It is not surprising that the first states to make Christmas an official holiday were Southern: Alabama in 1836, followed closely by Louisiana and Arkansas in 1838. Traditionally, this was the time of the year when the plantation registries were reviewed, profits and losses calculated and new slaves bought or leased out accordingly. It allowed workers to rest, neighbors to interact with each other and planters to settle their financial affairs. In the agrarian South, Christmas also had one very important function: it was a much-needed period of leisure after a hard year of work. Harvard student Jacob Rhett Motte, writing in the 1830s, compares 'the ringing of bells and firing of guns' on the Fourth of July in the North to Christmas celebrations back home, in South Carolina. Christmas was the time for fox-hunting, for parties and balls. Marling's Merry Christmas!: Celebrating America's Greatest Holiday records that as late as 1870 public schools in Boston were functioning on Christmas day and pupils who dared to skip class for the sake of the holiday were punished.īy contrast, Christmas was largely observed in the South, owing to the area's Episcopalian tradition and to the high degree to which Southerners had adapted and preserved old English customs. Though the ban on Christmas had been repealed in the 17th century, New England Puritans continued to frown upon most forms of celebration or even upon interrupting activity on Christmas day. In the first half of the 19th century, very few holidays were observed across the nation and Christmas was not one of them.

Christmas in America by Penne L. Restad