Bringing in Christmas

For many religious denominations, Christmas Day was set aside for sermonizing and prayer, and little else. Much to the irritation of this quiet faction, other Christians chose to make noise. Mary Boardman Crowninshield, proper New Englander and wife of the secretary of the navy, noted in her diary for Christmas 1815: “Christmas morn. It seems more like our Independence—guns firing all night.”¹ New Englander that she was, she chose to go to Catholic church in Washington, D.C.—where she lived—because “it is their great day.” In any case, Christmas revelry, or “making the night hideous” to those who did not approve, was an integral part of the American celebration of the holiday.² And with it came a vast array of foods whose origins stretched back into the early Middle Ages, in some cases into the pre-Christian era.