Sunday, December 3, 2000

Christmases of past not so simple

Frazzled holiday shoppers scurrying about for all things Yuletide often profess how they yearn for the simpler Christmases of yesteryear.
   For the founders of Jamestown and Plymouth Colony, however, December was hardly that. Battling hunger, disease and the brutal elements left little time for making merry.
   The end of 1620, for example, when the Mayflower brought its pilgrims to the eastern shores, was more about the business of founding what would become the second permanent British settlement than reminiscing about any celebrations taking place across the North Atlantic. A journal entry dated Dec. 25, 1620, reveals just what labors colonizing demanded.
   "Monday, the 25th day, we went on shore, some to fell timber, some to saw, some to rive and some to carry, so no man rested all that day," according to a then-anonymous journal that would be published the following year as "Mourt's Relation."
   "And so they labored as if it were any other day," said William Scheick, a University of Texas English professor specializing in colonial American literature and culture. Because pilgrims and Puritans "defined themselves against Roman Catholicism, such holidays as Christmas and Easter were consciously eliminated."
   As colonial America grew, records show that shops in Boston and other New England towns kept regular hours on Christmas Day, Scheick said. Children attended school and Puritans eventually passed laws in the 1600s that forbade the observance of Christmas.
   Nevertheless, there were pockets throughout the colonies that marked the holiday. If you traveled back in time, instead of a Christmas tree you'd likely find other greenery adorning a pilgrim's home.
   "Some display would have been brought indoors, all associated with the winter solstice occurring near that time," said Joseph A. Conforti, professor of American and New England studies at the University of Southern Maine. "The evergreens were a reminder that nature was sleeping, not dead, and that all would be reborn in the spring."
   Those who didn't share their Puritanical brethren's disdain of such festivity were more receptive to the idea of gift giving and jollity. The Dutch of New England, for example, would about now be preparing to celebrate the feast of Saint Nicholas on Dec. 6.
   Not until the 19th Century would the burning of candles at home for Christmas become commonplace.
   "Because making candles was a time-consuming endeavor at home or expensive to buy, people were very economical with their use," Conforti said. An efficient household that could afford the tallow or beeswax could produce as many as 300 candles per candle-making session, he noted.
   Those aching for the old-world traditions of home might include meat in the day's main meal, such as salt pork, beef, mutton or wild fowl.
   But while much has changed in the past 400 years, the spirit of Christmas has not.
   Said Conforti, "One tradition that has survived from New England is the idea that people who are better off have some obligation to those who are not."