January 2010 - Wasioja Newsletter

Christmas during the Civil War

Many of today's American Christmas customs are rooted in the early 19th century. Perhaps ironically, they came to maturity during the Civil War, when violence, chaos, and staggering personal losses seemed likely to drown out the choruses of  "Peace on Earth."
Many of the artists of the period, Winslow Homer, Thomas Nast, and Alfred Waud created visual chronicles of the spreading influence of many holiday traditions we enjoy today, including Santa Claus Christmas trees, gift-giving, caroling, holiday feasting, and Christmas cards.
Nast and Homer drew scenes of the wartime practice of sending Christmas boxes filled with homemade clothes and food items to soldiers at the front.  Christmas boxes  gave their recipients a much-needed mental and physical boost.  .
The most beloved symbol of the American family Christmas--the decorated Christmas tree--came into its own during the Civil War.  Illustrators working for the national weeklies helped popularize the practice by putting decorated table-top Christmas trees in their drawings.
 While there were many families who spent lonely Christmases during the war, they still had a Christmas Tree which was the centerpiece for the home. Most trees were small and sat on a table.
The decorations were mostly home made, such as strings of dried fruit, popcorn, pine cones.  Santa brought gifts to the children.  Those gifts were home made, such as carved toys, cakes or fruits. 
It was only a matter of time before the Christmas tree made its way into military camps. Alfred Bellard of the 5th New Jersey remarked about the  Christmas icon to his camp along the lower Potomac River.
"In order to make it look much like Christmas as possible, a small tree was stuck up in front of our tent, decked off with hard tack and pork, in lieu of cakes and oranges, etc".
Christmas carols were sung both at home and in the camps.  Some of the most popular ones were "Silent Night," "Away in the Manger," "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," and "Deck the Halls".
 Santa Claus had a much easier time visiting homes in the North than those in the South that Christmas.  Sometimes Santa Claus worked behind the scenes of wartime savagery to bring a bit of Christmas cheer to those who otherwise had little reason to celebrate. Following General William T. Sherman's capture of Savannah, Georgia, and presentation of it as a Christmas gift to Lincoln in 1864, about 90 Michigan men and their captain in turn gave a token of charity to Southern civilians living outside the city. Christmas Day, the soldiers loaded several wagons full of food and other supplies and distributed the items about the ravaged Georgia countryside. The destitute Southerners thanked the jolly Union Santa Clauses as the wagons pulled away under the power of mules that had tree-branch "antlers" strapped to their heads to turn them into makeshift reindeer.
As the war dragged on, deprivation replaced bounteous repasts and familiar faces were missing from the family dinner table. Soldiers used to "bringing in the tree" and caroling in church were instead scavenging for firewood and singing drinking songs around the campfire. And so the holiday celebration most associated with family and home was a contradiction. It was a joyful, sad, religious, boisterous, and subdued event.
Gilbert J. Barton, Company I of Charlotte, recorded some of the hardships of camp that day:
"Dec 25th Christmas. Had hard Tack soaked in cold water and then fried in pork Greece [sic]. Fried in a canteen, split into[sic] by putting into the fire & melting the sodder[sic] off. We pick them up on the field left by other soldiers, also had coffee & pork. Ordered up at 5 this morning with guns ready, as it is reported that there are 400 Rebel Cavalry not far off prowling around. Foggy morning."
 
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 From the diary of Private Robert A. Moore, a Confederate soldier:
 Wednesday, Dec. 25th, 1861, camp near Swan's...
"This is Christmas & and very dull Christmas it has been to me.  Had an egg-nog to-night but did not enjoy it much as we had no ladies to share it with us."
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One of the dreariest accounts of Christmas during the Civil War came from Lt. Col. Frederic Cavada, captured at Gettysburg and writing about Christmas 1863 in Libby Prison in Richmond:
"The north wind comes reeling in fitful gushes through the iron bars, and jingles a sleighbell in the prisoner's ear, and puffs in his pale face with a breath suggestively odorous of eggnog...."
"...Christmas Day! A day which was made for smiles, not sighs - for laughter, not tears - for the hearth, not prison."
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From the diary of Robert Watson of Key West, Florida.
December 25, 1863 at Dalton, Georgia after action at Chickamauga
"Christmas day and a very dull one but I find a tolerable good dinner.  I had one drink of whiskey in the morning.  There was some serenading last night but I took no part in it for I did not feel merry as my thoughts were of home..."
 
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From the Civil War diary of General Josiah Gorgas - 1864:
"December 26th  A despondent Christmas has just passed, yet people contrived to eat hearty and good Christmas dinners.  The soldier unfortunately have not even meat, and have had none for several days.  The Commissary General has singlely failed in his duties; while there is plenty of food in Georgia there is none here.  There is no sufficient excuse for this.  The food must be brought here, and the means to so provided and organized.."
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By late 1865 the country was starting to reunite as the horrors of war and the shock of Lincoln's assassination faded into memory. That December brought the first peacetime Christmas in five years. Most soldiers had been mustered out of the military and were home to celebrate the holiday with their families. Of course, many others had never returned home.