

Angela Platt

You’re moving from this era in which children were seen as many adults contributing to the household the economy into – in the middle class at least – into an arena in which children were seen as something slightly more distinct from adulthood and therefore deserving their own attention in this distinction.

Host

Two things that are often brought up about children in the 1800s is that they lived longer and hand-in-hand with that families have fewer kids These physical changes helped foster a new view of childhood, a new understanding that had a large emotional component.

This idea of kids being little adults. It’s not new. It’s been around for hundreds of years. So, so why now? Why care about children all of a sudden.

Angela Platt

That has to do with this new shift in romanticism and in the romantic views of childhood.

I mean, just to say what romanticism is more generally, I mean, it has to do with the emphasis on feelings, an emphasis on individualism and perhaps self-discovery, an emphasis on nature. So in this era, you have new ideas of childhood coming into the fore.

And as I noted, some have argued that childhood for the first time became a distinct category in this era. And others have suggested that maybe childhood didn’t become distinct, but the ideals of childhood, which are equated with innocence, became distinct. So almost like a veneration of childhood.

Host

I mentioned this before, but these changes in life in society, they weren’t evenly distributed. In fact, many of the people who benefited the most from this transition fell into a new socioeconomic grouping. I touched on them earlier. It was called the middle class.

Angela Platt

So what historians tend to be talking about is this new group, or at least a newly identifiable group, which is linked with the Industrial Revolution and linked with capitalism. Money is what some historians have called the primary necessity.

Period Audio Voice Over

Like most of the babies here, this one, Theodore Eastwood by name, has an ascribed status of middle class. His father is Joseph Eastwood, high school educated and a white collar worker in the AIMS factory. He has a steady, skillful job and is comfortably off the mortgage on his house, is on its way to being paid. And someday it undoubtedly will be.

Angela Platt

And the second important thing is the importance of religion.

Host

Now, when we consider the way Christmas changes from a raucous party to a family room gathering during this time period, we’re looking at generally a shift in the middle class, a category of people who now had money and means, as well as a developed social code.

Angela Platt

In the mid-18th century, you have the rise of evangelicalism, and that’s the case in Britain and in America in fact. And these feelings that are arising in popularizing and evangelicalism, we’re combining with these enlightenment feelings. So enlightenment feelings had to do with these sensibilities where you would have humanitarian feelings about human progress, humanitarianism and human rights. So these combined with sort of these religious sentiments and produced middle class morality and middle class respectability.

And so this was a response to the aristocracy because the aristocracy was renowned in the 18th century for being marked by debauchery, lasciviousness, excess and luxury. All of these things considered sin. And it was in contrast to the working class who many middle class perceived as being indolent.

And so you have the middle class that’s in the middle of these two groups being marked by these religious sensibilities, these religious feelings and religious respectability and morality, which they were trying to spread among the other groups.

Host

Okay. Middle class.

Back to the question of what is a Callithumpian band? The ultimate decider would be this new class of people who developed a morality that reflected a new domestic life, aspiring to be godly and productive. So the existing celebrations like Callithumpian bands or wassailing, even Belsnickel, they no longer reflected the lifestyle of the time, or at least the direction which the moralities and sensibilities of society were moving.

For Christmas to continue we had to find a holiday that better suited the more domestic, family centric and emotional leanings, and we start to find them in a bunch of lies.

Lies told by someone now associated with Halloween for stories like The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It was Washington Irving that gave us some of the first building blocks of our new Christmas.

As far as 19th century Christmas liars go,Washington Irving was in a class unto himself. He burst onto the scene with his first book, A History of New York from the beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty by Dietrich Knickerbocker. It’s most commonly known as the Knickerbocker History. The book was a satire of the history of New York, but stands out the most now, though, is that it included some new details about Saint Nicholas, which would become definitive characteristics for our yet to be formed gift giving Saint.

Excerpts from A History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty

And, lo the good Saint Nicholas came riding over the tops of the trees in that selfsame wagon where he brings his yearly presents to children.

Host

Irving created the first drafts of what would be Santa’s sleigh, made his pipe magical and gives us the finger to the nose wink. But this was just the start of Irving’s commitment to Saint Nicholas. He was a member of the Saint Nicholas Society of New York. It was a group of people who were also less than worried about historical accuracy.

Judith Flanders

So what this group did was in the multicultural, busy, industrialized world of New York, they looked back at the supposed agrarian, calm Dutch times, and they made up all of these customs.

And we know they’re made that there’s no doubt about it. You know, they talk about Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of New Amsterdam. Well, that’s fine and good, except of course, the Dutch Reformed Church who ran New Amsterdam was Protestant, and they had no Saints. The timeline’s all wrong. Everything’s wrong. I mean, if you actually look at this history, it’s made up. But it worked really well at the beginning of the 19th century in New York.

Host

There’s actually been a claim that this society brought Saint Nicholas to New York. Now, whether that’s true or not, they did make a concerted effort over a series of years to make Saint Nicholas a major player in New York, attempting to make him the patron Saint of New York City, which ultimately failed.

But these two huge things, creating Santas characteristics and giving Saint Nicholas a home in New York, they don’t amount to the biggest impression the Washington Irving had on re-envisioning our holiday

In a world of romanticism and nostalgia, Irving gave us something to look back on fondly. It was an anchor point for today’s Christmas, and it was also another book of exaggerations. This time he said it in the English countryside during Christmas The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon.

Excerpt from The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon

There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingering of the holiday. Customs and rural games of former times

Judith Flanders

Spent a little bit of time in England and he wrote a series of linked sketches, in which in some of them he depicted a Yorkshire squire who was having what he described as a real north of England Christmas.

Excerpt from The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon

It seemed to throw open every door and unlock every heart. It brought the peasant and the peer together and blended all ranks in one warm, generous flow of joy and kindness.

Judith Flanders

Again, it’s fiction. It’s entirely made up. The people who read it in England at the time knew it was made up, that this did not happen. He gathered up scraps of traditions he made up other ones. He painted this picture, as with his New York Dutch thing, of going back to an older, agrarian, rural holiday.

Excerpt from The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon

Heart called us on to heart, and we draw our pleasures from the deep wells of loving kindness.

Host

Thinking of authors and books today gives the wrong impression of Irving’s impact on the culture of the time. His Knickerbocker history was successful and widely read both in America and Europe. Putting him on his way to becoming the first American to make a living solely as a writer. His sketchbook eclipsed all his previous successes making him the first American author to garner acclaim in Europe.

The Christmases he created were read and loved everywhere. There’s actually still a dinner held in Yosemite each year in honor of the English countryside from Sketchbook.

I could keep praising Washington Irving, and at some point it might become confusing as to whether his stories actually created our Christmas. But we know that people have written about Christmas before this. So, why does Irving get mentioned and not the author of the early Christmas gift books that captured stories of the holidays 30 years prior?

Is what Washington Irving is doing here very different than what was already going on with antiquarianism in the way people were looking back? He just did it in a very popular way? Like, would you say maybe his largest contribution was just the popularity of something that was kind of already happening in society?

Or is this something? Is he doing something new here?

Judith Flanders

Well, I think one of the things you have to remember when people say things like Dickens invented Christmas or Washington Irving invented Christmas or whatever. They’re tapping into the zeitgeist. If what they were doing had been totally unfamiliar, people would not have been that interested. They were hugely successful because they were painting a picture of things people sort of recognized so that they could pick up small elements and say, ‘Oh yes, that’s what used to happen.’

So whether it’s Washington Irving’s sort of fake 18th century Yorkshire Christmas or, 15 years later when Dickens writes a Pickwick Papers, The Pickwick Papers, and he has this Christmas in Dingley Dell, they are elaborate and they’re embroidering on the stories of Christmas that people know.

And with that, they are creating new elements…

Host

So here we are, just where the snowball of Christmas can start to roll again. All the different aspects of the holiday that we now love are falling into place. We have the building momentum of a kid centered home life, factories pushing us towards a world of things, money, and on top of all of that, we know what we’re wanting in our Christmas.

And the writers and artists of the time are beginning to help us shape it while building on to it.

We are only years away from Christmas, taking off like reindeer racing around the globe.

And that’s all next. In the conclusion of the holiday, the world needed…

Creating Christmas was produced this week by Oversaturated Inc and me. I am incredibly grateful for the help I received putting this story together.

I’m so thankful that so many people have been willing to lend their time and voice.

Thanks to Bruce Forbes and his book Christmas : A Candid History.

Thank you, Judith Flanders, who set aside time to talk even as her house was being remodeled and for her book Christmas A Biography

And a massive thank you and all my gratitude to Angela Platt.I found her research on her blog, The Beeton Ideal, and it is a great start to understanding life during this time.

Check out our website CreatingChristmasPodcast.com for links to all the work featured in today’s show and cool episode extras. And if you have time, great reviews. I hear for every review an angel gets its wings.

I’m Bob Christian and until next time – Stay Jolly.

*Audio*

It’s time for Christmas. Oh, it’s time for us. Oh, it’s time for Christmas. Don’t you know.

It’s time for Christmas. Oh, it’s time for us. Oh, it’s time for Christmas. Don’t you know.