mtblujeans
DIS Legend
- Joined
- Mar 25, 2004
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Please feel free to add your historical tidbits to this thread
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Necco wafers and candy canes were popular candies given out during the Christmas holidays in the 1860s. Many more of the present-day customs had their start between the 1820s and 1840s and were well established by the 1860s. Fourteen states had made Christmas an official holiday by 1860, with 13 more joining in by the end of the Civil War. Christmas became a federal holiday in 1870.
There is no record of anyone playing the role of Santa for the southern states during the war of the North and South. Godeys Ladys Book, a popular U.S. magazine, published a picture in 1850 of Queen Victoria and her decorated Christmas tree. In 1856, President Franklin Pierce put the first Christmas tree in the White House, and the custom was widely established by the end of the decade.
Tradition back then was to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, behind the closed doors of the parlor. Candles were arranged on tree limbs and unwrapped presents hung on the tree boughs. Wrapping paper would later come in the 1880s. When decorating the tree was completed, the candles were lighted and the doors flung open to the delight of the waiting family.
Children could expect books, toys, candy, musical instruments, and rocking horses. Newspaper ads of the time suggested Mother would like a sewing machine and Father would like a microscope. For either, books, stationary, and clothes were always good choices at the time.
Stockings were also a tradition by the 1860s, although history shows there was a debate at the time over whether it was right to do both stockings and a tree. One newspaper reported that Christmas trees had ruled the hanging up of stockings out of order, but another publication posed the question of which tradition was the most stylish.
Necco wafers and candy canes were popular candies given out during the Christmas holidays in the 1860s. Many more of the present-day customs had their start between the 1820s and 1840s and were well established by the 1860s. Fourteen states had made Christmas an official holiday by 1860, with 13 more joining in by the end of the Civil War. Christmas became a federal holiday in 1870.
There is no record of anyone playing the role of Santa for the southern states during the war of the North and South. Godeys Ladys Book, a popular U.S. magazine, published a picture in 1850 of Queen Victoria and her decorated Christmas tree. In 1856, President Franklin Pierce put the first Christmas tree in the White House, and the custom was widely established by the end of the decade.
Tradition back then was to decorate the tree on Christmas Eve, behind the closed doors of the parlor. Candles were arranged on tree limbs and unwrapped presents hung on the tree boughs. Wrapping paper would later come in the 1880s. When decorating the tree was completed, the candles were lighted and the doors flung open to the delight of the waiting family.
Children could expect books, toys, candy, musical instruments, and rocking horses. Newspaper ads of the time suggested Mother would like a sewing machine and Father would like a microscope. For either, books, stationary, and clothes were always good choices at the time.
Stockings were also a tradition by the 1860s, although history shows there was a debate at the time over whether it was right to do both stockings and a tree. One newspaper reported that Christmas trees had ruled the hanging up of stockings out of order, but another publication posed the question of which tradition was the most stylish.
