Home New Hampshire The Stealth Campaign To Bring the Christmas Tree Into American Homes

The Stealth Campaign To Bring the Christmas Tree Into American Homes

The New Hampshire lady who influenced Thanksgiving had a few things to say about Christmas

by
7 comments

Sarah Josepha Hale famously campaigned to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, but less well known are her stealth efforts to bring the Christmas tree into American living rooms.

Puritan New England had in the 17th century banned Christmas – a rowdy celebration quite unlike the family holiday we celebrate today. By the Civil War, Christmas started to make a comeback. Charles Dickens’ 1843 story A Christmas Carol popularized the idea of a secular holiday that celebrated the Christian values of kindness and generosity.

Immigration also changed the way Americans viewed Christmas. German immigrants especially brought with them their Christmas traditions, including the Christmas tree.

A German Harvard professor named Herman Bokum published the first known image of a Christmas tree in America.  In 1836, he published a book called The Stranger’s Gift, illustrated with an image of a mother and small children standing around a tree lit with candles. Another German-born Harvard professor, Charles Follen, put up a Christmas tree in his house on Follen Street.

The German Christmas Tree

Sarah Josepha Hale, born in 1788 in Newport, N.H., was in 1848 the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, a popular magazine for women published in Philadelphia. She published a story that December about the German celebration of Christmas. German parents on Christmas Eve led their children into a darkened room to ponder what ‘the little infant Jesus’ brought them. Then they took them into a room with a brightly lit Christmas tree with beautiful presents hung from its branches.

sarah-josepha-hale-thanksgiving

Sarah Josepha Hale

That year, the Illustrated London News printed a woodcut of Queen Victoria, her German husband Prince Albert, five of their children and a governess gathered around a tabletop Christmas tree.  Two years later, Hale ran with the image of Victoria and Albert next to their tree — after editing out Albert’s sash and moustache, Victoria’s tiara and boxes of German cookies under the tree. It was supposed to depict the modern American family.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with tree, without jewels or moustache.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with tree, without jewels or moustache.

The next year, a woodsman named Mark Carr cut down evergreen trees in the Catskills. He then hauled them by oxen sled to New York City and sold every last one in Washington Market.  In 1856, Franklin Pierce put up the first Christmas tree in the White House.

In 1860, as families anticipated being separated by the Civil War, Hale ran the picture again. She called it The Christmas Tree and accompanied it with instructions on how to make a Christmas tree stand up in a sand-filled stoneware jar. She showed how to put a green chintz skirt around it and how to dress it with ornaments for children. And she described stringing holly berries and attaching candles to the branches with wires.

Christmas Spreads

Godey’s 150,000 readers paid attention. Not for nothing did the magazine call itself ‘the queen of the monthlies.’ Other magazines such as Harper’s followed Hale’s lead in promoting Christmas and the rituals that went along with it.

By then, four New England states had declared Christmas a bank holiday: Maine, Vermont, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Throughout the Civil War, 13 more states would make Christmas a legal holiday.

The Christmas Tree by Albert Chevallier Tayler

Christmas then came to mean family sentiments and benevolence. And it meant an escape from carnage and destruction for soldiers and the families they’d left behind.

In 1870, the federal government declared Christmas a national holiday. By then, most American families put up a Christmas tree at Yuletide.

 *  *  *

 

The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s book, Italian Christmas Cookies, tells you how to make those delicious cookies. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Click here to order your copy today.

 

This story was updated in 2023.

7 comments

Edgar Allan Poe Writes A Story Based on a Boston Harbor Legend - New England Historical Society March 2, 2016 - 8:20 am

[…] Edgar Allan Poe kept the legend alive. In 1846, he published The Cask of Amontillado in Godey’s Lady’s Book. The story is set in a nameless Italian city in an unspecified year. The owner of a wine cellar […]

Stockbridge Steps Into a Norman Rockwell Christmas Painting - New England Historical Society December 20, 2016 - 8:43 am

[…] picture window that gave him a steady northern light. In Stockbridge Main Street, there’s a Christmas tree in that […]

Six Christmas Firsts for New England - New England Historical Society December 21, 2016 - 8:16 pm

[…] at Harvard named Charles Follen set up Christmas trees in his Cambridge home beginning in 1832. Sarah Josepha Hale deserves credit for promoting the practice in her popular magazine, Godey’s Lady’s […]

Sarah Josepha Hale, the Little Lady From NH Who Started Thanksgiving - New England Historical Society November 20, 2017 - 8:05 am

[…] she rose to the editorship of a popular women’s magazine. From her perch, she popularized the Christmas tree, the white wedding dress and the Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, stuffing and pumpkin […]

A Christmas First for New England? Each State Can Claim One. - New England Historical Society December 22, 2017 - 6:19 pm

[…] New Hampshire native Sarah Josepha Hale deserves credit for promoting the Christmas tree in her popular magazine, Godey’s Lady’s Book. […]

Six Historic Downtown Department Stores - New England Historical Society September 6, 2019 - 7:21 am

[…] shop window displayed an old-fashioned circus. Inside the store, hundreds of decorated Christmas trees, Christmas baskets and red holly bells wowed […]

Charles Dickens Brings 'A Christmas Carol' - and Christmas - to Boston - New England Historical Society November 30, 2019 - 6:23 pm

[…] New Hampshire's Franklin Pierce put up the first Christmas tree in the White House. And in 1860, Sarah Josepha Hale published a picture of a Christmas tree in her popular ladies […]

Comments are closed.

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join our mailing list to receive the latest artciles from the New England Historical Society

Thanks for Signing Up!

Subscribe To Our Newsletter

Join Now and Get The Latest Articles. 

It's Free!

You have Successfully Subscribed!