By David J. Kent
Washington, DC
Sunday, December 22, 2024
In 1834, as an Illinois legislator, 25-year-old Abraham Lincoln voted against closing the state government on Christmas day. He felt that elected officials should keep the day a workday “because he felt he would be wasting taxpayers’ money if he took the day off.” Later when he was in the White House, he sent no Christmas cards and set up no Christmas tree.
Shocking? Not really. Back then Christmas was a normal working day in most of the United States. Government offices and most businesses were open. Christmas didn’t become a national holiday until President Ulysses S. Grant signed a congressional bill into law. That was in 1870. For those that are interested, David Frum, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, provides fascinating insights into why Christmas wasn’t celebrated by the government.
Lincoln himself was usually in the office on Christmas day. On December 25, 1861, for example, he and his cabinet were engaged for over four hours debating what to do about James Mason and John Slidell, the Confederate envoys pulled off the British vessel, Trent, that was causing much consternation.
That’s not to say that Christmas wasn’t important. In fact, Christmas was getting a lot of press in that era, which is one of the reasons why Grant did what he did. The brutality of the Civil War also played a role in the resurgence of Christmas in American life. Ironically, it was the non-religious aspects of Christmas that saw the biggest growth during this period. Not the least of which was the popularization of Santa Claus.
While Santa may have had some origins in St. Nicholas and other regional folklore, he evolved into the jolly old elf we know today thanks in large part to Thomas Nast, a prolific illustrator and cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly magazine. It was Nast who first introduced Santa Claus (aka, Father Christmas) – as a recruiting tool for the Union army! One iconic image from the January 3, 1863, issue of Harper’s, has Santa “on a sleigh handing out packages to Union soldiers in a Civil War camp.”
So, Santa became propaganda rallying behind the Union war effort. The South used this to its advantage as well, telling children that the evil Yankees might block Santa’s route from the North Pole down to Confederate territory. This, of course, was long before Coca-Cola turned Santa into a soft drink marketing campaign and Hallmark made a fortune selling Christmas cards.
There was one rather important Christmas celebration for Lincoln. General William Tecumseh Sherman, who had been decimating a path toward the sea throughout the fall of 1864, wired Lincoln in the White House on December 22nd. The wire said:
I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah.
He also had captured “150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition,” along with “about 25,000 bales of cotton.” An ecstatic Lincoln replied with “many, many, thanks for your Christmas gift.” As devastating was Sherman’s destruction during his march, it helped bring the war to an end a few months later.
There was reason for Lincoln to celebrate as 1864 was coming to an end. He had been reelected to a second term, the war had turned decidedly in the North's favor, and 1865 promised to bring a chance to refocus a reconstructed Union on pursuing progress. Alas, sometimes things go bad very quickly.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyful Kwanzaa, and Happy Holidays!
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