Read The Battle for Christmas Online
Authors: Stephen Nissenbaum
It was two holiday seasons later, in 1825, that we find the first direct evidence of a commercial gift exchange within the Sedgwick family. For that evidence we can thank Catharine M. Sedgwick, who was living in New York with her brothers Henry and Robert and their families, and who had recently achieved acclaim as an author. Catharine had published her novel
A New England Tale
in 1822, and she was already taking on a role that would endear her to the rest of the family, that of the affectionate aunt who reported in vivid detail all the goings-on within the clan, and especially among its children, all of whom loved her dearly. Catharine Sedgwick took great pleasure in making her nieces and nephews happy, and she was very good at it. And it was to her that all her siblings would invariably turn for advice or comfort.
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Unmarried herself, Catharine Sedgwick spent much of her free time in devoted attention to other people, and in passing along news to other members of the Sedgwick clan. On December 28, 1825, she reported to her
5-year-old niece and namesake Katherine that “Jane and Fanny both got dolls from their Aunt Speakman for a Christmas gift.” She described the scene vividly: “Jane’s was a wax doll with eyes that open and shut—and it looked so much as if it was alive that Jane thought it really was and screamed ‘It is alive! It is alive!’”
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With this gift we suddenly find ourselves hurled into the orbit of a modern Christmas. The doll is ornate, high-tech, designed to impress, and was obviously purchased at a shop (and, just as obviously, it is
expensive).
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In the second half of the 1820s, Christmas came on in a rush. In 1827 little Kate Sedgwick’s parents (they lived in Lenox, a village several miles from Stockbridge) “kept Christmas … in Episcopal style.” In Stockbridge itself, on New Year’s Day the rest of the family gave presents to the children, who “received with the most entire satisfaction the simplest offerings, finding in their own happy hearts the best New Year’s gifts.”
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The two teenage children of Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., were in New York that same day, visiting their city kin. Their mother reported the presents they had received, along with details of the prices paid (and even a suggestive hint about the shopping excursion during which the gifts had been purchased):
Theodore’s present [i.e., her present to their son Theodore
III] …
consisted of some very ornamental things for the table, to the amount of $11.
I
got them [at] a great bargain, the first price asked was $16. Sister Catharine [Catharine Sedgwick], who was with me, thought them as beautiful & cheap as any thing she had ever seen.
I
wish you could have seen how much they were admired. Sister Catharine presented Theodore with a beautiful cameo breast pin, & decorated Maria [Theodores sister] with flowers, & Sister Elizabeth [Robert’s wife] had kindly provided a very pretty present for both Maria & Theodore, a little article combining a purse, card-case, & tablet—a convenient affair which they both wanted.
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Finally, that same year (1827), Robert Sedgwick and his wife, Elizabeth, set up an elaborate new ritual for their two young children (ages 2 and 3), complete with stockings—and Santa Claus. The year 1827 was the very year that Clement Clarke Moore’s 1822 poem was finding its way into print in newspapers published in New York and other American cities. It is striking how quickly the Sedgwicks adopted this ritual (and we can be sure that their children would later assume that it went back forever!):
Nothing could exceed the joy of the children on New Year’s morning, when awakening with the first dawn of light, they jumped up eagerly to examine their stockings, which, certain
of “Santa Claas[’]”
bounty, they had had suspended the evening before from the bed post—and which, according to their anticipations were full to overflowing.
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The next Christmas season these same children (now ages 3 and 4) received an even more elaborate bounty, which their mother characteristically described in loving detail:
They received a great many beautiful presents, among which Lizzy had a Mahogany bedstead and Bureau, and a wax doll, whose eyes would open and shut. The Bureau, which is a gift from her father, is really a curiosity. It is more than half a yard square, and has three drawers[,] which are sufficiently deep to hold all her dolls clothes now. And to be useful as she says for her ornaments and Curiosities hereafter[,] [“]when she is a big lady.”
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By the next year, 1829, Santa Claus had managed to reach the Massachusetts branch of the family. In the little village of Stockbridge, Henry and Jane Sedgwick’s children “were awake before day light to feel for their stockings & examine what Santa Clas [sic] had put into them—8c I have heard but one [ongoing] peal of merriment from them ever since.”
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Santa Claus reached the Lenox Sedgwicks, too, that year, but there his bounty was disappointing to Catharine M. Sedgwick’s favorite niece Kate, now 9 years old, who conveyed to her aunt the hope “that Santa Claus has given you at least as many presents as he has me, for he only gave me four.” (Kate’s four presents included a pair of books, a “neat brown pocket book which mother gave, & sixty-eight cents from father.”)
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In New York, that same day, Elizabeth E. Sedgwick was able to note casually to her father that her two children “had
as usual
a quantity of beautiful presents at New Years [emphasis added].”
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And the next year, 1830, she used the same phrase, but went on to include some details:
New Years day as usual was a most joyous day to the children. They were loaded with presents from all their friends—whips, tops, dolls, guns, books, tea cups, &c. Never was any thing like it. And never was such happiness.
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The implication here was that each year’s bounty had to outdo all preceding ones. As it happens, there exists a wonderfully charming account
of the excesses of gift giving, in the form of a description of that same scene, taken literally out of the mouth of one of the very children who were on the receiving end of those gifts. For this account we are indebted to Lizzys aunt, Catharine M. Sedgwick. On January 2, 1831, Catharine Sedgwick penned a document that purported to transcribe the exact words of her little niece Lizzy Sedgwick (now 6 years old, and the oldest of five children). The transcription took the form of a letter from Lizzy herself to her cousin Kate—Catharine Sedgwick’s favorite niece. It is a charming account, worth quoting in full (and diligent readers will be rewarded with a passing reference to a cockroach made out of sugar).
When I went to bed New Year’s eve I felt inclined to jump up & run about but I was afraid of waking Haddy [her infant sister, Henrietta]. I moved continually and wanted to jump. I didn’t have much sleep that whole night. When we were all dressed we prepared to go into Mama’s room to get our New Year’s presents & Aunt Kitty [i.e., Catharine Sedgwick] came down to see us. I had mine in a bag & it felt pretty heavy. First I took out something tied in a paper. I found it was a candlestick snuffer & extinguisher. I then took out a box & opened it
&
found some sugar-men, some candy a cockroach-sugar also & some cherries (sugar!). I then pulled out a case & asked Papa to open it for I found it difficult. There was a microscope in it—
larger than yours
. ([Here Catharine Sedgwick interrupts in her own words:] I was going to add the italicised words when Lizzy with great delicacy said ‘No I should not like to say that Aunt Kitty.’) Then came the Token for 1831 [a Gift Book], from a gentleman I never saw nor heard of (Mr. Collins, a friend of her father) a large beautiful French box from Mama I forgot to mention,
&c
some sugar-plums. After wards I went upstairs & Aunt Kitty gave me a chocolate lamb, very pretty. As we were looking over [her 2-year-old sister] Sue Ridley’s basket we heard a squeaking noise[.] I was frightened for I tho’t it was one of the children—it was doleful & funny too! I turned round & found it was Ell [her brother Ellery, age 5] blowing a trumpet. He had besides a magic lanthorn[,] sugar men, a whip, candy, a corn-[stick?]. Then for Sue’s basket—tea-things & a sauce-pan, a beautiful doll stiffly & fashionably dressed (& I dressed her[:] CMS)[,] a cunning mouse & a French bag of sugar.
In the course of the day George [a friend] came in & Ellery blowed his trumpet. George went out & came in with a gun which he pointed at us. We ran away trembling
&
George gave the gun to Ellery, then he held out the other hand to me & I grasped it & found a book called The Pearl—beautiful. Next came sister with a snake for
Ellery. I forgot a superb humming-top which Joseph [another friend] bro’t Ellery. Then came some play-things from Cousin Rodericks[:] one cavalry-officer whose head took off & on
&
turned about, & the rider got off the horse…. Is not this a pretty good long letter[?]
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It is all there: the indulgent treatment of young children; the plethora of toys, many of them expensive and ornate (that toy soldier “whose head took off
&
on
&
turned about,
&
the rider got off the horse”); the eager anticipation; the hard-to-open packages; the showing off; even the little edge of competitiveness (the microscope that was
“larger than yours”)
. After 1830, then, it is hardly necessary to report year by year on the Sedgwick families’ holiday celebrations. It is enough to say that over the next half decade the presents they gave and received became even more elaborate and numerous. And as the presents themselves became more extravagant, expectations rose with them, and so did problems and disappointments. Indeed, over the course of the ten-year period from 1825 to 1835, one or another of the Sedgwicks encountered virtually every problem that besets the Christmas shopper in our own day. Here, organized into some familiar modern categories, are a few examples (all taken from the years 1825–35):
Forgot to buy presents
. On Christmas Eve, 1832, Charles Sedgwick wrote in embarrassment that he had returned to his house in Lenox only to find, to his dismay, “the whole house quite gay with Christmas presents.” As for himself: “I am in consternation for I doubt not expectation is on tiptoe for presents from me & I have not as yet got one for any body.” And he concluded, “Indeed the presentees are so thick I am discouraged.”
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(That last line may suggest still another category of problems:
too many people to buy presents for.)
Presents that soon break
. We have already encountered the doll that little Jane Sedgwick received from her “Aunt Speakman” in 1824, the wax doll that looked so real that Jane “screamed ‘It is alive! It is alive!’” It was Catharine Sedgwick who reported this anecdote. But Sedgwick went on to note dolefully that Jane’s doll soon “got a dirty mark on her forehead—a little piece broken off her beautiful fat bosom—and all the color kissed off one of her cheeks.” Nine years later, a similar fate befell a wooden dog (a dog that actually barked) given to a 2-year-old toddler:
We were so successful with Willie as to protract his pleasures for at least an hour during which time his little wooden
dod
[presumably Willie’s pronunciation of
dog]
kept up a merry barking; but alas how
fleeting are all worldly pleasures—one untimely blow scattered his disjointed member. He gave a howl of despair as his limbs were torn asunder & Willie poor Willie’s notes chimed with those of his departed
dod.
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Not received in time, or lost in the mail
Perhaps an even more common problem then than now, given the logistical problems faced by the postal system. In 1834 the gifts sent to Lenox from the New York Sedgwicks failed to arrive until late on New Year’s Day, so the family decided to repeat the entire ritual for the children the next morning. Two years later the presents from New York arrived as late as January 6 (once again the opening ceremony was held the following day); but even then a number of expected gifts appeared to be missing, as Mrs. Elizabeth Sedgwick anxiously wrote to her daughter (then living in New York):
The things have not all come, as I find … by allusions in your letters. There is no present as you mentioned to Bess from her Aunt E. and no box of things (bonbons) I suppose to be distributed by Bessie…. I will tell you, for your satisfaction, what we did receive. My parcel from you. Bessie’s from you. Charley’s book. Ell’s book, and his present from you. Hun’s parcel. 1 large parcel of bonbons. 1 ditto almonds. 1 sweets ditto lozenges. Grace’s presents from Aunt Lizzy, from you and from Aunt C. Your Aunt Lizzy speaks of a guard chain for Ell which was not to be found among the parcels.
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Hard to find the right present
. … “Your stockings are horridly ugly but they are the only
tolerable
ones I could find.” …
At the right price:
“I hope she will like the ring—it was very cheap. The enamel [ones] like it elsewhere &
very
little larger were $6, & your Aunt Lizzie preferred this size as a matter of taste—I confess I did not, but like your father I have always rather a hankering for the
best
priced article.”
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The wrong gift
. “The game you sent marked
HDS
[Henry D. Sedgwick] is I presume a substitute for the one I asked you to get.”
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The grass is always greener…
“The children have had a merry morning, although their New Year’s wealth would seem very meagre, in comparison with the piles of treasure which bless the eyes of the little folks in New York.”
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Or again: “My dearest Aunt, I hope … that Santa Claus has given you at least as
many
presents as he has me, for he only gave me four.”
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