As it turns out, the most important channels through which the ritual was spread were literary ones. Information about the Christmas tree was diffused by means of commercial literature, not via immigrant folk culture-from the top down, not from the bottom up. It was by reading about Christmas trees, not by witnessing them, that many thousands of Americans learned about the custom. Before they ever saw such a thing, they already knew what Christmas trees were all about-not only what they looked like, but also how and why they were to be used.
I shall deal, one by one, with each of the sources through which Christmas trees were introduced into middle-cla.s.s American culture during the 1830s. Each source, as we shall see, reveals in turn a different element with which this ritual was a.s.sociated: first, the element of surprise; surprise; second, that of second, that of folk authenticity; folk authenticity; third, third, unselfish children; unselfish children; and finally, and finally, parental control parental control Who were the writers who introduced the Christmas tree into American culture? The evidence suggests that, much like the Knickerbockers who devised Santa Claus, these writers const.i.tuted something of a distinct set. Like the Knickerbockers, the members of this set were genteel and cultured. But they were part of an emerging upper middle cla.s.s that laid no claim to preserving an aristocratic social order. In contrast to the Knickerbockers, too, they lived mostly in New England and Philadelphia, not New York, and the church of their choice was Unitarian rather than Episcopal. And instead of being politically reactionary, they tended to stand somewhere on the progressive, reformist side of the issues that were coming to divide Americans in the 1830s. This is not to say that the members of this set were of a single mind on every matter. After 1830, as we shall see, they were divided over the emerging antislavery movement, and also over issues of child-rearing. But in any event they used culture rather than politics as an instrument to influence the social order. They employed their cultural authority-a combination of literary skill and access to the most popular channels of print-in a strenuous effort to deal with what they feared were the corruptive cultural effects of consumer capitalism, especially on the young. The Christmas tree played a serious if relatively minor role in that larger project.
SOME C CHRISTMAS T TREES.
Little Charleys Christmas Tree There is no doc.u.ment about the Christmas tree that corresponds to Clement Clarke Moore"s verses about Santa Claus. Instead, there are only various legends that describe how the Christmas tree came to America. One of these legends is about Hessian soldiers during the American Revolution (it dates the real event too early); another is about Queen Victoria and her German-born husband, Prince Albert (it dates the event too late).
What is probably the most famous of the legends, and the one with which we shall begin, has it that the first American Christmas tree was set up in Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1835, by Charles Folien, a German immigrant who had become an American citizen and a Harvard professor. The source of that legend is a popular book written by a very famous British visitor to the United States, a woman named Harriet Martineau, who happened to witness the Follens" tree while she was touring New England. As Martineau wrote, "I was present at the introduction into the new country of the German Christmas-tree." Though this was not the first first American Christmas tree, it is certainly true that Charles Folien set up a Christmas tree in Martineau"s presence for his son and namesake, an endearing 5-year-old whom everybody called "little Charley." It is time to visit the scene. American Christmas tree, it is certainly true that Charles Folien set up a Christmas tree in Martineau"s presence for his son and namesake, an endearing 5-year-old whom everybody called "little Charley." It is time to visit the scene.
The tree (actually the top portion of a fir or spruce) had been placed in the front drawing room of the house. A toy hung from every branch, and when Martineau arrived Charles Folien and his wife were just adding the seven dozen little wax candles. As little Charley and two older companions approached the house, the adults quickly closed the door to the front drawing room and moved into an adjacent room, where (as Martineau put it) they sat around "trying to look as if nothing was going to happen." After the visitors were served tea and coffee, a round of parlor games was played in an effort to distract the children"s attention from the front drawing room, where Charley"s parents were now busy lighting the candles. (The element of surprise surprise was crucial here, and as we shall see it was something that distinguished the Christmas tree ritual from other modes of presenting children with their gifts.) was crucial here, and as we shall see it was something that distinguished the Christmas tree ritual from other modes of presenting children with their gifts.) Finally, the double doors were thrown open and the children poured in, their voices instantaneously hushed. "Their faces were upturned to the blaze, all eyes wide open, all lips parted, all steps arrested. n.o.body spoke, only Charley leaped for joy." After a few moments the children discovered that the tree "bore something eatable," and "the babble began again." The children were told to take what they could from the tree without burning themselves on the candles. (Martineau reported that "we tall people kept watch, and helped them with good things from the higher branches.") After the children had eaten their fill of the edibles, the evening continued with dancing and mugs of "steaming mulled wine." By eleven, all the other guests had gone home; little Charley was in bed; and Harriet Martineau herself was left alone with the boy"s parents, Charles and Eliza Folien. It had been a delightful evening, and Martineau concluded her account by predicting that the Christmas tree ritual would surely become an established American tradition.2 KARL FOLLEN"S STORY Harriet Martineau"s story of little Charley Follen"s Christmas tree was accurate enough, even if this was not the first American Christmas tree. But in an important way the story was misleading. For when Martineau reported the episode, she placed it in a context that implied that she had simply stumbled upon it during the course of her travels. The episode appeared as part of a catchall chapter in Martineau"s book, a chapter she called "Hot and Cold Weather," about seasonal phenomena in New England.
Martineau"s evening with the Follens was anything but an accident of travel, and it hardly took place as part of the ordinary New England seasonal cycle. Martineau and the Follens had met only a few months earlier, but in the course of those few months they had become fast personal friends and political allies in a cause that was changing the course of their lives. Harriet Martineau had gone to visit the Follens that evening to chart their mutual plans at a moment of crisis, a crisis that was forcing them to make a difficult choice between their personal principles and their professional careers. The issue that precipitated the crisis was nothing less than the movement to abolish slavery in America. It is a story that bears telling in some detail.
IF C CHARLES F FOLLEN HAD not died in 1840 at the age of 43 (in the explosion of a steamship), he would in all probability be remembered today in connection with something more important than the American Christmas tree. Even as it stands, however, Follen"s career is fascinating. Somewhat like Thomas Paine before him, he was a radical on two continents. Even before coming to America in 1825 in his late twenties, Follen had been exiled from Germany, and then from Switzerland, for his revolutionary activities. not died in 1840 at the age of 43 (in the explosion of a steamship), he would in all probability be remembered today in connection with something more important than the American Christmas tree. Even as it stands, however, Follen"s career is fascinating. Somewhat like Thomas Paine before him, he was a radical on two continents. Even before coming to America in 1825 in his late twenties, Follen had been exiled from Germany, and then from Switzerland, for his revolutionary activities.
Karl Follen, as he was named at birth, was no simple product of German folk culture. He was a scion of the German elite, the son of a respected judge-almost the German equivalent of Clement Clarke Moore. But early in his life Follen moved in a very different direction than Moore. He became a youthful revolutionary, a representative of the emerging liberal nationalist movement in Germany. As a university student, Follen auth.o.r.ed an incendiary political song and was actually arrested for complicity in a political murder (he was acquitted). Appointed a member of the faculty at the University of Jena in 1820 (at the age of 24), Follen continued his political activities and was forced into exile in Switzerland, where he received another professional position; but four years later he was compelled to flee once again (in the face of new charges that he had organized a revolutionary cell). This time Follen found refuge in America. He arrived in New York, having learned English during the voyage and bearing letters of introduction from another European revolutionary, the aged Marquis de Lafayette, who suggested that he try to find employment in the Boston area. Follen followed that advice, and headed for Cambridge.3 Even before he arrived on New England soil, Folien stopped off in New York to meet a woman we have already met, the writer Catharine Maria Sedgwick, whose novel Redwood Redwood was the first book he had read in the English language. Catharine Sedgwick obviously admired Follen"s intelligence and culture, his gentility, and his republican principles. The following summer she invited him to Stockbridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, to meet the rest of the Sedgwick clan. Then, that fall, Sedgwick introduced Folien to one of her oldest and most intimate friends, Eliza Cabot of Boston. Two years later Folien and Cabot married, and in 1830 they had a child, who was christened Charles after the English version of his father"s name. was the first book he had read in the English language. Catharine Sedgwick obviously admired Follen"s intelligence and culture, his gentility, and his republican principles. The following summer she invited him to Stockbridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, to meet the rest of the Sedgwick clan. Then, that fall, Sedgwick introduced Folien to one of her oldest and most intimate friends, Eliza Cabot of Boston. Two years later Folien and Cabot married, and in 1830 they had a child, who was christened Charles after the English version of his father"s name.4 Charles Folien (as he was now being called) had fallen in love with the United States, a nation that promised to fulfill the republican values for which he had been striving vainly in Europe. He worked hard to make a new career in his new home, and in this he was eminently successful. Living in Cambridge, Folien auth.o.r.ed books on the German language (as yet little studied in the United States) and taught German part-time at Harvard. He even established and ran a gymnasium in the Harvard area. Above all, he formed close ties with the liberal Unitarian establishment that dominated Harvard and Boston. Folien was a deeply religious man as well as an enlightened republican, and he found Unitarianism wholly compatible with his own progressive Christian beliefs.
In 1830, five years after his arrival in America, Folien reached what would prove to be the pinnacle of his new life. That year he was made a minister in the Unitarian Church, and he became a U.S. citizen. Most important of all, he was appointed to a full-time faculty position at Harvard, a new professorship of German literature that had been given five years" funding by a group of his admirers, with the expectation that Harvard would pick up the tab thereafter. Little Charley was born in 1830, too, and the next year the family moved into a new house. Folien was flying high.5 But within less than five years, the radical commitments that had brought him to America in the first place brought him down once again. This time the issue was slavery, a subject that was just beginning to arouse feelings of urgent intensity in a handful of Americans. In 1831 William Lloyd Garrison began publishing his abolitionist journal, The Liberator The Liberator, in Boston, where, that same year, he organized the American Anti-Slavery Society. Folien quickly sensed the parallels between the antislavery movement and the principles he had stood for in Germany; by 1834 he had become one of the most dedicated of Garrison"s followers. He even helped organize a Cambridge Anti-Slavery Society, based at Harvard. But radical abolitionism did not sit well with most Northerners, even with the Boston Unitarian establishment, whose members were offended by what they regarded as its vulgar style as well as its constant insistence that abolition be total total and and immediate immediate. William Lloyd Garrison was regarded by most of Follen"s acquaintances as a crazy man, and a rather uncouth one at that. (Even Follen himself was occasionally critical of Garrison"s style, though never of his principles.)6 Charles Follen was warned that becoming an active abolitionist would surely jeopardize his professional prospects, but he was too much a man of principle to let that get in the way. Anyway, he had been through it all before, back in Europe. Charles Follen was warned that becoming an active abolitionist would surely jeopardize his professional prospects, but he was too much a man of principle to let that get in the way. Anyway, he had been through it all before, back in Europe.
Charles Follen. This engraving, the only known likeness of Follen, appeared as the frontispiece to the biography that Eliza Follen published in 1841, just a year after her husband"s tragic death in the explosion of the steamship Lexington. (Courtesy, Harvard College Library) Lexington. (Courtesy, Harvard College Library) His fall was heroic. In early 1834 Follen became an active member and officer of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. He did so against the urgings of his Harvard colleagues, who warned him that it would cost him his position. (The professorship would expire in 1835, and only at that point would it be made permanent-or else terminated. In effect, Follen would be coming up for tenure.) Follen"s friends were of course correct. Early in 1835 he learned that his appointment would terminate at the end of the spring semester.7 He and his family (little Charley turned 5 that year) would be left high and dry, with no source of income. (Eliza Follen may have been born into the prominent Cabot family, but she had few resources of her own, and the family did not come to her a.s.sistance on this occasion.) He and his family (little Charley turned 5 that year) would be left high and dry, with no source of income. (Eliza Follen may have been born into the prominent Cabot family, but she had few resources of her own, and the family did not come to her a.s.sistance on this occasion.) For the moment, though, Follen was rescued by his remaining admirers, who arranged for him to have what appeared to be an ideal position. He would oversee the education of the two children of a wealthy Boston merchant, James Perkins, who had recently died (and whose widow was emotionally incapacitated). In return for this part-time work, Follen was to have the use of the Perkinses" house, and he would be paid the comfortable annual salary of $2,000. "The fortune of the Follens seems like a Fairy-tale," Catharine Sedgwick wrote when she learned the good news.8 This time it was Follen"s educational principles that got him into trouble. Follen took the teaching of children seriously indeed. He was committed to a progressive pedagogical strategy, derived largely from the work of the Swiss reformer Johann Pestalozzi. Pestalozzi a.s.sumed that children were intrinsically perfect creatures to begin with, and that education should therefore consist in the cultivation of those attributes that were already present in their young souls. Follen wrote (in what amounted to his job proposal) that he intended to "study their natures," so as to "awake every dormant energy" the two boys already possessed.9 This was the kind of approach that struck many people (including many Unitarians) as leading inevitably to an indiscriminate parental indulgence of children in their immature desires and whims. This was the kind of approach that struck many people (including many Unitarians) as leading inevitably to an indiscriminate parental indulgence of children in their immature desires and whims.
What happened next is not wholly clear. But it appears that Follen"s political enemies used his progressive educational ideas against him, and when Follen, predictably enough, refused once again to retreat from his principles, he learned that he was once again out of a job. The bad news arrived in mid-December 1835, just a couple of weeks before Christmas.10 As if that were not enough, Follen"s personal crisis was part of a larger crisis in the abolitionist movement. The last months of the year 1835 witnessed a series of verbal and physical attacks on the abolitionist movement (abolitionists later referred to this period as a "reign of terror"). In October, William Lloyd Garrison was physically a.s.saulted by a mob which dragged him through the streets of Boston with a halter around his waist. Most Bostonians were convinced that Garrison"s own behavior had brought on such treatment, and indeed that additional steps had to be taken to prevent the abolitionists from provoking further public disorder. With additional pressure coming from Southern quarters, the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature was soon considering a law that would effectively ban most abolitionist activities.
Charles Folien played a role in that episode, too. Early in 1836 he testified against the proposed antiabolitionist bill at a public legislative hearing. On that occasion he was silenced by the committee chairman and threatened with charges of contempt. Through these trying hours, as always, Folien maintained his characteristically calm, patient demeanor, but he did not retreat a single inch.11 He was a man of extraordinary principle and tenacity, an intellectual who was above all an effective moral leader-a genteel counterweight to William Lloyd Garrison. But he was also a man without a job. And it was in connection with all these troubles, just in time for the end of the Christmas season, that Harriet Martineau came to visit. He was a man of extraordinary principle and tenacity, an intellectual who was above all an effective moral leader-a genteel counterweight to William Lloyd Garrison. But he was also a man without a job. And it was in connection with all these troubles, just in time for the end of the Christmas season, that Harriet Martineau came to visit.
HARRIET MARTINEAU"S STORY Her visit was no coincidence. Martineau herself had been born (in 1802) into an English Unitarian family, though one less distinguished socially than the Sedgwicks or the Boston Unitarian establishment. By the time of her American tour Martineau had become a famous writer. She had arrived in the United States in mid-1834, coming (with a publisher"s travel advance) with the express intention of writing a book about life in the new nation.12 At first, as she traveled around the country, Martineau was welcomed and feted everywhere. Because of her connection with the Unitarian community, one of the Americans to whom Martineau received an introduction was Catharine Sedgwick (whose literary renown made her one of the best-known American Unitarians), and Stockbridge was the first place Martineau visited outside the New York City area. The two women quickly became friends. Martineau was offering her "love" to Sedgwick as early as December 1834, and urging the American writer to join her the following summer on a trip to the western states. (Sedgwick initially agreed, but had second thoughts and backed out because she was seeing a new book through the press.13) Harriet Martineau spent part of the summer of 1835 in Stockbridge, where the Sedgwicks once again were her hosts.14 Returning to Boston during the autumn, she met and quickly befriended Charles Folien. It was in some measure in response to Follens urging that Martineau attended an abolitionist women"s meeting, held in Boston on November 19, in the midst of the "reign of terror." She came to this meeting in the role of a reporter, but by the time she left she had become an avowed abolitionist. In the course of the meeting a note was pa.s.sed to Martineau, asking her to express her opinion of what she had heard. Martineau did so, but only with great reluctance, because she found that she was in agreement with the abolitionists, principles and knew that making a public gesture of solidarity with them would have the effect of alienating her from most of her American acquaintances-and thereby cutting off her access to most of the contacts on which she depended for the book she was writing. As Martineau later put it: "I foresaw that almost every house in Boston, except those of the abolitionists, would be shut against me; that my relation to the country would be completely changed, as I should suddenly be transformed from being a guest and an observer to being considered a missionary or a spy...." As she would acknowledge twenty years later, "[t]he moment of reading this note was one of the most painful of my life." Returning to Boston during the autumn, she met and quickly befriended Charles Folien. It was in some measure in response to Follens urging that Martineau attended an abolitionist women"s meeting, held in Boston on November 19, in the midst of the "reign of terror." She came to this meeting in the role of a reporter, but by the time she left she had become an avowed abolitionist. In the course of the meeting a note was pa.s.sed to Martineau, asking her to express her opinion of what she had heard. Martineau did so, but only with great reluctance, because she found that she was in agreement with the abolitionists, principles and knew that making a public gesture of solidarity with them would have the effect of alienating her from most of her American acquaintances-and thereby cutting off her access to most of the contacts on which she depended for the book she was writing. As Martineau later put it: "I foresaw that almost every house in Boston, except those of the abolitionists, would be shut against me; that my relation to the country would be completely changed, as I should suddenly be transformed from being a guest and an observer to being considered a missionary or a spy...." As she would acknowledge twenty years later, "[t]he moment of reading this note was one of the most painful of my life."15 Martineaus foreboding was correct. The Boston papers reported (and ridiculed) her avowal of abolitionist sympathies, and those reports were quickly reprinted throughout the United States. By the following spring she was forced to change the itinerary of her postponed western trip in order to avoid the prospect of encountering personal danger. (As it turned out, she ended up taking this trip in the company of the Follens themselves-and using it not simply as a professional tour but also as an opportunity to engage in abolitionist activities.) Martineau had transformed herself from a journalist into an activist. She would always recall her American sojourn as a profoundly transforming episode in her life. For a time, she seriously considered returning permanently to America to engage in abolitionist work. She regarded Charles Follen as her "very nearest friend, guide, and guardian," and to the end of her life she kept his portrait (next to one of William Lloyd Garrison) in her parlor.16 In the meantime, soon after her political coming-out in November 1835, Martineau returned to Boston (she had meanwhile taken a brief tour of some nearby communities) in order to spend New Year"s with the Follens.17 Both of them were under heavy pressure just then; Martineau had just lost her social credibility, and Charles Follen had just lost his post as tutor to the Perkins children. The visit would be a time for mutual commiseration, and also a chance to plan a strategy for what would be (it was now clear) the abolitionist focus of the rest of Martineau"s American visit, including the western trip that she would take several months later in the Follens" company. Both of them were under heavy pressure just then; Martineau had just lost her social credibility, and Charles Follen had just lost his post as tutor to the Perkins children. The visit would be a time for mutual commiseration, and also a chance to plan a strategy for what would be (it was now clear) the abolitionist focus of the rest of Martineau"s American visit, including the western trip that she would take several months later in the Follens" company.
A few days before their holiday reunion (it actually took place on New Year"s Eve), Follen wrote to Martineau in mock-conspiratorial language: "I rejoice in the prospect of having you with us next Friday, to settle the affairs of this nether world at least, at this Congress of our Holy Triple Alliance [i.e., Charles and Eliza Folien and Martineau herself]." A week or so earlier, Folien sent her a more serious letter, deeply personal in tone. In that letter Folien articulated to Martineau what the two of them had recently done. They had each "stepped out of the safe vessel of selfish indifference, and ventured to walk on troubled waters of philanthropic enterprise." As a result, both of them were suffering the fate of principled radicals of all ages and cultures, being either "shunned with silent condemnation as abolitionists, democrats, agrarians, or hailed with the cries of"Crucify! crucify!" as fanatics and incendiaries." Folien went on, however, to a.s.sure Martineau that in their own deepening friendship they could both find an oasis of intimate serenity: "But if the world separate itself from us, it leads us to find a world in ourselves and each other...."18 At their reunion, Charles Folien went out of his way to seal his intimacy with Martineau, and also to offer the promised oasis of serenity, by setting up little Charley"s Christmas tree in her presence. (The Follens had postponed the ritual until New Year"s Eve in order to accommodate Martineau"s schedule.) The tree was a success, a time of joy for the grownups as well as for little Charley and his friends (these friends were in fact none other than the Perkins children; indeed, the whole event took place in the Perkinses" house, where the Follens were still living). The rest of the agenda-the commiseration and the political planning-could presumably wait until the next morning.
IN HER PUBLISHED ACCOUNT, Harriet Martineau took pains to conceal all this, or at least to dissociate it from the story of little Charley"s Christmas tree. She did not even identify the Follens by name in her account, referring to them only as "Charley"s father and mother."19 But it should be clear to us that Martineau"s experience of what she believed to be the introduction of the Christmas tree into America was actually embedded in a thick matrix of political controversy. Little Charley"s Christmas tree was a carefully planned moment of domestic peace in the midst of crisis and scandal. But it should be clear to us that Martineau"s experience of what she believed to be the introduction of the Christmas tree into America was actually embedded in a thick matrix of political controversy. Little Charley"s Christmas tree was a carefully planned moment of domestic peace in the midst of crisis and scandal.
Those connections make for an interesting story, and one that has not been told. But from another angle they point to broader developments. First, they confirm something that historians have recently come to notice: There were important similarities between the antislavery sensibility and the new att.i.tude toward children. Abolitionists and educational reformers shared a joint empathy for people who were powerless to resist the wrath of those who wielded authority over them-slaves and children, respectively. (Both types of reformers had a particular abhorrence of the use of the lash as a form of punishment.)20 Second, we can view the juxtaposition of the two stories (the Christmas tree and the political crisis) as a telling instance of another phenomenon that historians have been pointing to: the way that middle-cla.s.s people in the early nineteenth century went about creating for themselves a private s.p.a.ce, radically cut off from the pressures of the world outside and centered around the happiness of children.21 In fact, what Charles Follen did in 1835 is similar in that sense to what Clement Clarke Moore had done more than a decade earlier, although his reasons-Moore was a reactionary, Follen a radical-were profoundly different. But both men had reason to feel alienated from their respective communities, and both responded by turning inward, to their own children, and using Christmas as the occasion for doing so. In fact, what Charles Follen did in 1835 is similar in that sense to what Clement Clarke Moore had done more than a decade earlier, although his reasons-Moore was a reactionary, Follen a radical-were profoundly different. But both men had reason to feel alienated from their respective communities, and both responded by turning inward, to their own children, and using Christmas as the occasion for doing so.
It is no coincidence that radical abolitionists were in the vanguard of the new child-centered Christmas. Two years earlier, in 1833, the Anti-slavery Society had formed a children"s chorus, the Boston Garrison Juvenile Choir (its members may have been African-Americans), which gave a public concert on Christmas Day. One of the numbers it performed was "The Cradle Song;" another was t.i.tled "The Sugar Plums." And beginning in 1834 (and continuing each year for more than two decades) the Garrisonians held an annual Antislavery Fair to raise money for the cause-invariably, on the days just before Christmas. In 1836 several abolitionists presented Garrisons own 10-month-old son George with shoes, stockings, mittens, and "a very beautiful gown" that had been offered at that year"s fair. "Pretty well for the young fanatic!" the proud father noted privately-and with uncharacteristically self-deprecating wit.22 In fact, according to a report published in Garrison"s magazine The Liberator The Liberator, the very first of these Antislavery Fairs (the one in 1834) displayed an "evergreen shrub" that bore another witty message: "Persons are requested not to handle the articles, which, like slavery, are too "delicate" to be touched." to be touched."23 (This was a sarcastic reference to the reluctance of most respectable Americans to discuss the slavery issue.) Humor aside, if any of the articles for sale at the 1834 fair were actually attached to this evergreen shrub (or placed around it), then //would have the honor of being the first public Christmas tree displayed in the United States. (This was a sarcastic reference to the reluctance of most respectable Americans to discuss the slavery issue.) Humor aside, if any of the articles for sale at the 1834 fair were actually attached to this evergreen shrub (or placed around it), then //would have the honor of being the first public Christmas tree displayed in the United States.
"Christmas Eve" (1836). This is the first image of a Christmas tree to be printed in the United States. It appeared in Boston in 1836, as the frontispiece to The Strangers Gift The Strangers Gift, a Gift Book written by a German immigrant named Herman Bok.u.m, a man who had taken over Charles Follens old job of teaching the German language on a part-time basis at Harvard. The tree is illuminated by open candles. The door at the right suggests that the children have only moments earlier been allowed to enter the room. (Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society) (Courtesy, American Antiquarian Society) Catharine Sedgwick"s Christmas Tree Catharine Sedgwick declined to support the abolitionist ideology endorsed by Martineau and the Follens, but she continued to count them among her closest friends. And during the same Christmas season in which Martineau witnessed the Follens" Christmas tree, Sedgwick published a story of her own, written earlier that year, in which a Christmas tree played a small but distinct part. The story was t.i.tled "New Year"s Day." (Like the Follens" Christmas tree, Catharine Sedgwick"s fictional tree was set up for New Year"s Day rather than Christmas itself.) Inasmuch as Martineau"s account of the Follens was not published for another two years, it was actually Sedgwick"s story that has the honor of introducing this ritual into American literature.
Sedgwick"s fictional account resembled Martineau"s report except that here the family that performs the ritual was not German but of old Yankee stock-Yankees living in New York City, as Catharine Sedgwick herself was doing. But this fictional tree was set up at the behest of a German immigrant, the young heroine"s maidservant, Madeleine. The heroine herself has been planning to give Christmas presents to each of her younger siblings (as well as to her father), and the maidservant has "persuaded her young mistress to arrange the gifts after the fashion of her father-land" father-land"-that is, by hanging them on a tree secretly set up in the rear parlor, a room the children rarely enter. Together Lizzy and Madeleine hang up Lizzy"s gifts: Never did Christmas tree bear more multifarious fruit,-for St. Nicholas, that most benign of all the saints of the Calendar, had through the hands of many a ministering priest and priestess, showered his gifts. The st.u.r.diest branch drooped with its burden of books, chess-men, puzzles, &c., for Julius, a stripling of thirteen. Dolls, birds, beasts, and boxes were hung on the lesser limbs. A regiment of soldiers had alighted on one bough, and Noah"s ark was anch.o.r.ed to another, and to all the slender branches were attached cherries, plumbs [sic], strawberries and peaches as tempting, and at least as sweet, as the fruits of paradise.24 As it turns out, the Christmas tree plays only a small role in this story, and the maidservant Madeleine does not make any further appearances. As far as I can tell (and I have carefully read the family"s correspondence during these years), there was no German maidservant in Catharine Sedgwick"s house, and no Christmas tree. It is possible, of course, that Sedgwick learned of the tree through a neighbor"s maidservant. What is far more likely is that she learned about it from the Follens themselves.
But there was much else in Sedgwick"s short story that clearly was was based on her immediate experience. And in order to understand the story (and so to understand the meaning that Christmas trees bore at the moment of their introduction into American literature), it is necessary to make still another visit to the Sedgwicks" New York household during the Christmas season. based on her immediate experience. And in order to understand the story (and so to understand the meaning that Christmas trees bore at the moment of their introduction into American literature), it is necessary to make still another visit to the Sedgwicks" New York household during the Christmas season.
Catharine Sedgwick was in the habit of spending her winters in the New York home of her brother Robert Sedgwick and his wife, Elizabeth Ellery Sedgwick (see Chapter 4 Chapter 4). This house was a fashionable place, perhaps too much so for Catharine"s more understated tastes. Elizabeth Ellery Sedgwick cared intensely about acc.u.mulating both material goods and success in New York"s fashionable social circuits, and she had a sense that by lavishing herself with the one she would help ensure herself the other. Each year Mrs. Sedgwick proudly reported to her father what she had been given that holiday season and also the number of visitors who had called upon her household on New Year"s Day (one year she boasted that the total was "about 70 gentlemen"). In turn, she noted that her husband, Robert, "made 63 calls in five hours, so you may judge how he walked." (Such a schedule meant that each visit took less than five minutes, including traveling time.) Elizabeth Sedgwick even thought about her children"s holiday gifts in the context of the fashionable world. Recalling how she had just greeted her seventy callers in the front room of her house, Mrs. Sedgwick proudly noted that the children "occupied the back parlor, and made a pretty perspective for us as we received our visitors." Nor did she fail to note that several of the children"s gifts were "very valuable."25 Out of the sense of n.o.blesse that governed so much of her life, Catharine Sedgwick partic.i.p.ated fully in the fashionable ritual of receiving the gentlemen callers. But the visitations wore on her patience. In a private letter (written to a favorite young niece) Sedgwick noted that on New Year"s Day, 1835, she had greeted "between 70 & 80" gentlemen, but she added that neither their names nor their fashionable witticisms (the latter presumably repeated at every stop) were worth pa.s.sing along. A single example would have to do, Sedgwick confided to her niece. One of the callers had chosen to comment cleverly on the beautiful winter weather (the sun had come out on that very day) by comparing it to the seasonal appearance of Gift Books (or literary "annuals," as they were also known): "He said "Nature has come out with her her annual at last, & as bright as the best of them-the gentlemen find it a book of beauty."" annual at last, & as bright as the best of them-the gentlemen find it a book of beauty.""26 The following year Catharine Sedgwick took an authors revenge, in the form of a mocking fictionalized account of that same experience. Her account made up the central section of the short story in which the Christmas tree also figured. In Sedgwick"s fictional rendering the woman who receives the visitors is the tale"s teenage heroine, a charming and attractive girl named Lizzy Percival, the oldest child in a New York family of great wealth and prominence, and the character who obviously represents Catharine Sedgwick herself. (Lizzy Percival is sweet, caring, and sincere-a young woman who shares Catharine Sedgwick"s disdain for artifice.) Like the Sedgwicks, the fictional Percival family experienced a busy New Year"s Day: "their visitors were innumerable, and a continual stream poured in and poured out," uttering in the process "the stereotyped sayings of the season." When one of their visitors referred to the New Year"s ritual as a "fine old custom" created by "our Dutch ancestors," Lizzy secretly thought of him as an "interloper who had not a drop of... Dutch blood." (And when another asked for "whiskey-punch," Lizzy modestly reminded him that alcohol had been ""banished from all refined society."" Catharine Sedgwick evidently supported the detoxification of New Year"s visitations.) Every one of Lizzy"s fictional visitors spoke in stock phrases, and most of them were coa.r.s.e, materialistic, and compet.i.tive. One man boasted that his wife had received fully 200 visitors the previous year. Another openly compared the hospitality he had received at various houses. A third betrayed the confidence of a woman he knew-a relative of Lizzy"s who had declined to receive visitors that day on grounds of ill health-by revealing that the woman was not sick at all: """ Say to my friends, "I"m sick, I"m dead [she had confided]." But, between ourselves, my dear Lizzy, the draperies to the drawing-room curtains are not completed-that"s all.""27 The least offensive of the fictional visitors were the ones who merely attempted to be clever. Among these was a young man whose witticism will already be familiar to us. Echoing almost verbatim Sedgwick"s earlier, real-life report, this young man extolled the weather "and said that nature had, last of all the publishers, come out with her annual, and the gentlemen had found it "a book of beauty.""28 This kind of extended (and autobiographical) satire provides a literary contrast that sets off the brief but important appearance of the Christmas tree in this story. Set in this new context, its meaning is simple: Catharine Sedgwicks Christmas tree is a.s.sociated with everything that is absent in the fashionable visitation ritual. It is a.s.sociated with children-innocent, good-hearted children-and the private s.p.a.ce of a purely domestic ritual. In effect, Catharine Sedgwick had turned the tables on the sheriff (discussed in Chapter 3 Chapter 3) who had identified with the world of alcohol and male culture and dismissed the world of women (and temperance) as cold comfort.
Here again, Catharine Sedgwicks fictional presentation stands in contrast to the Sedgwicks" actual experience. In real life, as we have seen, the children of Robert and Elizabeth Sedgwick were playing with their presents in the back parlor at the same time that Catharine and Elizabeth Sedgwick were receiving their fashionable visitors in the front one. In fact, the door between the two rooms remained open the entire time. Elizabeth Sedgwick chose to comment on the children"s activities only by noting how they enhanced the charm of the adult ritual: "the children occupied the back parlor, and made a pretty perspective for us as we received our visitors." But in Catharine Sedgwick"s fictionalized account of the same event, the two rituals appeared to be taking place in a separate time and s.p.a.ce-and it was crucial that they did.
The central theme of Sedgwick"s story is the contrast between artifice and authenticity. The holiday season functioned as a literary occasion on which it was easy to carve out a divide between the private and the public worlds, and to take the pleasures of the former more seriously than the demands of the latter. That is the point of the love story in which Sedgwick"s plot is superficially framed (and which is not worth retelling here). And it is the reason Sedgwick chose to set the story at Christmas, a time when, as she saw it, the most artificial rituals were juxtaposed with the most authentic ones. Sedgwick"s young heroine, Lizzy Percival, may be able to hold her own in repartee with the gentlemen visitors, but it is to the private domestic ritual that her heart belongs. Through the character of Lizzy, Sedgwick manages to establish a core of authenticity in a household that is besieged from without and within by the forces of social convention, whether "the stereotyped sayings of the season" or the equally stereotyped holiday presents the real-life Sedgwick children received.
I don"t know exactly what those presents were, but the children"s mother did report that they were numerous and "some of them [were] very valuable." When Catharine Sedgwick fictionalized this part of her experience she was more specific. The toys that Lizzy Percival placed on the Christmas tree consisted of things like books, dolls, animals, and a regiment of toy soldiers. At first glance these, too, would appear to be commercial toys, toys she has bought, the kind of toys that are available at any of number of New York shops. But as the children-Lizzy"s younger brothers and sisters-comment on their gifts one by one, it becomes absolutely clear that Lizzy has prepared them all herself.
Catharine Maria Sedgwick. This picture shows the author as a young woman, and suggests something of the charm that helped endear her to a wide circle of acquaintances. (Courtesy of the Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library) (Courtesy of the Fine Arts Library, Harvard College Library) Consider the children"s responses. One of the brothers receives "a nice book, filled with copies for him to draw after;" and exclaims pointedly, ""how much pains you have taken to do this for me! how much time and trouble you have spent upon it....!"" A sister receives a beaded bag and makes the same point: "?, sister Lizzy! "I did not know when I spilt all your beads that you was knitting this bag for me ... !"" The dolls that two other siblings receive may have been store-bought, but they come dressed in clothing Lizzy has sewn. ("?, Anne, your doll is dressed just like mine; sister has even worked their pocket handkerchiefs."") Even the toy soldiers have been hand-finished: ""Sister, sister, did you paint these soldiers?" cried Hal; "kiss me, you are the best sister that ever lived."" One of the children speaks for them all when, thanking Lizzy for the handembroidered ap.r.o.n she has received, she exclaims, ""O papa! does not sister do every thing for us?""
Finally, we learn that Lizzy has done the same for her father, too; she presents him with "a pair of slippers ..., beautifully wrought by her own hands," together with "several pairs of fine woolen hose which she had knit for him, in her intervals of leisure." Sedgwick hammers the point home: "They were just such as he liked, just such as he could not buy, just such as n.o.body but Lizzy could knit...."29 Just such as he could not buy. As early as this story, written in the mid-1830s, Catharine Sedgwick was able to make a point of how special it was for Christmas presents to be handmade or even hand-finished. More to the point, Sedgwick chose to have all these gifts made by hand in order to reinforce further the point she had already suggested by the German Christmas tree: The true essence of the Christmas gift exchange must be forged outside the fevered crucible of market relations.
HANDMADE GIFTS, a German maidservant, and a Christmas tree-by employing such literary tactics, Catharine Sedgwick was partially able to resolve the contradiction between market relations and intimate personal ones. But there was one aspect of the contradiction that remained immune to such a literary solution: the tension between the story"s message and the medium that carried it. After all, whether or not Catharine Sedgwick actually knew a maidservant like the fictional Madeleine, her story conveyed the impression that the tree really was a folk tradition observed by servant girls. But in fact it was not the German maidservant Madeleine who effectively spread the idea of the Christmas tree throughout American culture. It was the Yankee patrician Catharine Sedgwick-popular author and Unitarian daughter of a Ma.s.sachusetts congressman-who accomplished that. Even more important, Sedgwick did this not by setting up such a tree but by writing a story about it-and publishing that story in a popular Gift Book read by middle-cla.s.s readers throughout America, a Gift Book that went on sale just in time for the 1835 holiday season. Remember that the fashionable gentleman visitor (in both Sedgwick"s story and her actual experience) had tried to construct a stylish pun by speaking of Mother Nature as if she were the publisher of just such an annual. (In fact, the particular volume in which Sedgwick"s story appeared-a Gift Book called The Token The Token-remains notable to literary historians for another reason entirely: It contains the first publication of two important stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne-"The May-Pole of Merry Mount" and "The Ministers Black Veil.") Literary annuals were hardly produced in the workshops of folk culture. They were a part of the fashionable new commercial world, a world that Catharine Sedgwick was critiquing from within.30 Sedgwicks readers may unconsciously have a.s.sumed that they were learning about Christmas trees directly from the folk character Madeleine, but in fact the path of transmission was nothing other than the latest holiday-season commodity-a Gift Book that had been purchased as a present in a fashionable shop. Sedgwicks readers may unconsciously have a.s.sumed that they were learning about Christmas trees directly from the folk character Madeleine, but in fact the path of transmission was nothing other than the latest holiday-season commodity-a Gift Book that had been purchased as a present in a fashionable shop.
TOWARD A H HISTORY OF C CHRISTMAS T TREES.
We have happened upon an important paradox: The Christmas tree entered American society through the avenues of commercial culture, but it did so in the name of precommercial folk culture. This was exactly what happened with the figure of Santa Claus. We might go so far as to say that both rituals were part of an early "folk revival" of sorts, a revival that emerged close behind the full-blown emergence of commercial culture itself.
It is commonplace to believe that Christmas trees were transmitted to America by early German immigrants in Pennsylvania. And in all probability, American Christmas trees did, indeed, first appear in the Pennsylvania German community in the early nineteenth century. But it is unlikely that they made their appearance much before 1820. Folklorists have done their best to seek out the first tree in Pennsylvania, and it seems plain that credible evidence of actual Christmas trees dates no earlier than the 181os. In 1819 (possibly as early as 1812), an immigrant artist from Germany drew a picture of a tree he saw during a tour of the Pennsylvania countryside, and that picture has been preserved in his sketchbooks. The first extant verbal verbal reference to Christmas trees dates from the very next year, 1821 (it is an entry in the diary of a Lancaster resident, who reported that his children had gone to a nearby sawmill "for Christmas trees"). reference to Christmas trees dates from the very next year, 1821 (it is an entry in the diary of a Lancaster resident, who reported that his children had gone to a nearby sawmill "for Christmas trees").31 After that, references begin to multiply. After that, references begin to multiply.
What this sequence suggests is that Christmas trees were first set up by Pennsylvania Germans sometime during the 1810s (the very decade during which St. Nicholas was introduced in New York). If that chronology holds, it is natural to wonder why Christmas trees were introduced in Pennsylvania at such a late date. Why didn"t they appear a century or so earlier, when the first Germans emigrated to Pennsylvania? The answer to this question is intriguing. It turns out that the Christmas tree was a relatively new tradition in Germany itself, one that was still emerging there in the early nineteenth century. In fact, the story of the German Christmas tree has parallels to that of the Dutch Santa Claus. What happened in both cases was that a small group of people suddenly began to make much of what had previously been a distinctly minor tradition.
An Early American Christmas Tree. This sketch was drawn from life (in either 1812 or 1819) by John Lewis Krimmel, a German painter who had emigrated to Philadelphia, and who drew the sketch while touring the Pennsylvania countryside. (Although Krimmel"s sketch is the first picture of an American Christmas tree, it was not printed until a few years ago.) The eleven people who appear here are apparently members of a single family. Judging from the dress and furnishings, this was a relatively prosperous household-a point of some significance in tracing the way Christmas trees were diffused through the Pennsylvania German community. (Courtesy, The Winterthur Library: Joseph Downs Collection of Ma.n.u.scripts and Printed Ephemera, No. Col. 308) (Courtesy, The Winterthur Library: Joseph Downs Collection of Ma.n.u.scripts and Printed Ephemera, No. Col. 308) A careful reading of the German sources suggests both a chronology and a pattern to this process. Before the last third of the eighteenth century, Christmas trees had been a localized custom, largely limited to a single place-the Alsatian capital of Strasbourg-where they seem to have developed by the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Strasbourg Christmas tree was apparently used as part of a judgmental judgmental Christmas ritual-much like the similar St. Nicholas ritual in Holland-in which good children were rewarded with bonbons provided by the "Christkindle" (i.e., the Christchild), while "disobedient" youngsters were punished by a figure known as "Hanstrapp," the local version of the Belsnickle. Christmas ritual-much like the similar St. Nicholas ritual in Holland-in which good children were rewarded with bonbons provided by the "Christkindle" (i.e., the Christchild), while "disobedient" youngsters were punished by a figure known as "Hanstrapp," the local version of the Belsnickle.32 The ritual began to spread to other parts of Germany-minus Hanstrapp-only after 1750. A key date in this development may have been 1771, when Strasbourg became the site of an extended visit by the young writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, who discovered in this city a new sense of "German" ident.i.ty that transformed his larger cultural vision. Goethe came to a.s.sociate the Christmas tree itself with that new awareness. In fact, a Christmas tree scene is included at a dramatic moment of the 1774 novel that established his literary reputation, The Sufferings of Young Werther The Sufferings of Young Werther (the scene takes place shortly before the hero"s suicide). (the scene takes place shortly before the hero"s suicide).
It was largely through Goethe and his literary colleagues that the Christmas tree spread to other parts of Germany. It did so as a fashionable new ritual that was perceived-even there-as an ancient and authentic folk tradition. Christmas trees were adopted by the elite in Berlin, for example, only in the 1810s. In 1820 a young American visitor, the future historian George Bancroft, saw a tree there in the home of his local host, the distinguished jurist Baron Friedrich Karl von Savigny-a man who had married the sister of Goethe"s mistress Bettina Brentano. (Bancroft reported this episode in vivid detail in a letter to his father, who was a Unitarian minister in Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts.)33 It was not until the 1830s that Christmas trees became a truly national practice in Germany. They were introduced to Munich, for example, only in 1830, by the queen of Bavaria. It seems fair, under the circ.u.mstances, to consider Christmas trees as something of an "invented tradition," much like Santa Claus in New York-a ritual picked up by the elite and spread via literary channels through a middle cla.s.s that was interested in discovering its "authentic" national culture.
By the early nineteenth century, Christmas trees were being described as a timeless tradition. In 1820-the same year that produced the earliest evidence of an actual Christmas tree in Pennsylvania-a story of modern European authorship, but set in medieval Germany, noted that on Christmas Eve "every family a.s.sembles all its members together and fathers and mothers are surrounded by their children; they light up a number of wax lights, which they suspend to the branches of a small fir-tree, which are also hung round with the presents they mean to make them." (The same story also informs us-remember, this is the fourteenth century-that "the shops in the streets" are filled with "toys of every kind.")34 As it happens, that story was reprinted in the United States the same year it was published in Europe. Its American venue was The Athenaeum The Athenaeum, a cosmopolitan literary magazine published in Boston by Unitarians and devoted to reprinting the latest European literary work. The story itself was trivial (even though it, rather than Catharine Sedgwicks 1835 story, may represent the first reference to Christmas trees that was published in the United States). Still, two things about it have a bearing on our our story. What matters first is the story"s plot. It deals with the redemption of a sinful mother by her selfless young child-a child who, like Jesus himself, was born on Christmas Eve (the story is t.i.tled "Christmas Eve; or, The Conversion"). The other point that matters is the place where the story was printed-in an organ of New England Unitarian culture. story. What matters first is the story"s plot. It deals with the redemption of a sinful mother by her selfless young child-a child who, like Jesus himself, was born on Christmas Eve (the story is t.i.tled "Christmas Eve; or, The Conversion"). The other point that matters is the place where the story was printed-in an organ of New England Unitarian culture.
UNITARIANS, CHRISTMAS T TREES, AND THE C CHARACTER OF C CHILDREN.
The two points are interrelated. By now it should be clear that the Christmas tree was spread throughout the United States in large measure by committed Unitarians. It is time to ask what their agenda was. Why did members of this group care so much about Christmas trees? Answering this question takes us along two important literary paths. The first starts with a famous British writer; the second, with a controversial Swiss educational reformer. Both paths run chiefly through the channels of Unitarian culture. And both constantly refer to the theme of selfless children.
Coleridge"s Children: The Ratzeburg File The British writer was Samuel Taylor Coleridge (17721834), the Romantic poet and essayist. Coleridge happened to spend the 1798 Christmas season in the German town of Ratzeburg, located near Hamburg in the northern part of Germany. He had gone to Germany three months earlier, shortly after making a professional decision that changed the shape of his career-he had just decided against pursuing a career as a minister in the Unitarian Church. (In addition, Coleridge had recently completed what would prove to be his two greatest poems, "Kubla Khan" and "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.") The 26-year-old poet spent much of the season socializing with the local elite and fending off invitations to attend their frequent holiday dances.35 But in the midst of these revels he witnessed a domestic Christmas tree, accompanied by a ritual that "pleased and interested" him so much that he published an account of it eleven years later, in a magazine he was then editing in England (the piece was published in time for the 1809 Christmas season). But in the midst of these revels he witnessed a domestic Christmas tree, accompanied by a ritual that "pleased and interested" him so much that he published an account of it eleven years later, in a magazine he was then editing in England (the piece was published in time for the 1809 Christmas season).
The tree that Coleridge saw was, as we might expect, the top of an evergreen fastened onto a table in one of the parlors in the house to which he had been invited, and there were lighted candles attached to its branches. But that wasn"t what most "pleased and interested" Coleridge. What really impressed him was a more important twist-for in the ceremony he witnessed, it was the children children who gave presents to their who gave presents to their parents parents, and not the other way around. Coleridge detailed the procedure: For three or four months before Christmas the girls are busy [working], and the boys save up their pocket-money, to make or purchase these presents. What the present is to be is cautiously kept secret, and the girls have a world of contrivances to conceal it....
Those, then, were the presents that were placed under the Christmas tree, to be opened on Christmas Eve "with kisses and embraces," in a ceremony that Coleridge found deeply moving: Where I witnessed this scene, there were eight or nine children, and the eldest daughter and the mother wept aloud for joy and tenderness; and the tears ran down the face of the father, and he clasped his children so tight to his breast-it seemed as if he did it to stifle the sob that was rising within him.-I was very much affected.36 Coleridge did not realize it, but this ritual seems to have been a strictly local one, conceivably even limited to the single household in which he observed it. He afforded only brief mention to the more standard ritual that took place the following day-the familiar ritual in which the parents gave presents to their children.37 Coleridge"s account left something of a wake in the United States, a wake that I have come to term "the Ratzeburg file." Coleridge originally published his Christmas recollections in 1809, in a short-lived magazine he edited called The Friend The Friend. The bound magazine was republished in London three times during the 1810s, and an American edition appeared in 1829 (in Burlington, Vermont). Catharine Sedgwick, for one, read the book no later than January 1836 and perhaps earlier.38 Actually, Coleridge"s account of the Ratzeburg Christmas tree had been printed as a separate item in the United States back in 1824, in the official journal of the Unitarian Church in America, the Christian Register Christian Register, published in Boston.39 Six years later parts of the account reappeared, without attribution, in a children"s book written by another Unitarian, Lydia Maria Child. Child, a novelist and an abolitionist, was best known at the time as the author of a cookbook, Six years later parts of the account reappeared, without attribution, in a children"s book written by another Unitarian, Lydia Maria Child. Child, a novelist and an abolitionist, was best known at the time as the author of a cookbook, The New England Frugal Housewife The New England Frugal Housewife. For the 1830 Christmas season she published a juvenile Gift Book, The Little Girls Own Book The Little Girls Own Book. This volume contained a collection of games, puzzles, and riddles. It is the last item in the book, t.i.tled "A Custom Worthy [of] Imitation," that is of interest to us here. For it was nothing other than a paraphrase of Coleridge"s report-except that Child did not refer to the Christmas tree itself but only to what we might think of as the central element in the ritual, the generational reversal in the gift exchange. (Child did not refer to Coleridge, either, or to Ratzeburg itself; instead, she implied that the ritual characterized Germany as a whole.) In Germany the children all make it a rule to prepare Christmas presents for their parents and brothers and sisters. Even the youngest contrive to offer something. For weeks before the important day arrives, they are as busy as little bees contriving and making such things as they suppose will be most agreeable.The great object is to keep each one ignorant of the present he, or she, is to receive, in order to surprise them when the offering is presented. A great deal of whispering, and innocent management is resorted to, to effect this purpose; and their little minds are brimful of the happy business.40 Another version of the same account appeared the very next year, 1832, in Keene, New Hampshire, in a children"s primer auth.o.r.ed by one J. K. Smith, Juvenile Lessons; or The Child"s First Reading Book Juvenile Lessons; or The Child"s First Reading Book. One of the reading lessons in this book was t.i.tled "Christmas Presents." This lesson began: "The children in the North part of Germany, have a custom which pleases me much. It is usual with them to make little presents to their parents at Christmas time." The lesson went on to tell its young readers: "For some time before this happy day, the girls are as busy as so many bees, and the boys are careful to save every cent of their pocket money." It then added confidentially: "They are very careful to keep all their plans secret; for they do not wish to have their parents know the pleasant surprise they are preparing for them, till the time arrives."
The evening before Christmas, they obtain leave to light one of the parlors, and here the presents for their parents are laid out with great care. When all things are ready, the parents are called in, and the dear little creatures present their gifts. It is a delightful scene of kisses and embraces, and frolick.
Smith concluded by expressing a hope that "the boys and girls in America would make such a good use of Christmas eve, and Christmas day."41 The same item reemerged one last time, at the very end of the decade, in 1840, in a children"s religious magazine, Youths Companion Youths Companion. Like the earlier reprintings, this version, too, was published in New England. But whereas the earlier examples had been a.s.sociated with Unitarians, the magazine in which this one appeared was published by their old opponents, the evangelical Congregationalists. This Congregationalist version actually came closest to Coleridge"s original account. The Christmas tree reappeared in it, and so did the town of Ratzeburg itself. In this story a group of children are discussing a new kind of Christmas ritual they have happened upon. One of the children explains: "I was reading something about it in one of papa"s books, the other day.... The perso