Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry shares more stories and trivia connected to Christmases past. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
Today I continue with more good cheer and memorable events connected with Christmases past.
I found in the Dallas Morning News a chronology of Christmas events. I covered several of them in Part 1, beginning with 1492 all the way to 1868. Today I start with the year 1882. I have added to and altered the original list from the Dallas Morning News.
1882: The first Christmas tree lighted by electricity was put in the New York home of Edward Hibberd Johnson, an inventor and business associate of Thomas Edison and the vice-president of Edison Electric Light Company.
William Augustus Croffut, a correspondent for the Detroit Post and Tribune, visited the Manhattan home of Johnson and published the following in the December 22 edition:
The First Electric Christmas Tree Lights
Last evening I walked over beyond Fifth Avenue and called at the residence of Edward H. Johnson, vice-president of Edison’s electric company. There, at the rear of the beautiful parlors, was a large Christmas tree, presenting a most picturesque and uncanny aspect. It was brilliantly lighted with many colored globes about as large as an English walnut and was turning some six times a minute on a little pine box. There were eighty lights in all encased in these dainty glass eggs, and about equally divided between white, red and blue. As the tree turned, the colors alternated, all the lamps going out and being relit at every revolution. The result was a continuous twinkling of dancing colors, red, white and blue, all evening.
I need not tell you that the scintillating evergreen was a pretty sight – one can hardly imagine anything prettier. The ceiling was crossed obliquely with two wires on which hung 28 more of the tiny lights; and all the lights and the fantastic tree itself with its starry fruit were kept going by the slight electric current brought from the main office on a filmy wire. The tree was kept revolving by a little hidden crank below the floor which was turned by electricity. It was a superb exhibition.
The electric lights were a revolutionary invention – not just for the aesthetic effect, but by replacing lit candles with electric lights it made homes much safer.
1897: Francis Church of the New York Sun wrote a famous editorial, “Yes, Virgina, there is a Santa Claus,” to young Virginia O’Hanlon. His response to the eight-year-old girl was so moving it was reprinted in newspapers across the country, even in the tiny town of Rocky Bar, Idaho.
The conclusion of Church’s editorial:
“Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
“You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
“No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.”
Here is the letter Virginia wrote to the Sun, asking “Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?”
In 2009 a group of students from The Studio School were featured in the New York Post, along with a photo of Virginia. Their assignment was to answer the letter Virginia had written to the editor in 1897, expressing their own thoughts on whether Santa was real or not.
The school, located in a 95th Street building in New York City, was the very same building that Virginia lived in. The students made a plaque to commemorate this and raised funds to establish a scholarship fund in Virginia’s name.
The students’ written missives emphasized that Santa was more a magical thought, like joy, rather than the white bearded jolly fellow commercialized. One of the students noted she knew this to be true when she visited Santa at Macy’s one year and pulled his beard down.
While the Santa these kids were trying to explain cannot be seen with the naked eye, they stay firm that one should never stop believing in the magic of good will, peace, and the love in one’s heart.
1912: The first community Christmas trees were erected in Madison Square Park, New York, and on Boston Common.
According to sources including the New York Times, on 21 December 1912 a 60-foot tree arrived on a truck from the Adirondacks to be used for the tree lighting in Madison Square Park. It was decorated with 1,200 colored lights donated by the Edison Company.
Here is a clip from the Boston Journal entitled, “Christmas Carols Sung by 10,000 on [Boston] Common” describing the event.
This article reports:
Boston’s first municipal Christmas celebration, held on the Common last night, will go down in history as one of the most remarkable Yuletide demonstrations ever witnessed in the city.
Never was the literal significance of Christmas more strikingly illustrated. The sound of 10,000 voices singing in unison “Adeste Fideles” [aka “O Come, All Ye Faithful”], as the singers stood ankle-deep in snow, the silk-hatted gentleman from Beacon Street rubbing elbows with the beggar, presented a never-to-be-forgotten spectacle.
The mighty volume of song, rendered with the deepest feeling, carried with it an irresistible sentiment. It swept like a roll of thunder across the snow-blanketed Common, and filled the hearts of all with happiness.
A video entitled, “The Boston History Project: Christmas Traditions in Boston,” by author Anthony Sammarco, looks at Christmas traditions in Boston. He claims that Mayor Fitzgerald had a public Christmas tree display in 1907.
1923: Calvin Coolidge was the president who lit the first National Christmas tree at the White House in Washington, D. C.
1937: The first Santa Claus School operated by Charles W. Howard, a farmer, was opened in Albion, New York, with enrollment of six students. Below is a photo of Mr. Howard dressed as Santa for his school, courtesy of the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School Facebook page.
Mr. Howard, the Dean of all Santas, has long passed, but the school is still in operation teaching future Santas all the tricks they need to know.
I found this photograph in the New York Post from 2006 which includes a classroom of jolly old fellows practicing “Claus-isthenics” on the second day of class in Santa school. They really have the moves down!
Stay tuned for my favorite memorable picks!
Merry Christmas Peeps!
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Note on the header image: candle on a Christmas tree. Credit: Malene Thyssen; Wikimedia Commons.
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