Tracing The Roots Of Christmas Celebrations In America

Christmas celebrations today are a mixture of several different cultures...making it the perfect American holiday!

The Invention of Present Day Christmas

If you have never watched the 2017 film “The Man Who Invented Christmas” starring Dan Stevens (no relation), I highly recommend doing so. Although the movie is about how Charles Dickens came to write “A Christmas Carol”, it also reveals that at the time the book was written, Christmas was not the big celebration that we see today. In one scene, the characters discuss the new German trend of placing a live tree in the house to celebrate.

One Holiday, Many Influences

So how did we end up with the Christmas traditions of today? In a nutshell, we combined traditions of various cultures...pagan, German and Christian.See the Gallery below for an explantion of the Christian symbolism in The 12 Days of Christmas song.

Pagan Influence

We often hear people say that Jesus was not born on December 25th and if we are being perfectly honest, that may be true. We really have no idea of the exact date. The winter holiday originated with the pagan winter solstice celebrations that involved a lot of eating, a lot of gift giving and a lot of evergreen plants. The mistletoe we have today came from the Druids who associated it with eternal life.

German Influence

We have the Germans to thank for our beautiful Christmas trees. Our love of Gingerbread houses at Christmastime also came from German Immigrants after they came to the United States.

Christian Influence

The Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ is the predominate focus in American Christmas celebrations. The Nativity Scenes that we place in our homes, our yards, our churches and businesses, have been around for a long time. In 1223, St. Francis of Assisi created the first live nativity to illustrate Christ's birth.

St. Nicholas

St. Nicholas is the person at the heart of present-day Santa Claus. St. Nicholas is believed to have been a 4th century Bishop in Myra (Turkey). His reputation for generosity and kindness arose from many selfless acts including the paying of “marriage dowries of gold to three girls whom poverty would otherwise have forced into lives of prostitution.”

Santa Claus

According to Britannica, Protestant countries forgot about Nicholas after the Reformation, but Holland kept his memory alive with “Sinterklaas”. Dutch colonists shared the tradition when they arrived in the American colonies in the 1600’s. Sinterklaas soon became Santa Claus. This figure was then combined with Nordic tales of a magician who rewarded good children with gifts while punishing bad children.

Getty Images

Victorian Revival of Christmas

As I mentioned earlier, the form of Christmas we celebrate today is a relatively new celebration. The Christmas we know today can be attributed to England’s Queen Victoria and her husband, who was German. When Prince Albert moved to England to marry the Queen, he brought along his family’s Christmas traditions. After his death at a young age, Queen Victoria kept the traditions alive in his honor.

The Symbolism of the 12 Days of Christmas Explained

The Twelve Days of Christmas was originally published in England in the late eighteenth century. The best known version is a 1909 arrangement by English composer Frederic Austin. He said he simply put down on paper the song he remembered singing with his family as a child. Many of us have often wondered why the lords are a leaping and why we need to know about eight maids a milking. As with many things, the animals and people in the song are symbolic. In this case, they represent things found in the Bible.

Gallery Credit: Tasha Stevens

Christmas Movies Filmed In Texas OR About Texas

There are a ton of Christmas movies out there, and some of them were filmed here in Texas. One was filmed next door in Waco. Here is a list of movies filmed in and about Texas...or....filmed elsewhere but are ABOUT Texas.