Posted on 12/29/2008 7:10:29 AM PST by buffyt
A popular Christmas song tells us this is the “hap-hap-happiest time of the year,” and for many of us, it is.
Of course, that is not always the case, as a look at recollections of some past Christmases shows. But despite the problems that have beset our ancestors through the years, most of them overcame — or simply survived — their difficulties.
One source says the singing of the Midnight Mass by members of LaSalle’s group in the 1680s was the first documented Christmas celebration in Texas.
It isn’t clear that this was an unhappy holiday for them, but having been plunked down in a wilderness, away from family and friends couldn’t have been much fun.
D.W.C. Baker’s “A Texas Scrapbook” includes the description of an 1828 Christmas dinner served on a vessel that had just arrived at Matagorda. The meal consisted of “hominy beat in a wooden mortar” and fresh milk. Baker notes the fresh milk was a greatly appreciated treat for those aboard. Even so, it sounds pretty bleak.
Conditions in Brazoria County still were primitive when one early settler dispatched his son to oversee the shipment of 59 bales of cotton to be shipped to the United States.
The “Narrative of Robert Hancock Hunter, 1813-1902,” states the cotton was loaded aboard a makeshift vessel composed of a platform constructed between two big, homemade canoes.
On Christmas morning 1834, this pseudo ship was launched to begin the trip down the Brazos River. Near Columbia, the boat hit a snag and overturned.
Those aboard, who were wet and cold, shouted and yelled until they finally managed to attract the attention of a resident, who rescued them.
Cutting the cotton loose from their makeshift vessel, they floated the bales onto the muddy river bank and later managed to float it to its destination.
Mary Austin Holley wrote of spending the Christmas of 1837 in Houston, where she learned on Christmas Eve that Mexican troops were massing on the border of Texas. An imminent invasion was feared.
“All attention was focused on preparing the militia,” she wrote. “Everyone was busy and excited.”
She added, however, that the threat of invasion by the Mexican Army failed to discourage the Texans from celebrating the holiday.
She also wrote of a New Year’s Eve party that was held at the home of Mrs. Edmund Andrews in Brazoria — a woman whose divorce later became the talk of the entire area.
Holley noted a guitar, flute, violin and accordion provided the music to which Mary and other guests “danced in the new year.”
On Christmas Day 1862, in the midst of the War Between the States, 300 Union soldiers landed on Galveston Island, taking over that city.
Their victory was short-lived, however, as by the dawn of New Year’s Day, Brazoria County residents heard resounding gunfire echoing along the county’s upper coastline and learned Confederate troops had managed to recapture the city.
Also in 1862, the Union’s blockade of Southern ports caused shortages of many of the treats traditional for area families.
Shortages of white sugar, raisins and flour hampered but did not completely halt the production of Christmas cakes in Brazoria County kitchens, as innovative cooks used substitute ingredients that rarely performed as hoped.
Coffee was almost nonexistent, and county residents tried everything from acorns to okra, and from sweet potatoes to parched grains in their efforts to brew a hot beverage to take its place.
That year and to an increasing degree for the next two Christmases as the war dragged on, gifts were more likely to be of the homemade variety than luxuries shipped into the area.
Merchants had few items on their shelves. Confederate money was continually devalued, which made it difficult to afford what little was available, so residents made do with what they could make at home.
Julia Pease, daughter of Elisha and Lucadia Pease, wrote of her recollections of Christmas 1863, when the family’s tree “was just a common cedar, cut by old Tom. Sprawling it certainly was, making it difficult to attach the many bundles done up in wrapping paper and home-made twine.
“The ladies worked for days stringing popcorn, making cornucopias and pasting on them the bright prints which had been saved for months,” she said.
The family raised goats, and when they were butchered, the skin was saved. Lucadia cut a pair of slippers from the kidskin, and Julia and her sister then embroidered them as a gift for their father.
“On cloth, with the aid of the governess, we did the same for my mother,” she wrote. “Hideous things, they were, no doubt, but our patience and love redeemed all.”
Another recollection of the Christmas 1863 in Texas was written by Kate Stone, a young Mississippi refugee who lived in Tyler after being driven from her parents’ plantation home.
She noted that the day had passed quietly, without a cake or visitor, and with eggnog that only the servants enjoyed, as it was “made of mean whiskey.”
She mentioned “only one present on the place, a fine turkey from Mrs. Lawrence.” The previous Christmas morning, when a child named Beverly awoke to look at her stockings, she saw that her gifts included “only some homemade toys, bedstead and chairs made of white pine by the plantation carpenter.
The little girl “hid her head, sobbing that she ‘would not have the ugly common things,’” Stone wrote.
A relative chided the girl, explaining that Santa Claus had been unable to get through the Yankee lines. At this point, Stone wrote, the child’s “apologetic little voice faltered out, ‘Table, I begs your pardon. Bed, I begs your pardon. I will keep you and play with you. You is nice.’”
In 1865, with the war over but its effects on local finances and spirits still much in evidence, merchants’ newspaper advertisements offered candy, raisins, tobacco, coffee and whiskey, among other items. Unfortunately, few residents had ready cash to spend on such luxuries.
“A sad postscript on the horrors of war were advertisements for metallic artificial legs for $100 to $125, ‘cheaper and more long lasting than wooden legs,’” Elizabeth Silverthorne wrote in “Christmas in Texas.”
Letters in the papers of James F. and Stephen S. Perry, father and son who owned Peach Point Plantation from colonial through Reconstruction days, also tell of Christmases in the 1870s.
Children often attended school at some distance from their homes, and because transportation was so difficult in that era, families were often separated during the holiday season.
On Dec. 17, 1871, James Perry wrote from Bellevue High School to his mother, Sarah Perry, at Peach Point. In the typically misspelled writing of students then and now, he said, “I think their will be a great deal of difference between this Christmas & the one a year ago; that is with me.”
The previous year he had been “with those I love, but now there is a Gulf between us and a long roade,” the youth said, expressing the hope that he would not be parted from his family on many future Christmases.
“I know it is for my good that we are parted, when I quit School I will be with you all, all the time…” he added.
Three years later, when Sarah was away from home, her daughter, Emily, wrote of plans for the holiday, noting the family at Ranch Prairie planned to have a Christmas tree.
“I expect Christmas will be very dull without you,” she added.
And during holidays a half-century later, many families marked the bleak Christmas seasons of the Great Depression, with gifts consisting of oranges, apples and nuts, and perhaps a homemade doll.
Even so, it was Christmas, and while it might not have been the “hap-hap-happiest time” they had ever known, they endured to enjoy subsequent celebrations that did qualify for that description.
Marie Beth Jones, a published author and freelance writer based in Angleton, is chairwoman of the Brazoria County Historical Commission.
Bump for later read. Thanks! :)
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Galveston is a beautiful place. And I have yet to hear anyone say no one should be allowed to live (insert location here). I HAVE heard lots of folks say that not one dime of tax money should be spent rebuilding, say, New Orleans. I would agree with that.
Otherwise very interesting post.
IMO, this article is mis-titled. It contains only one reference to a Christmas event during colonial days, and it wasn’t held in one of the colonies.
It’s been a while since I studied this, but IIRC, in general, Christmas wasn’t celebrated in the colonies. It was taught by many of the protestant preachers that it was not a Christian holiday.
That’s probably an over-generalization, but that’s my memory of what I’ve read.
as an unusually honest History professor told me when I was in school...
“The United States used to experience a very deep and sustained economic recession on a regular, cyclical basis. It was called Winter!”
In 1680, Texas would have been part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, but I'm not sure it could be considered a "colony." For one thing, there were few, if any white settlers in the region, although settlement began in earnest in the area around what is now El Paso during the late seventeenth century.
Very interesting post, buffyt. When I was researching my book, Christmas was mentioned several times in letters of ancestors, etc. On Christmas Day 1838, the Cherokee on the trail of tears forded a frozen stream singing Christmas hymms. Some years after the CW, a ‘cousin’ writes about “Santy Claus” being so poor that year. I was surprised to find Santa Claus was so much a part of the culture even then.
http://jesusweptanamericanstory.blogspot.com/
AFAIK, when we refer to the colonies, we’re referring to the 13 colonies of England.
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