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ceremonies

Before Groundhog Day, It Was Candlemas

Candlemas was always about two thing before it was about the groundhog: candles and the weather.

Winter in Connecticut by Childe Hassam

For many Catholics, Candlemas was also about putting away the Christmas decorations. (If you haven’t by now, perhaps you should consider it.)

Groundhog Day started out as a Roman festival and then morphed into a Christian holiday before it turned into an homage to a woodchuck.

The ancient Romans dedicated a festival of light to the divinities of the underworld in early February. According to myth, the goddess Proserpina was kidnapped by Hades. Ceres, her mother, went looking for her in the underworld with a lighted torch. Proserpina brought springtime when she was restored to Ceres, the goddess of agriculture, fertility, grain crops and motherhood.

Candlemas Invented

The early Christian church couldn’t destroy old ties and associations, and so it gave Candlemas a new meaning. The church modified a procession in memory of Ceres into a festival in honor of the Virgin mother. Candlemas marks the 40^th day after Christmas, when Mary went to the temple at Jerusalem to be purified and to present her son to God.

Franco-Americans in New England celebrated a special mass on Candlemas or the following Sunday. They lit candles and held them during parts of the service, then brought them home. They believed the lit candles protected the home during storms, warded off evil and comforted the sick.

On Candlemas night, Franco-Americans often had pancake parties, believed to bring good luck.

Episcopal priests blessing candles on Candlemas Day.

Other Protestants, such as Lutherans and Anglicans, blessed the candles that would be used in religious ceremonies for the rest of the year. Churches stopped using candles at vespers, which they had done during the winter. That gave rise to the old saying,

On Candlemas Day,
Throw candles away.

Candlemas was also a day to eat beans, probably a modification of the pagan custom. The Romans believed beans were sacred to the dead and invoked their presence.

The Puritans, of course, disdained Candlemas Day, which they correctly viewed as a pagan tradition.

Weather Forecasts

Writing in The Standard in 1901, Sophie Bronson Titterington described Candlemas as “the old time tradition.”

“It is a day of religious observance,” she wrote, “but more especially a day remarkable from unknown times for its significance in weather prognostications.”

Punxsatawny Phil held up for all to see

Those predictions heralded Punxsatawny Phil, whose shadow on a sunny day foretells six more weeks of winter:

As far as the sun shines in on Candlemas Day
So far will the snow blow in by the first of May.

Or this:

If Candlemas Day be fair and bright,
Winter will take another flight;
If Candlemas Day be foul and rain,
Winter is gone and won’t come again.

New Englanders who lived in old houses used to watch the cracks and crevices in their walls on February 2. They made a mark where the farthest sun ray penetrated, believing that was how far the snow would drift in before May 1.

Weather prognostication extended to the sea:

When the wind’s in the east on Candlemas Day,
There it will stick till the first of May.

Another saying was viewed as binding by early New Englanders:

The farmer should have on Candlemas Day,
Half his wood and half his hay.

Candle Fads

Titterington was writing during the Colonial Revival Movement, which she called “the modern craze for reviving old fashions.” She described a fad for Candlemas suppers, “where the only lights are candles in prodigal profusion.” Guests were given small, round cakes with lighted candles. The guest whose candle burned the longest would be the luckiest for the year. The parties also included an indoor procession with people bearing lighted candles from room to room to drive away the lurking shadows of evil.

You may also want to read the New England Historical Society stories, What They Say About Snow in New England, and Remembering the Great Snow of 1717.

This story was updated in 2023. With thanks to The New England Kitchen: A Monthly Journal of Domestic Science, Volume 2. Image: Blessing of the candles by Jonathunder – Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=55800233. Punxsatawny Phil By Chris Flook – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=80320762,

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Seven Strange Facts About Colonial Funerals

New England’s early colonists paid a great deal of attention to death and funerals. Many people attended colonial funerals, and would think it strange for a town’s resident not to pay respect to an upstanding citizen by attending a funeral.

Customs at colonial funerals were quite different from today.

Many of today’s traditions, such as giving right of way to a funeral procession, stem from the earliest days of America. Other traditions from colonial funerals have died out or changed over time.

Here are seven strange practices of colonial funerals that faded away:

2 sets of pall bearers, sometimes 3

Early colonists carried the body of the deceased all the way from the funeral service to the graveyard. The older, more respected members of the community often found that a long way to carry a heavy coffin.

So two sets of men got pallbearer duty. The younger men of the community would be assigned as under bearers to carry the bier on which the coffin rested. Older men would carry the pall, which draped the casket. In cases where the graveyard was a long way off, a second set of under bearers spelled the first group.

Occasionally, the men set down the bier on a slab to rest.

Gloves, Routine Parts of Colonial Funerals

Families sent mourning gloves to people expected to attend the funeral of a departed loved one. Mourners wore the gloves during the funeral and at the graveside.

They were fashionable, respectful and, for ministers at least, plentiful. Andrew Eliot, ordained pastor of Boston’s North Church in 1742, kept a careful diary of his life. In his 32 years as a minister, he received 2,940 pairs of funeral gloves.

What did he do with them? He sold them, at least as many as he could. His diary shows a steady effort to divest himself of the gloves over the years.

Old North Church

Rings Were the Thing

The families of the deceased often created commemorative rings for their loved ones. They would be distributed to families, close friends and ministers. The rings represented a steady stream of business for goldsmiths and silversmiths.

The rings frequently had inscriptions with sayings, such as: ‘Death Parts United Hearts,’ or ‘Death Conquers All’ or ‘Prepare for Death.’ Because of the expense, mourning rings were more common at the colonial funerals of the wealthy.

The minister Andrew Eliot, in addition to collecting gloves, also had a massive ring collection. He stored it in a tankard.

Families often cherished the rings and handed them down from one generation to the next. The colonists didn’t view them as maudlin, but rather cheerful reminders of their reunion with their dead family in the afterlife.

No Sermons

While many townspeople attended colonial funerals, the services were virtually silent affairs. The earliest colonists, wishing to avoid any appearance of papistry, conducted minimalist funerals that no one could confuse with the Catholic ceremonies.

Sermons and eulogies were non-existent. Instead, the pallbearers would silently conduct the body to the graveyard. Mourners attached notes of praise for the deceased to the bier, which would be compiled and published as memorials to the deceased.

Bostonian Thomas Lechford (1590-1644) offered a description of colonial funerals in his notebooks:

At Burials nothing is read, nor any funeral sermon made, but all the neighborhood or a goodly company of them come together by tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly to his grave, and then stand by him while he is buried. The ministers are most commonly present.

At funerals for major civic leaders, a minister would say a few words at the grave about the man’s character. For the most part, however, interment was a silent affair. This custom began dying out in the early 1700s, however. Popular sentiment began to build behind the idea that the dearly departed should have a few well-chosen words said over his grave.

Sober Affairs, Funerals Were Not

Early New Englanders used colonial funerals as a great excuse to tie one on.

Lucius Manlius Sargent, in his collection Dealings with the Dead, noted that in early colonial funerals guests viewed the body and then proceeded to a nearby table – always provided. They could then choose liquor from a well-stocked bar.

Mourners then generally went outside and to chat until it was time to carry the coffin to the burial ground. Though rarely did colonial funerals cause drunkenness, the idea of not serving liquor would have shocked. And the bar tab could grow quite large.

The following listing represents the funeral expenses for David Porter of Hartford, who drowned in 1678. The biggest outlay: booze.

A pint of liquor for those who dived for him. – 1 shilling
A quart of liquor for those who brought him home. – 2 shillings
Two quarts of wine & 1 gallon of cider to jury of inquest. — 5 shillings
8 gallons & 3 quarts wine for funeral. – £1, 15 shillings
Barrel cider for funeral. –16 shillings
1 Coffin. –12 shillings
Winding sheet. — 18 shillings

Sargent noted the practice of serving alcohol at funerals finally petered out, saddening a great many of the older citizens.

Mourning Got Out of Hand

As the colony grew wealthier, more and more mourners received rings, scarves and gloves. The wealth or popularity of the deceased was highlighted by the number of gifts distributed or the length of the funeral bell ringing.

The showiness and expense offended Puritan leaders, and several efforts limited the practices. In 1741, the Massachusetts government decided to fine a person 50 pounds for distributing wine or rum or funeral rings. The colony also restricted gloves to pall bearers and the clergy.

In Salem, the government hoped to curb excessive bell ringing and grandiose funerals by limiting what undertakers could charge for bell-ringing. Officials also limited the number of times a bell could be rung, as well as the overall cost of organizing the funeral.

Objects, Even Houses, Were Draped

People didn’t only decorate themselves colonial funerals. In some places, they decorated objects with black crape.

In Hartford, black cloth covered all wall decorations, mirrors and pictures. Mourners closed window shutters and sometimes tied them together with black ribbon or a sash. They kept it that way for a year-long mourning period.

Following the death of Sir William Pepperell of Kittery, mourners draped his entire house.

Again, the prominence of the deceased generally dictated the size of the colonial funeral show and the quantity of black bunting used.

If you enjoyed reading this story, you may also want to read about epitaphs in New England graveyards here.

Hat tip to Customs and Fashions in Old New England by Alice Morse Earle. This story about colonial funerals was updated in 2021.

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Remembering Martin Bergen, From Beaneaters Star to Murder-Suicide

In the summer of 1934, three very different lives converged in North Brookfield, Mass.: song-and-dance man George M. Cohan; Philadelphia Athletics manager Connie Mack; and Martin Bergen, a Boston Beaneater who murdered his family and killed himself 34 years previously.

George M. Cohan takes an at-bat as Connie Mack catches, July 10, 1934. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library, Leslie Jones Collection.

North Brookfield

All three had grown up in or near North Brookfield. Cohan, born in 1878, spent summers in North Brookfield at his grandmother’s house when he wasn’t traveling on the vaudeville circuit with his family. He loved the town. His musical Fifty Miles From Boston was inspired by North Brookfield and includes the song Harrigan.

In 1934, Cohan told a reporter, “I’ve knocked around everywhere, but there’s no place like North Brookfield.”

Geoge M. Cohan on Broadway

Cornelius McGillicuddy, better known as Connie Mack, was born Dec. 22, 1862 in East Brookfield, Mass., to a large Irish family. He quit school at 16 to work in a shoe factory and help support his family. He played baseball, or what was then called town ball, any chance he could get.

In 1886 he began his 10-year career as a light-hitting catcher in the National League. Then he went on to manage, and become part owner, of the Philadelphia Athletics for 50 seasons. He won, lost and managed more games than anyone in baseball history, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1937.

Martin Bergen

Martin Bergen. Photo courtesy Boston Public Library.

Martin Bergen was also a catcher, and some said he was the best defensive catcher ever to play the game. He was born on a farm in 1871 in North Brookfield.

From 1896 to 1899, he played for the Boston Beaneaters (later the Braves), growing increasingly erratic. Sometimes he would disappear for days. Once he suddenly slapped a teammate without provocation. He claimed people were trying to poison him and he began to walk sideways so he could detect his potential assassins.

His teammates mistook his behavior for alcoholism, but Martin Bergen suffered from mental illness.

When his three-year-old son died in the summer of 1899, Martin Bergen complained his teammates kept reminding him of his son’s death. Some of the Beaneaters, on the other hand, said they wouldn’t play the next year if he were still on the team.

Boston Beaneaters in 1897

On Jan. 19, 1900, Martin took an axe and bludgeoned to death his wife and two small children. He then slashed his own throat so savagely his head was nearly severed. Doctors concluded he had schizophrenia and possibly manic depression.

Cohan and Mack knew Martin Bergen. Mack had played baseball with him. Mack and Cohan had become friends, and in 1934 they helped collect enough money to establish a granite monument to Martin Bergen at his gravesite in St. Joseph Cemetery.

Connie Mack Day

The Brookfield Chamber of Commerce planned July 10, 1934 as a special day to dedicate the monument. George M. Cohan agreed to play master of ceremonies. He asked Connie Mack if his Philadelphia Athletics, on pace for a losing season, would play a top town team, the Armortreds.

Ironically, the day to honor Martin Bergen became Connie Mack Day. The town bedecked itself in patriotic bunting and American flags. The 181^st Infantry Band serenaded a crowd of 6,000 with tunes. NBC broadcast the game, with Cohan doing the play-by-play when he wasn’t umpiring or sitting next to Connie Mack, eating hot dogs or signing autographs.

Connie Mack, 1911

After the Athletics lost 9-5, Connie Mack spoke to the crowd:

I cannot begin to tell you the pleasure it has given me to come back to North Brookfield today. It was 51 years ago on the Fourth of July that I played my last ball game on this common … And I lost that one too. I don’t know if I have set foot on this field since.

Mack had returned to North Brookfield 34 years earlier to attend Martin Bergen’s funeral. Only two others had joined him for the sad ceremony: his brother Bill Bergen and his teammate Billy Hamilton.

The inscription on the monument read, “In memory of Martin Bergen, 1871–1900. Member of the Boston National League Club. Erected in appreciation of his contribution to American’s national game.”

With thanks to Connie Mack: A Life in Baseball By Ted Davis. This story about Martin Bergen was updated in 2022.

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Images of New England Observing Memorial Day in WWII

New England observed Memorial Day during World War II with special solemnity. For many, the memory of fallen heroes was fresh, raw and intense.

The Roosevelt administration sent photographers into the field to record how Americans honored their war dead. They worked for the Office of War Information, and would go on to lead illustrious careers.

How Ashland, Maine Observed Memorial Day

Rural Aroostook County lost 239 young men in World War II, either missing in action, killed in action or killed in the line of duty.

Many of the young men from tiny Ashland, Maine, in the county were drafted, and so Memorial Day took on a somber significance.

Legionnaires and Boy Scouts

The town, a farming community, had fewer than 1,000 residents, so the ceremonies featured hardly any young men.

John Collier took these photos of the ceremonies in Ashland in 1943 for the Office of War Information. After the war, he became an anthropologist and an early leader in the fields of visual anthropology and applied anthropology.

In Ashland, Collier noticed all boys and young men marched in the Memorial Day parade. Almost none watched from the audience.

The parade about to begin

Below, a Congregational minister offered a prayer for divine guidance through the years of war.

Prayers

Though only a small farming center with a population under 1000, Ashland had a good band with lots of purple trim and gold braid for the Memorial Day ceremony.

Keeping the beat

A bugler sounded Taps during the ceremonies.

Honoring their sacrifice

Gloucester, Mass., on May 31, 1943

Gordon Parks took these photos showing how Gloucester, Mass., observed Memorial Day in 1943. Parks, then 30, was working for the Office of War Information. He would later become well known for his photo essays of the civil rights movement for Life magazine — and for directing the 1971 film Shaft.

He also composed music and wrote fiction and poetry. His best known work is The Learning Tree, an autobiographical novel about a poor young African American growing up in segregated rural Kansas during the late 1920s and early 1930s. He received 20 honorary doctorates before he died in 2006 at the age of 93.

Here he captures one of the speakers at the Gloucester Memorial Day ceremony.

Solemn words

Gloucester, a fishing community, also held memorial services for fishermen lost at sea. Here relatives of fishermen wait their turn to toss flowers into the water.

Waiting their turn.

A Legionnaire played Taps during the Gloucester ceremony.

Again

When the parade ended, the ROTC band took a rest.

Southington, Conn., 1942

These Memorial Day photos of Southington, Conn., were taken by Fenno Jacobs during World War II for the Office of War Information. Jacobs, born in Waltham, Mass., was a rebellious child who didn’t get past the eighth grade. He joined the Merchant Marine, then took up photography. By the time the OWI hired him he had worked for Time, Life and National Geographic.

Jacobs belonged to a team of photographers who spent the month in Southington, Conn., taking pictures of residents at work and at leisure. The photos were compiled into a booklet designed to show friends and enemies in Europe the traditions and values of typical American families. Military planes dropped thousands of copies over Europe during the German occupation.

The photo below shows the parade marching past the Southington Town Hall on Memorial Day in 1942.

The flag at half-staff

Southington had a large number of residents with German, Polish and Italian ancestry. Their immigrant ancestors came to work in the mills during the 19th century.

A nicely decorated bicycle on the left

The Catholic congregation gathered in the St. Thomas cemetery for an outdoor Mass.

Remembering those who have passed

After World War II, Southington became a bedroom community and the population grew to over 42,000 people.

After the parade

Photos courtesy Library of Congress. This story was updated in 2022.

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We Won’t Go Until We Get Some: New England Colonial Christmas Traditions

Just how rowdy was a New England colonial Christmas? It depended on who was celebrating. But it bore little resemblance to Christmas today, and New Englanders found it a touchy subject from the start.

Illustration of Gov. William Bradford putting down the Christmas revels in the earliest days of Massachusetts. (Howard Pyle)

Illustration of an early New England colonial Christmas tradition: Plymouth Gov. William Bradford putting down the Christmas revels. (Howard Pyle)

The Pilgrims who arrived in Plymouth were a mix of people. They were led by separatists who despised the Christmas traditions of the Anglican Church as well as the Roman Catholic Church. They wanted to establish their own protestant churches, free of Christmas.

But many of the Pilgrims did not come to America for religious reasons at all. They were craftsmen or farmers recruited to ensure the colony would survive, and they simply wanted to make a better life in America.

New England Colonial Christmas

On their first Christmas at Plymouth, the Pilgrims celebrated the best way they knew how: They worked right through it. By the next year, Christmas traditions began infiltrating the group, and Gov. William Bradford had to put down the celebrations. He went so far as to call the Christmas treat mincemeat pie ‘idolatrie in a crust.’

As the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony gained ascendance, they had plenty of disagreements with the Pilgrims in Plymouth. But they largely agreed in their dislike of Christmas.

There remained in their midst, however, people who did celebrate Christmas with gusto. The fishing communities especially embraced the New England colonial Christmas, with their less-literate members mostly celebrating the holiday. Much of what actually happened was never recorded. What was recorded was seen through the eyes of the Puritan theocracy, and they painted an ugly picture of Christmas indeed.

Paganism

The Puritans complained that Christmas arose from an unnatural ideological marriage between the Roman Catholic Church and the pagans. They thought it originated in the Roman festival Saturnalia.

Just how pagan is Christmas? We won’t try to settle that debate. But the New England colonial Christmas increasingly irritated the Puritans, and they decided to stomp it out.

In 1647, the reformers in England outlawed Christmas. And the Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut soon followed suit. People who celebrated Christmas would be subject to a fine of five shillings.

In 1662, a Beverly, Mass., man found himself in court for hosting a drunken gathering on Christmas Day. He was a troublemaker whose family frequently tangled with Puritan society. His wife would eventually die on the gallows, but that’s another story.

More Mayhem

A second glimpse of Christmas mayhem occurred on Christmas Day in 1679 in Salem, Mass. Joseph Foster, Benjamin Fuller, Samuel Brayebrooke and Joseph Flint decided they wanted some booze for the holiday. They knew 72-year-old John Rowden had made perry, a liquor made from pears. So they dropped in to pay him an unscheduled visit.

Rowden told them to get out. Fuller refused, saying, “it was Christmas Day at night and they came to be merry and to drink perry, which was not to be had anywhere else but here and perry they would have before they went,” according to court records. The encounter ended in a fight and stolen property.

Twelfth Night (The King Drinks), by David Teniers the Younger (1634-1640), foreshadowing the New England colonial Christmas.

Drinking was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Christmas debauchery. The New England colonial Christmas included wassailing, mumming, gambling and feasting.

The Puritans constantly struggled to keep Christmas under control. The hoi polloi embraced the New England colonial Christmas as quite a good time.

With the harvest over, the cupboards full and the long winter yet to come, December seemed a perfect month for a ripping good celebration.

Lord of Misrule

In England and elsewhere in the colonies, towns would appoint a “lord of misrule.” This custom borrowed from Saturnalia as well. Generally the towns appointed someone of lower standing to this role to serve as master of ceremonies of the Christmas celebration either up to or including the Twelfth Night festivities.

The reason? During the New England colonial Christmas, people reversed their roles and the poor ruled over the wealthy. In addition to the feasting and drunkenness, the more outgoing celebrants used the holiday as an excuse for wassailing. Wassailing involved barging into the houses of the wealthier citizens, singing a song or two or putting on a short skit, and demanding food, drink and money.

Figgy Pudding

Perhaps you’ve sung the Christmas carol, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, with its chorus of “Oh, bring us a figgy pudding…we won’t go until we get some.” They meant it.

Figgy pudding with flaming brandy

The more obliging citizens would fork over the goods. Others, however, declined — resulting in fights, rock-throwing and hard feelings. Even more abhorrent to the Puritans was the sexual promiscuity that accompanied Christmas. Celebrants cast aside their inhibitions.

One of the more colorful New England colonial Christmas traditions was mumming, in which men dressed like women (and vice versa) or simply disguised themselves in a range of costumes. Mumming could be as innocent as street theater or as bawdy as a loosely disguised roving orgy.

The Puritan objected to the custom because a person disguised could slip into a neighbor’s house for an assignation without raising eyebrows. How commonplace was the debauchery? It’s probably impossible to say, though the good Puritans wanted nothing to do with it.

In 1681, with the Civil War over in England, the crown began pressuring Massachusetts to embrace the Anglican Church and roll back Puritan reforms. The colony complied by repealing the laws against Christmas. But the holiday remained frowned upon.

The Ghost of Christmas Past

Mad Mirth

In 1687 the Puritan minister Increase Mather railed against Christmas. He declared that those who celebrated it “are consumed in compotations, in interludes, in playing at cards, in revellings, in excess of wine, in mad mirth.”

No one really disagreed. It just didn’t bother some people the way it did Mather and the Puritan leadership.

It would take more than 100 years for Christmas to develop the wholesome, twinkly veneer it has today. While the southern colonies and New York, with its Dutch roots, embraced Christmas earlier, New England Protestants would hold out well beyond 1800.

The rest of the nation also felt the influence of the New England colonial Christmas tradition. In 1789, for instance, Congress held a session on Christmas Day. Businesses throughout New England always opened on Christmas. And children attended school on Christmas well into the 1800s.

The New England Colonial Christmas Gets a Facelift

By the early 1800s, however, with Episcopalians and Catholics already celebrating Christmas, the holdout Protestants felt pushed to join in. Most, though, still considered Christmas a pagan holiday that the Catholic Church had co-opted for its own purposes.

The holiday got a facelift with the poem Twas The Night Before Christmas, published in 1822. and Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carol in 1843. The opposition in the church then began to relent.

Marley’s Ghost, from A Christmas Carol. Original illustration by John Leech from the 1843 edition

After the Civil War, the battle ended. New England joined the rest of the country in embracing Christmas. And Christmas, by the way, embraced New England values, at least to some degree. The over-the-top debauchery and drunkenness gave way once and for all to the quieter, conventional celebrations we know today.

* * *

The Christmas holiday actually began in ancient Rome — and so did Italian cookies. The New England Historical Society’s new book, 24 Historic Italian Christmas Cookie Recipes, tells you how to make those delicious treats. It also bring you the history of the Italian immigrants who brought them to New England. Available now on Amazon; just click here.

To read more about the history of New England colonial Christmas, you may want to read The Battle for Christmas, by Stephen Nissenbaum.

This story about New England colonial Christmas traditions was updated in 2022.

Images: Figgy pudding By Ted Kerwin – originally posted to Flickr as Figgy Pudding with Flaming Brandy, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7162734. Twelfth Night by David Teniers By David Teniers the Younger – PradoWeb Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15885934.

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