Where the Treetops Glisten and Children Listen

Christmas often seems timeless, beyond the confines of history. We imagine a story stretching back two thousand years into the fog of Biblical days. But like many traditions, those of Christmas were invented, as was the holiday itself, and not that long ago.

Although commemorating the birth of Jesus on December 25 dates to the era of the Roman Emperor Constantine, around 336 A.D., the reason for choosing the day has no Biblical basis. Some say it was arrived at by counting forward nine months from Christ’s crucifixion, by tradition in March. According to legend, he died on the same day he was conceived.

The connection to the winter solstice is obvious — in both Roman and Persian worlds, citizens whooped it up in relief after the sun reached its lowest point and days began to grow longer. The Romans combined the celebration with Saturnalia, which honored the god of agriculture. It was a time of gift-giving and feasting, of wreaths and candles.

In America, the Puritans put the kibosh on Christmas, in part because of these pagan connections. Through the first decades of the 1800s, little attention was paid to the day. It didn’t become an official holiday until 1870.

Many of our yuletide traditions have their roots in Europe. We can thank German immigrants for the Christmas tree. Folks began putting up both community and private trees beginning in the 1830s. The first White House Christmas tree was erected in 1889 under President Benjamin Harrison. Electric lights had been added seven years earlier, invented by an electric utility executive.

Several writers helped to “invent” Christmas itself. Clement Clark Moore, a classics scholar from New York City, is said to have written a Christmas poem in December 1822 to amuse his six children. He called it “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” but it’s also known by its first line: “'Twas the night before Christmas.” He drew the story from Dutch legends about Saint Nicholas, a fourth century bishop known for his kindness and generosity and a patron saint of children (his feast day is December 6).

Moore borrowed from his friend Washington Irving, who had earlier recorded the names of Santa’s reindeer — “Dunder" and "Blixem" were Dutch terms for thunder and lightning. Irving also gave St. Nick the ability to fly by “laying his finger aside of his nose.” Visions of sugar-plums have danced in the heads of children ever since.

Charles Dickens was another giant of Christmas cheer. His 1843 story “A Christmas Carol,” with its vivid characters and homely lessons established notions about the holiday at a time when Christmas sentiment was burgeoning in America as well as in Victorian England. Although the phrase “Merry Christmas,” had been around for centuries, its use in the Dickens story cast it in stone.

The Dutch term for St. Nick was Sinterklass. The name morphed into our modern Santa Claus, a tradition that also referred to the English “Father Christmas.” Santa was first given a face by preeminent cartoonist Thomas Nast. A staff illustrator for Harper’s Weekly, Nast drew the portrait in 1863 as the nation struggled through the Civil War. His images continued the transformation of Christmas into a secular rather than religious holiday.

Nast’s 1863 Santa Claus

An Albany, NY, printer and variety store operator named R.H. Pease created the first American-made Christmas card in the early 1850s. Twenty years later, the colorful cards printed via chromolithography had become immensely popular and were intended as gifts, not just greetings.

If Americans have borrowed Christmas traditions from Europe, we’ve also given back. Only in America, perhaps, could Israel Beilin, born in a Russian shtetl and son of a Jewish cantor, write the most popular Christmas song of all time. By 1942, when he jotted down“White Christmas,” Beilin had changed his name to Irving Berlin. The Bing Crosby version of the song is the best-selling single of all time.

There’s one old Christmas story that still packs a punch, even among the most secular of us. Written down around 70 A.D., it’s the tale of a divine being who came to earth not on a throne but in the form of a helpless infant. The angels who announced the news appeared not to patriarchs and priests but to humble shepherds. The message was simple: “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy.”

To peace on earth . . . and a Happy Saturnalia to all!