Read The Battle for Christmas Online
Authors: Stephen Nissenbaum
There seem to be virtually no records of Belsnickles in Philadelphia itself. But this too may be partly a matter of terminology, since the city (in contrast to much of the Pennsylvania backcountry) was not dominated by German-Americans. And in Philadelphia, as in New York, the disorder that was associated with figures of misrule took on a tone of greater menace.
Susan G. Davis, who examined this aspect of Christmas in Philadelphia in an important 1984 article, observes that people arrested there for disorderly behavior at Christmas “were uniformly young and male,” and she attributes this to “the breakdown of the apprenticeship system and the decline of craft skills”—the general economic problem besetting youths and young men in a period of rapid industrialization. Rowdy Christmas revelry “crystallized the city’s year-round youth problem.” Davis observes that “In the street Christmas, rowdy youth culture reached its apotheosis; concern over riotous holiday nights was constant from the 1830s on. The mid-1840s were especially uproarious, but tumult and commotion seemed ominous for decades.”
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As early as 1833 the
Philadelphia Daily Chronicle
reported:
Throughout almost the whole of Tuesday night—Christmas Eve—riot, noise, and uproar prevailed, uncontrolled and uninterrupted in many of our central and most orderly streets. Gangs of boys and young men howled and shouted as if possessed by the demon of disorder. Some of the watchmen occasionally sounded their rattles; but seemed only to add another ingredient to the horrible discord that murdered sleep. It is undoubtedly in the power of our city police to prevent slumbering citizens from being disturbed by the mad roars of such revelers.
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The problem, in Philadelphia as well as New York, was that this kind of rowdiness had been transformed in an urban capitalist setting into something that respectable people found threatening, as they did in 1839, when a riot broke out on Chesnut Street, opposite the state capitol. The participants, one newspaper reported with disgust, “could not have chosen a more public place; throngs of persons were passing on both sides of the street, viewing all the sights that were to be seen; but… a street fight was one of the entertainments that did not please a majority of them….”
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Susan Davis reports that gangs of young men from the working-class communities that surrounded Philadelphia were deliberately invading the downtown business and theater districts, “where playgoers and promenaders thronged to view shop-window illuminations.”
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In Philadelphia as in New York, respectable people placed the greatest measure of blame on alcohol. Drinking itself, as we have seen in
Chapters 1
and
2
, had been an interclass ritual at Christmas, but now it was becoming a way of
distinguishing
the classes from one another. In 1839 a newspaper pointed out, in a Christmas Day editorial, that “there are certain modes of rejoicing which are appropriate to Christmas, and other modes of doing the same thing, which are quite unbecoming and reprehensible.” But the editorial went on to acknowledge that this was a recent development, and even to analyze how it had come about:
Some years ago, every housekeeper thought it incumbent on himself or herself to provide a bowl of egg-nog or spiced toddy for the celebration of this day. Persons who were usually of temperate or sedate habits, seemed to think that the return of Christmas justified a slight degree of intoxication. Friends and acquaintances, who called to tender the compliments of the season, were urged to partake of these liquid preparations, the seductive taste of which frequently overcame the most sober resolutions. On such occasions, it may be supposed that there were many evidences of joy and hilarity; but it was properly questioned by some considerate persons whether that kind of joy and hilarity became [i.e., suited] a day set apart to commemorate the origin of Christianity.
When this subject was duly considered, the customs spoken of, fell into disuse, and soon became ranked among the barbarisms of a former age. We are happy, therefore, to find that
one
incorrect mode of celebrating Christmas is no longer
general;
though particular instances may be noted wherein the relics of these absurd practices are still preserved.
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By the late 1840s that attitude had come to be backed by force of law. Philadelphia simply banned the sale of alcohol—it became a “dry” community (by that time the temperance movement had gained widespread support). But that did not stop people from buying drinks in the neighboring towns, where, following an old Christmas tradition, “as usual… the proprietors of… groggeries that fill the bystreets on either side of the boundaries of the city … treated their motley customers with egg-nog.”
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But if geographic dividing lines were hard to draw, so were psychological ones. Even the newspapers themselves sometimes betrayed a lingering ambivalence toward rowdy behavior at Christmas. An 1844 editorial started out by describing the new domestic Christmas as “religion
in each mans house … a celebration of the spirit of the universe, humanized and domesticated.” But the same editorial went on to acknowledge that the day also had a long tradition of “high rejoicing, eating, drinking (and getting drunk, we presume …).”
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Or take the headlines that one Philadelphia newspaper employed to report the arrest of men charged with inciting riot and similar forms of behavior. One such report, from 1836, was headed “
CHRISTMAS GAMBOLS
.” Others in subsequent years were headed “
CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES”
(1840);
“FUN ON CHRISTMAS DAY”
(1841);
“CHRISTMAS SPREES”
(1846); and “
CHRISTMAS SPORT”
(1850). These headings reveal an acute uncertainty about what to make of such behavior. The phrasing may be sarcastic, but it also betrays a residual understanding that rowdy behavior was to be
expected
at Christmas.
In Philadelphia the matter was made more complicated by another Christmas ritual, one that seems to have been unique to that city. In Philadelphia, during the late 1830s and 1840s, even respectable people observed Christmas Day in part as a public occasion. Each year thousands of people would spend the afternoon promenading in the downtown streets, attracted in part by the sheer sociability of the proceedings and in part by the prospect of doing their Christmas shopping, an activity that many Philadelphians (in common with residents of other cities) engaged in on Christmas Day itself. (Downtown shops generally remained open on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.)
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The scene attracted notice nationally.
Nile’s National Register
reported that on Christmas Day, 1841,
Chesnut street [the main commercial street] was crowded with a dense mass of human beings. The entire population of the outer districts seemed gathered there, eagerly gazing at the sights in the shop windows and enjoying the excitement of the moving panorama. It is estimated that there were 40,000 people on Chesnut street most of the afternoon.
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It is clear from such reports that the “moving panorama” itself was part of the show: People went to see and be seen, dressed in their best outfits—outfits presumably purchased in local establishments. This was the Philadelphia equivalent of New Years visiting in New York.
The Christmas Day promenades always bore an edge of menace, and by tracing local coverage after 1840 through a single newspaper, the
Public Ledger
, we can see that edge grow sharper year by year. In 1840 the promenade was described as an impressive scene: “We never before saw Chesnut street so thronged, from morning to night, in passing and repassing—indeed,
one to make any progress, was obliged to take the centre of the street.” (But the report added defensively, “This is right.”) The tone was still quite positive in 1841, even though the crowds on Chesnut Street were so dense that people were “struggling and jostling their way through the mass of humanity that well nigh blocked the great thoroughfare of fashion.” In 1842, from early afternoon until midnight, “the whole city seemed to have emptied into Chesnut street, which … was filled with a dense mass of human beings, young and old, male and female, great and small, black and white.” This report went on to describe the promenaders as “a rude and noisy crowd.”
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In 1843, after describing the promenade as an impressive display of fashion, the writer of the article acknowledged that “[a] number of arrests were made for disorderly conduct and breaches of the peace, and no small number were taken up for being intoxicated. There were more drunken men and boys in our streets, than we have witnessed for many a day before.” And again the 1844 article indicated that some portions of the crowd had chosen to dress in bizarre style, “tricked out in burlesque garb,” and that they were making cacophonous music with instruments “from the trumpet to the penny whistle.” A further report commented that “[a]n easy, carnival-like, practical joking air pervaded the moving crowd,” and noted ambiguously that “[m]any young men, individually and collectively, paraded the streets dressed in fantastic attire, ready for all kinds of sport….” It is not clear what kinds of “sport” these young men were ready for, but the fact that they were young and male links them with the one demographic group that had long been most closely associated with Christmas misrule. In any case, the reporter went on to condemn all the drunkenness, and to recommend that “[o]ur temperance friends should increase their zeal to counteract this fresh attack by the enemy.”
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The tide was turning. In 1845 there was no coverage at all of the promenade, only a brief notice that “Christmas was duly celebrated on Thursday,” followed by a very lengthy report headed “Rowdyism.” In 1846 there was, once again, only a very brief item (four sentences), noting that Christmas Day witnessed “the usual festivities,” and followed by another report of rowdy behavior: “There was, undoubtedly, more drunkenness visible in the streets … than has occurred for years before….”
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Finally, in 1847, a severe snowstorm on Christmas Day forced most Philadelphians to give up the promenade and spend the day at home. The result was almost an epiphany for the writer of an editorial that appeared in the
Public Ledger
. It was as if he had discovered that Christmas could best be celebrated without leaving one’s house after all. He suggested that
the poor weather actually made for “a merrier Christmas than we’ve had for several years”:
The ladies could not leave their houses, it is true, and we missed their pretty faces and winning smiles from Chesnut st.; but looks were brighter and smiles were sweeter, where they are most valued,
at home
. It is no wonder, then, that the streets were comparatively deserted, for husbands, sons, brothers and lovers deemed themselves the happiest within the family circle….
It was true, this writer continued, that not everyone stayed at home.
Some persisted in maintaining the old ways:
Those who were in the streets defied the uncomfortable weather with rude revelry, and occasionally the ear was attracted to their shouts, as they circulated from one tavern to another, imbibing at each another quantity of vinous excitement.
But such people were not partaking in the real spirit of Christmas. The only pleasures that qualified as true holiday mirth were those of home and hearth: “We have said that the day was a merry one—it was so, at home. Those who were out were merry also; but it was [only] the forced merriment which bacchanalian libations bring.”
It was during the 1820s that the Philadelphia press first began to take notice of Christmas as a family event. Before the middle of the 1820s Philadelphia’s newspapers, like those in New York and other cities, had acknowledged the coming of Christmas only by printing a religious poem or an occasional admonition to remember the poor. The absence of a special notice should not be taken to mean that Philadelphians did not celebrate the holiday, only that their celebrations did not require comment.
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The change began with the 1824 Christmas season, when no fewer than four new almanacs—all published in Philadelphia—printed Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas.” This marked the first appearance of the poem anywhere after its initial publication, just a year earlier, in a newspaper in Troy, New York. (A copy of one of these almanacs recently sold at auction for nearly $30,000.) Two years later, in 1826, the same poem appeared in a weekly Philadelphia paper, the
Saturday Evening Post
. In 1827 another local paper followed suit, and a
third paper published an extract from Washington Irvings “Bracebridge Hall” sketches.
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The rush was on, in Philadelphia as well as other American cities and towns. More than any other text, it was Moore’s poem that introduced the American reading public to the joys of a domestic Christmas. In Philadelphia itself, in 1828 “A Visit from St. Nicholas” appeared in
Poulsons Daily Advertiser
, and the
National Gazette
published another “antiquarian” Christmas poem, “Old English Christmas,” written by Walter Scott. And in 1829
Poulsons
reprinted a piece from a New York paper that gave a detailed explanation of the Santa Claus ritual. The following year, 1830, the
National Gazette
editorially explained the
inner
meaning of the new Christmas: That paper would not be appearing on December 25, readers learned, because it was a day to forget business in favor of domestic pleasures—and domestic pleasures were the most important thing in life, more important even than social standing, poverty, and “external disappointments or calamities.” The Christmas season, the paper noted, brings to mind “the culture and value of
the social and domestic affections,”
just as it reminds us of “the comparative insignificance, for private happiness, of all that is beyond them.”
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