For nineteen consecutive years the broadcast of Little Talks that comes on or before Christmas Day has been devoted to the subject of Christmas. Only a few times, of course, during these years has Christmas Day come on Sunday. When it does, it gives opportunity to give it special attention on a regular Sunday radio program.<\/p>\n
We do not need to be reminded that today Christmas has become so thoroughly commercialized that about all that reminds us that it is a great religious festival are the Christmas carols. One cannot hear repeated over and over the strains of “Away in a Manger”, “0, Little Town of Bethlehem” and “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” without being reminded that Christmas commemorates the birth of a religion accepted, however nominally, by millions of the earth’s inhabitants. There would be no such thing as Christianity if we had no reason to commemorate the birth of a child in a Bethlehem manger nearly 2,000 years ago.<\/p>\n
I have several times reminded the listeners to this program that, in Waterville, previous to 1855, no observance was made of Christmas.<\/p>\n
Our Puritan ancestors in New England were a solemn, serious lot. To smile was bad Christian manners; to laugh was outright sin. When the Puritans came to Massachusetts early in the 17th century, they either sought to reform or to separate completely from the Church of England, which had then been in existence for less than half a century. Puritans still living in 1620 remembered the days before Henry VIII had broken with the Roman Catholic Church, and they had come to have toward that church a bitter hatred. One of the most prominent observances of the Roman Church was the season of Advent, culminating in Christmas. Because sixteenth century Englishmen were not the solemn-faced people their Puritan descendants later became, the Catholic observance of Christmas, like several other Catholic festivals, had joy and gaiety mingled with the religious ceremonies. The Puritans, frowning upon all such gaiety, denounced Christmas as a pagan festival, designed by the Devil to draw man away from God.<\/p>\n
In our day, when Protestants and Catholics have come better to understand and respect each other, the former animosity toward Christmas, because it was a Catholic festival, seems absurd. Today the threat to Christmas is quite different. What Protestants and Catholics now face together is that in 1966 Christmas has little religious significance. Its emphasis today is on Christmas gifts, Christmas cards, and Christmas business in the stores. A part of the ecumenical movement so strongly supported by Pope John and continued by Pope Paul might well be for Protestants and Catholics to work together for a return to Christian emphasis on the celebration of Christmas.<\/p>\n
By 1876, ninety years ago, recognition of Christmas as a day of gifts and of special observance by the Protestant Churches, had become well established in Waterville, although it had been only 18 years earlier in 1858 that the first mention of Christmas locally appeared in the pages of the Waterville Mail.<\/p>\n
Even in 1876 the issue of the Mail for December 22 had no news items concerning the day to be observed three days later. One had to refer to the ads to realize that Christmas was close at hand.<\/p>\n
One ad said: “We wish to inform the public that they can find at the store of the Tilton Estate, three doors above the post office, many choice articles of jewelry suitable for the holiday trade, that can be bought below cost. We wish to close out our stock by New Years.”<\/p>\n
Another ad said: “Just the thing for a Christmas gift. Call at Robinson’s and get your friend a nice Cardigan jacket.”<\/p>\n
Dorr’s Drug Store got into the act with: “Holiday goods at Dorr’s. An unusually large assortment of elegant hair brushes and combs, perfumery, smelling bottles, powder puffs, and feather dusters.”<\/p>\n
In the 1860’s the papers made no mention of Santa Claus, though in the metropolitan press St. Nicholas was occasionally introduced. But in 1876 the name Santa Claus appeared in a Waterville ad: “Santa Claus has established his headquarters at Crowell’s on Main Street just below Silver. Toys and knick knacks in endless variety. Sleds, stationery, neckties, hosiery, suspenders, ribbons and ruffles. Bean pots, flower pots, pans and kettles.”<\/p>\n
Nowhere in any ad is there mention of the now ubiquitous Christmas card.<\/p>\n
In the following week’s issue of the Mail it was then a weekly paper — we learn how Christmas was observed in Waterville in that year of 1876. The paper’s leading news item was not about murder, robbery, divorce or scandal of any kind. It was about Christmas, and this is what it said: “Christmas Day was sunny, but the mercury was ten below zero. The young people did not mind the cold, and our streets were alive with sleigh riders. With a shining moon making the evening almost as light as day, parties were abroad until a late hour. The Baptist vestry was full. with old and young alike out to witness the exercises by the children of the Sabbath School. There was an entertainment called ‘The House of Santa Claus’, a fairy show adapted from a recent story in St. Nicholas magazine. At the Methodist vestry was held a genial and enjoyable sociable with refreshments. At the Congregational vestry there was a similar sociable with a Christmas tree and distribution of presents.”<\/p>\n
The correspondent in Oakland. then West Waterville, notified the Mail: “All things considered, we had a beautiful day for Christmas — very cold but sunny. There were several family trees. but only the Methodist Society distributed their presents in public, which they did in their vestry on Monday evening.”<\/p>\n
A Christmas item in that issue of the Mail was headed “Waterville Plains”. We would expect it to be about celebration of the day by the Catholic Franco-Americans in that area. But such was not the case. The item tells us: “Tuesday evening a successful Christmas tree was exhibited at the Plains. Among the exercises was the singing of a hymn by a young Karen in his native tongue. It is encouraging to friends of that mission to witness the improvement of the children during recent years in respect to reading, writing, singing, speaking and good manners.”<\/p>\n
The item, of Course, refers to a Christmas party held in the Baptist mission on the Plains — a mission that has now become the fully independent Second Baptist Church of Waterville. It was appropriate that a young Karen should take part in that program, because the same First Baptist Church that had established that mission on the Plains had also sent out the first missionary to the wild Karen tribes of northern Burma. That missionary had been the first graduate of Colby College, George Dana Boardman.<\/p>\n
In that Christmas season of 1876 there occurred in the office of the Waterville Mail an error for which they duly apologized on December 29. The apology said: “It was by our oversight that the holiday ad of Mr. I.H. Low, the well known apothecary, was omitted last week. He is not apt to be behind with his copy, and he was not delinquent this time. The fault is ours, not his. Those who call at his store for holiday gifts will find him well prepared. His fine establishment is in the Carleton Building just opposite the Common.”<\/p>\n
That apology reveals a difference in gift-giving customs at that time from the mode in our day. New Years was quite as appropriate as was Christmas for the presentation of gifts. Long before they came to recognize Christmas, the New England Puritans found no harm in giving presents, especially to children, on New Years Day. That is why, four days after Christmas. the Mail could say: “Those who call at Low’s store for holiday gifts will find him well prepared.” In other words, it was still not too late to give relatives and friends presents for New Years. So naturally the Mail printed on December 29 the Low ad it ought to have run on the 22nd. That ad said: “Holiday Goods and Everyday Goods. A first class, large stock of cologne, smelling bottles, puff boxes, floride waters, hair brushes and combs, shaving mugs and razor straps. An elegant lot of Russian leather wallets. pocketbooks, thermometers, sponges, chamois skins and Christmas candles.”<\/p>\n
Four years earlier, in 1872, the Fairfield Weekly Chronicle was giving some attention to Christmas. In fact it published a four-page Christmas supplement to accompany the four regular pages of the issue of December 18. But amazingly most of the ads in the supplement made no reference to Christmas. The largest ad was a full page by Bangs’ Mills of Waterville. In very large type Bangs informed the readers: “I have the best grist mill on the Kennebec River. I have on hand 2,000 barrels of flour. With my extensive personal acquaintances with western millers and a perfect knowledge of the grade of flour in demand in this vicinity, I declare that my facilities for buying low and selling cheap are unparalleled by any other dealer in Maine not on tide-water. To my patrons one and all I wish a merry Christmas and a happy New Year. I.S. Bangs, Jr.”<\/p>\n
Here is another of the larger ads in that Fairfield Chronicle: “LR. Mayo has on hand and will sell at low prices for cash, every variety of canned goods, consisting of sardines, oysters, peaches, pineapples. berries and nice tumble jellies of all kinds. A very good assortment of briar and meerschaum pipes. Fresh lemons received every week. New York oysters, fresh shelled, 70 cents a quart.”<\/p>\n
A few of the ads did deliberately refer to Christmas. E.H. Evans said he had a choice stock of Christmas and New Years goods, that included valises, backgammon boards and napkin rings. Evans also had one of the very few ads that mentioned toys. G.W. Burgess wanted folks to come in and look at his fine watches. Dyer and Cushing, up in Skowhegan, wanted Fairfield people to know that theirs was the store to visit for Christmas and New Years presents. They called special attention to their Bohemian China, lava vases, and marble busts.<\/p>\n
Although the publication called their extra four pages a Christmas supplement, it contained not a single mention of Christmas except in a few of the ads.<\/p>\n
Well, anyhow, I’ve told you how the newspapers recognized Christmas in Waterville and Fairfield nearly 100 years ago.<\/p>\n
Year: 1967<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #710, Broadcast on December 25, 1966<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42954,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8661"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8661\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}