How Did the 1800s Create Christmas as We Know It?

The eighteen hundreds were a time of remarkable change in the Western world, including the birth of many holiday customs. A For a long time before the mid eighteen hundreds, people in England and by extension, the United States, barely celebrated Christmas at all. For the article, this episode is based on How Stuff Works. Spoke with doctor Bruce David Forbes, Professor Emeritis of Religious Studies at Morningside University in Sioux City, Iowa.

He said the Puritans opposed Christmas. They thought it was a Catholic thing and that people were partying too much. Even though the Puritan Revolution was in the sixteen hundreds and didn't last very long, the discouragement of Christmas lasted like a century and a half. It's kind of like Christmas disappeared. However, beginning around the middle of the eighteen hundreds,

forces began gathering around the holiday. We've already talked on the show about how gardening trends and successful marketing during that time made the poinsettia a Mexican winter plant and inner continental phenomenon. But let's talk about another plant mainstay, the Christmas tree. It turns out we may have that largely thanks to the young and fashionable British royal family of the mid eighteen hundreds, headed by Queen Victoria and

her husband Prince Albert. Forbes explained the Christmas tree we usually credit was starting in Germany. It comes to England because Victoria is of the House of Hanover and that's German. Prince Albert is German. In eighteen forty eight, London newspapers published a photo of Victoria and Albert, along with several of their children, gathered around a decorated Christmas tree on a table in England, and soon thereafter in America, families

everywhere began putting up their own Christmas trees. A Forbes said it took off immediately. In that image of Victoria and Albert, their Christmas tree is on a table and the presents are hanging from the tree or on the table. As the presidents get more and more crazy, of course, then we're going to need the bigger Christmas tree. And

now we have Florida stealing trees in our houses. And then there's Santa While Saint Nicholas was probably a real person celebrated in certain religious circles for centuries, it was the nineteenth century that transformed him into Santa Claus. Forbes said, what's Saint Nicholas. We don't know what's legend and what's historical. He supposedly lived in the three hundreds in what's now Turkey,

and he was a bishop. Nicholas had a reputation for generosity and was canonized a Forbes said, after that, he kind of becomes the protector of everybody. He's like a guardian angel. His Saint's Day is December sixth, so it's not Christmas, but it's in that season leading up to Christmas. Saint Nicholas was especially popular in the Netherlands, where he's known as Center Claus. It was the Dutch who imported

him to the Americas. Of Forbes said, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, Quakers, all those people did not do Christmas in early America. It was not a huge cultural thing. But in New York at the time New Amsterdam the Dutch continue these traditions.

That's how Saint Nicholas gets his toe in the door and the Dutch term Center Claus gets angelicized to Santa Claus A. Saint Nicholas's transformation to the modern Santa comes partially courtesy of writers like Clement Moore, who published a Visit from Saint Nicholas, perhaps better known as Twas the Night Before Christmas in eighteen twenty three, and Washington Irving, who wrote a number of as celebrating old English holiday

festivities and the Christmas spirit. These works introduced Saint Nicholas to a wider audience, and then Santa morphed from a jolly old elf with a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer to the figure with a fur lined coat, a

bushy white beard, and rosy cheeks. Thanks to a political cartoon from eighteen sixty two, inspired by tales of Saint Nicholas and folk art of elves from his native Germany, cartoonist Thomas Nast published the image of Santa bringing good, cheer and warm socks among other gifts to Union soldiers

on the title page of Harper's Weekly. Meanwhile, electric Christmas lights didn't become common in American households until the nineteen thirties, but like so many other Christmas traditions, they were born in the eighteen hundreds. In eighteen seventy one, businessman Edward Hibbert Johnson hired a young inventor named Thomas Edison at the Automatic Telegraph Company. When Edison left to form his

own company, Johnson went with him. Edison famously patented the electric light bulb in eighteen eighty, and Johnson invested some of his own money to start the Edison Lamp Company. Meanwhile, Christmas was candlelight, and that gave Johnson a great idea. He wired together eighty multi color Edison bulbs and wrapped them on a Christmas tree. The decoration got a lot of press, though they were still too expensive for most

people to afford for another few decades. But okay, there is one more part of the traditional Christmas season that we haven't discussed yet, commercialism. Okay. In eighteen forty three, English writer Charles Dickens published a story that would cement a particular form of Christmas cheer or should we say spirit in pop culture forever. In a Christmas Carol, grouchy

businessman Ebenezer Scrooge is visited by four ghosts. Marle accounts literally, it's what he does too much of anyway, and Scrooge winds up learning a lesson in humanity. But long before Christmas Carol was a December mainstay of local theaters and singing muppets alike. Dickens was, in his own time, wildly popular. Forbes said he was a rock star. He toured the

United States and people lined up for tickets. Businesses that were open on Christmas Day saw themselves represented by Scrooge's attitude. Forbes said, businesses recalculate they're thinking about it and saying oh Christmas doesn't just equal lost business. There are business possibilities here. Businesses embraced the holiday, and suddenly it was commercialized, perhaps an ironic result for a story about the true

meaning of Christmas Thanks nineteenth century. Today's episode is based on the article how the nineteenth century Invented Modern Christmas on how stuffworks dot com, written by Kate Morgan. Brainstuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuffworks dot com and is produced by Tyler Klang. Four more podcasts from my Heart Radio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.