Christmas for Slaves in Early America

The Slave Experience of the Holidays

From Documenting the American South.University Library, 

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

American slaves experienced the Christmas holidays in many different ways. Joy, hope, & celebration were naturally a part of the season for many. For other slaves, these holidays conjured up visions of freedom & even the opportunity to bring about that freedom. Still others saw it as yet another burden to be endured...

The prosperity & relaxed discipline associated with Christmas often enabled slaves to interact in ways that they could not during the rest of the year. They customarily received material goods from their masters: perhaps the slave's yearly allotment of clothing, an edible delicacy, or a present above & beyond what he or she needed to survive & work on the plantation.

For this reason, among others, slaves frequently married during the Christmas season. When Dice, a female slave in Nina Hill Robinson'sAunt Dice, came to her master"one Christmas eve, & asked his consent to her marriage with Caesar,"her master allowed the ceremony, & a"great feast was spread."Dice & Caesar were married in"the mistress's own parlor . . . before the white minister."More than any other time of year, Christmas provided slaves with the latitude & prosperity that made a formal wedding possible.

On the plantation, the transfer of Christmas gifts from master to slave was often accompanied by a curious ritual. On Christmas day,"it was always customary in those days to catch peoples Christmas gifts & they would give you something."Slaves & children would lie in wait for those with the means to provide presents & capture them, crying 'Christmas gift' & refusing to release their prisoners until they received a gift in return. This ironic annual inversion of power occasionally allowed slaves to acquire real power. Henry, a slave whose tragic life & death is recounted in Martha Griffith Browne'sAutobiography of a Female Slave, saved"Christmas gifts in money"to buy his freedom.

Some slaves saw Christmas as an opportunity to escape. They took advantage of relaxed work schedules & the holiday travels of slaveholders, who were too far away to stop them. While some slaveholders presumably treated the holiday as any other workday, numerous authors record a variety of holiday traditions, including the suspension of work for celebration & family visits. Because many slaves had spouses, children, & family who were owned by different masters & who lived on other properties, slaves often requested passes to travel & visit family during this time. Some slaves used the passes to explain their presence on the road & delay the discovery of their escape through their masters' expectation that they would soon return from their"family visit." Jermain Loguen plotted a Christmas escape, stockpiling supplies & waiting for travel passes, knowing the cover of the holidays was essential for success: "Lord speed the day!--freedom begins with the holidays!"These plans turned out to be wise, as Loguen & his companions are almost caught crossing a river into Ohio, but were left alone because the white men thought they were free men"who have been to Kentucky to spend the Holidays with their friends."

Harriet Tubman helped her brothers escape at Christmas. Their master intended to sell them after Christmas but was delayed by the holiday. The brothers were expected to spend the day with their elderly mother but met Tubman in secret. She helped them travel north, gaining a head start on the master who did not discover their disappearance until the end of the holidays. 

Likewise, William & Ellen Crafts escaped together at Christmastime. They took advantage of passes that were clearly meant for temporary use. Ellen "obtained a pass from her mistress, allowing her to be away for a few days. The cabinet-maker with whom I worked gave me a similar paper, but said that he needed my services very much, & wished me to return as soon as the time granted was up. I thanked him kindly; but somehow I have not been able to make it convenient to return yet; &, as the free air of good old England agrees so well with my wife & our dear little ones, as well as with myself, it is not at all likely we shall return at present to the 'peculiar institution' of chains & stripes."

Christmas could represent not only physical freedom, but spiritual freedom, as well as the hope for better things to come. The main protagonist of Martha Griffin Browne's Autobiography of a Female Slave, Ann, found little positive value in the slaveholder's version of Christmas—equating it with"all sorts of culinary preparations"& extensive house cleaning rituals—but she saw the possibility for a better future in the story of the life of Christ: "This same Jesus, whom the civilized world now worship as their Lord, was once lowly, outcast, & despised; born of the most hated people of the world . . . laid in the manger of a stable at Bethlehem . . . this Jesus is worshipped now." For Ann, Christmas symbolized the birth of the very hope she used to survive her captivity.

Not all enslaved African Americans viewed the holidays as a time of celebration & hope. Rather, Christmas served only to highlight their lack of freedom. As a young boy, Louis Hughes was bought in December & introduced to his new household on Christmas Eve "as a Christmas gift to the madam." When Peter Bruner tried to claim a Christmas gift from his master, "he took me & threw me in the tan vat & nearly drowned me. Every time I made an attempt to get out he would kick me back in again until I was almost dead."

Frederick Douglass described the period of respite that was granted to slaves every year between Christmas & New Year's Day as a psychological tool of the oppressor. In his 1845 Narrative, Douglass wrote that slaves celebrated the winter holidays by engaging in activities such as"playing ball, wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, & drinking whiskey."He took particular umbrage at the latter practice, which was often encouraged by slave owners through various tactics."One plan [was] to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whiskey without getting drunk; & in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess."

In My Bondage & My Freedom, Douglass concluded that "[a]ll the license allowed [during the holidays] appears to have no other object than to disgust the slaves with their temporary freedom, & to make them as glad to return to their work, as they were to leave it." While there is no doubt that many enjoyed these holidays, Douglass acutely discerned that they were granted not merely in a spirit of charity or conviviality, but also to appease those who yearned for freedom, ultimately serving the ulterior motives of slave owners.

Christmas Pudding from the Middle Ages

 Presenting the plum pudding

Although the Christmas Pudding took its final form in Victorian England, the origins of Christmas pudding lie back in the middle ages, in the now-forgotten ‘plum pottage’. Pottage was a general term for a mixture of ingredients, usually meat and vegetables, boiled together in a cauldron for several hours. It was very versatile and was a staple of the English diet for many centuries. Plum pottage, the ancestor of the Christmas pudding, generally contained meat, dried fruits, a little sugar, and mixed spices (cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger). As with mince pies, the meat was included because many livestock were slaughtered in the autumn due to a lack of fodder in the winter, and cooks had to find a good way of both preserving and serving up the meat. Plum pottage didn’t necessarily contain any plums or prunes; it got its name from the fact that in the Elizabethan era, prunes became so popular that they started to be used to refer to a wide variety of dried fruits.

 Hurrah for the Christmas Pudding 1909

Over the course of the 18th century, pottage and porridge became unfashionable as sophisticated cuisine increasingly took its cues from France. In 1758 Martha Bradley, the author of The British Housewife: or, The Cooke, Housekeeper’s and Gardiner’s Companion said of plum porridge that “the French laugh outrageously at this old English Dish.” Her own recipe for ‘plumb porridge’ sounds very rich; it contains a leg and a shin of beef, white bread, currants, raisins, prunes, mace, cloves, nutmegs, sherry, salt and sugar. As plum pottage died out, the plum pudding rose to take its place. Thanks to cheap sugar from the expanding West Indian slave plantations, plum puddings became sweeter and the savoury element of the dish (meat) became less important. By the Victorian period the only meat product in a Christmas pudding was suet (raw beef or mutton fat). At this point it had really become Christmas pudding as we know it, with the cannonball-shaped pudding of flour, fruits, suet, sugar and spices topped with a sprig of holly, doused in brandy and set alight.

How exactly plum pudding got to be associated with Christmas is the next mystery. The earlier plum pottage was apparently enjoyed at times of celebration, although it was primarily associated with harvest festivities rather than Christmas. There is an unsubstantiated story that in 1714, King George I (sometimes known as the Pudding King) requested that plum pudding be served as part of his first Christmas feast in England. Whether this actually happened or not, was can see that recipe books from the 18th century onwards did start associating plum pudding with Christmas. In 1740, a publication titled Christmas Entertainments included a recipe for plum pudding, which suggests that it was increasingly eaten in a Christmas context. The first known reference to a ‘Christmas pudding’ is, however, not to be found until 1845, in Eliza Acton’s bestselling Modern Cookery for Private Families.

Joseph Clark (1834-1926) A Christmas Dole

At the time when Acton was composing her cookbook, Christmas puddings were traditionally made four or five weeks before Christmas on ‘Stir-up Sunday’. The name, rather amusingly, comes from the collect in the Book of Common Prayer for that Sunday, which reads “Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth good works, may by thee be plenteously required; through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Traditionally everyone in the household gave the pudding mixture a stir and made a wish whilst doing so. It was a common practice to include either a threepence or a sixpence in the pudding mixture which could be kept by the person who found it. For children this was a welcome piece of pocket money and for adults it was supposed to bring wealth in the coming year. Other common tokens included a tiny wishbone to bring good luck, a silver thimble for thrift, and an anchor to symbolize safe harbor.

Text only from the very entertaining blog Dance's Historical Miscellany

Christmas for America’s Slaves - Rest or Resist???

What Was Christmas Like for America’s Enslaved People? 

For some, it was a rare time of respite; for others, an opportunity for resistance.

By Farrell Evans Dec 21, 2020 History.com

How did Americans living under slavery experience the Christmas holidays? While early accounts from white Southerners after the Civil War often painted an idealized picture of owners’ generosity met by grateful workers happily feasting, singing & dancing, the reality was far more complex.

In the 1830s, the large slaveholding states of Alabama, Louisiana & Arkansas became the 1st in the United States to declare Christmas a state holiday. It was in these Southern states & others during the antebellum period (1812-1861) that many Christmas traditions—giving gifts, singing carols, decorating homes—firmly took hold in American culture. Many enslaved workers got their longest break of the year—typically a handful of days—and some were granted the privilege to travel to see family or get married. Many received gifts from their owners & enjoyed special foods untasted the rest of the year.

But while many enslaved people enjoyed some of these holiday pleasures, Christmas time could be treacherous. According to Robert E. May, a professor of history at Purdue University & author of Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas & Southern Memory, owners’ fears of rebellion during the season sometimes led to pre-emptive shows of harsh discipline. Their buying & selling of workers didn’t abate during the holidays. Nor did their annual hiring out of enslaved workers, some of whom would be shipped off, away from their families, on New Year’s Day—widely referred to as “heartbreak day.”

Christmas afforded some enslaved people an annual window of opportunity to challenge the subjugation that shaped their daily lives. Resistance came in many ways—from their assertion of power to give gifts to expressions of religious & cultural independence to using the relative looseness of holiday celebrations & time off to plot escapes.

For slaveholders, gift-giving connoted power. Christmas gave them the opportunity to express their paternalism & dominance over the people they owned, who almost universally lacked the economic power or means to purchase gifts. Owners often gave their enslaved workers things they withheld throughout the year, like shoes, clothing & money. 

According to Texas historian Elizabeth Silverthorne, one slaveholder from that state gave each of his families $25. The children were given sacks of candy & pennies. “Christmas day we gave out our donations to the servants, they were much pleased & we were saluted on all sides with grins, smiles & low bows,” wrote one Southern planter. 

In his book The Battle for Christmas, historian Stephen Nissenbaum recounts how a white overseer considered giving gifts to enslaved workers on Christmas a better source of control than physical violence: “I killed twenty-eight head of beef for the people’s Christmas dinner,” he said. “I can do more with them in this way than if all the hides of the cattle were made into lashes.”

Enslaved people rarely made reciprocal gifts to their owners, according to historians Shauna Bigham & Robert E. May: “Fleeting displays of economic equality would have controverted the [enslaved workers] prescribed role of childlike dependency.” Even when they played a common holiday game with their owners—where the first person who could surprise the other by saying “Christmas Gift!” received a present—they were not expected to give gifts when they lost.

In some instances, enslaved people did reciprocate with gifts to the masters when they lost in the game. On one plantation in the Low Country South Carolina, some enslaved house workers gave their owners eggs wrapped in handkerchiefs. Yet overall, the one-sided nature of gift-giving between slaveowners & those they enslaved reinforced the dynamic of white power & paternalism.

For enslaved workers, Christmastime represented a break between the end of harvest season & the start of preparation for the next year of production—a brief sliver of freedom in lives marked by heavy labor & bondage. “This time we regarded as our own, by the grace of our masters; & we therefore used or abused it nearly as we pleased,” wrote famed writer, orator & abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who escaped slavery at age 20. “Those of us who had families at a distance were generally allowed to spend the whole six days [between Christmas & New Year’s Day] in their society.”

Some used these more relaxed holiday times to run for freedom. In 1848, Ellen & William Craft, an enslaved married couple from Macon, Georgia, used passes from their owners during Christmastime to concoct an elaborate plan to escape by train & steamer to Philadelphia. On Christmas Eve in 1854, Underground Railroad icon Harriet Tubman set out from Philadelphia to Maryland’s Eastern Shore after she had heard her three brothers were going to be sold by their owner the day after Christmas. The owner had given them permission to visit family on Christmas Day. But instead of the brothers meeting with their families for dinner, their sister Harriet led them to freedom in Philadelphia.

For enslaved people, resistance during Christmastime didn’t always take the form of rebellion or flight in a geographical or physical sense. Often it came in the way they adapted the dominant society’s traditions into something of their own, allowing for the purest expression of their humanity & cultural roots. In Wilmington, North Carolina, enslaved people celebrated what they called John Kunering (other names include “Jonkonnu,” John Kannaus” & “John Canoe”), where they dressed in wild costumes & went from house to house singing, dancing & beating rhythms with rib bones, cow’s horns & triangles. At every stop they expected to receive a gift. “Every child rises on Christmas morning to see the John Kannaus,” remembered writer & abolitionist Harriet Jacobs in her autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. “Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its greatest attraction.”

These public displays of joy were not universally loved by all whites in Wilmington, but many encouraged the activities. “It would really be a source of regret, if it were denied to slaves in the intervals between their toils to indulge in mirthful past times,” said a white antebellum judge named Thomas Ruffin. For historian Sterling Stuckey, author of Slave Culture, the Kunering reflected deep African roots: “Considering the place of religion in West Africa, where dance & song are means of relating to ancestral spirits & to God, the Christmas season was conducive to Africans in America continuing to attach sacred value to John Kunering.”

Enslaved peopledid exhibit a long memory of Christmastime. They remembered how they used it to mark time around the planting season. They knew they could count on it for a measure of freedom & relaxation. Their inability to participate fully in gift exchange—one of the most basic aspects of the season—helped reinforce their place as men & women who couldn’t benefit from their labor. Some, like Harriet Tubman & the Crafts, saw it as a time best suited to challenge the whole society. 

The adults remembered the gifts. “Didn’t have no Christmas tree,” recounted a formerly enslaved man named Beauregard Tenneyson, in a WPA interview. “But they set up a long pine table in the house & that plank table was covered with presents & none of the Negroes was ever forgot on that day.”

Christmas with The Washingtons at Mount Vernon

Washington & his slave, Billy Lee. 1780, by John Trumbull. Metropolitan Museum

The Washingtons were not the only people at Mount Vernon observing the Christmas holiday. Evidence indicates that most servants & slaves had 4 days off from work at Christmas time & utilized the personal time for relaxation & observation. For a particular group of slaves, however, the Christmas holiday did not bring relief from their work. Cooks & house servants were required to work through the holiday.

Religion played a significant part in the observance of the holiday at Mount Vernon, as the Washingtons frequently attended church on Christmas day. In 1770, for example, Christmas fell on a Tuesday. After going to nearby Pohick Church in the morning, the family returned to Mount Vernon for dinner. Similar patterns were followed in 1771 & 1772, when December 25 fell on a Wednesday & Friday.

The Washingtons preferred to spend the holiday with family & friends, & George & Martha frequently had guests over at Mount Vernon to celebrate Christmas. While at Mount Vernon guests were encouraged to make themselves at home & take part in typical seasonal activities. Hunting & foxhunting, for example, were particularly favored activities. Twice in 1768 & 3 times in both 1771 & 1773, George Washington went hunting with visiting friends between Christmas & Twelfth Night.

The Journal of American History relates that in 1783, George Washington retired from the military, and spent Christmas at Mount Vernon with his family and the air was filled with "rousing cheers, song, pistol shots and firecrackers." 

Washington resigned his commission at Annapolis on December 23, 1783; took affectionate leave of his companions in arms; and once more a private citizen, with Mrs. Washington by his side, and accompanied by Colonels David Humphreys, William Smith, and Benjamin Walker, he rode forward over the familiar Maryland roads toward his beloved Mount Vernon.

“The General and Mrs. Washington reached home Christmas Eve. His 'people from the various farms gathered at the gate and along the drive to give them welcome.

"They lighted the night with bonfires and made it noisy with fiddling and dancing in the quarters. At the great door of the mansion the home-comers were greeted by a troop of relatives, and next day the neighbors drove in from all directions to add their welcome."

"A letter has been preserved, written by a little girl of the Lewis family of Fredericksburg, describing this joyous Christmas-tide. “I must tell you what a charming day I spent at Mt. Vernon with Mama and Sally. The General and Madame came home on Christmas Eve, and such a racket as the servants made! They were glad of their coming. Three handsome young officers came with them. All Christmas afternoon people came to pay their respects and duty. Among these were stately dames and gay young women. The General seemed very happy and Mrs. Washington was up before daybreak making everything as agreeable as possible for everybody.”

See:

Miller, Francis Trevelyn Editor. Journal of American History. 

    Associated Publishers of American Records, 1917. 

Pryor Sara Agnes Rice ("Mrs. R.A. Pryor, ") The Mother of Washington and Her Times

     Virginia 1903.

Thompson, Mary V. "Christmas at Mount Vernon," Mount Vernon Ladies' Association 

    Annual Report 1990. 

Wilstach, Paul. Mount Vernon: Washington's Home & the Nation's Shrine. 1916