Seeing Christmas in a New Light
Christmas is a beloved holiday--one associated with a solid set of traditions from the brightly lit trees to the well-known carols to the stockings on the mantelpiece. So we almost never think of it as including a treasure trove of ideas that most of us have never heard about.
Now Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President John Kennedy, has shown us a lot of what we have been missing. Her new anthology, A Family Christmas, is a collection of poetry, prose, lyrics and scripture about the season that lets us see the many aspects of Christmas that are rarely discussed.
For example, among the tidbits she offers are the following::
In 1659, the Puritans of Massachusetts banned the celebration of Christmas, "which had become known for public drunkenness, licentious sex, and gambling."
The American vision of Santa Claus was created by Clement Clarke Moore in his 1822 poem that starts "'Twas the night before Christmas" and was later exported to the world largely via Coca-Cola ads.
Department stores - invented in America - "contributed greatly to the economic growth of Christmas." Macy's began decorating its windows in the 1870s and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was created for Chicago's Montgomery Ward stores in 1939.
"The first electric Christmas-tree lights, eighty hand-blown red, white, and blue glass bulbs, festooned the 1882 tree of Edward Johnson, an executive in the Edison Illuminating Company."
"America's first public Christmas tree was lit in 1912 by Caroline Kennedy's great grandfather, Boston Mayor John F. Fitzgerald, at 5 p.m., beating New York's Madison Square tree by half an hour."
Among the more unusual entries are a letter from Groucho Marx about his bad luck with holiday tipping, recipes from the kitchen of Martha Washington and the lyrics to "Christmas in Hollis" by rappers Run-DMC.
So if you want to add some history, some fun and some unusual insights about the holiday, this is a great book to turn to and help you bring a new dimension to the family celebrations.
