Early Americans: To Christmas or Not to Christmas?

by Denise Weimer

As we approach Christmas, we might venture to say that most Americans, certainly those with a Christian heritage, eagerly anticipate the celebration of the holiday. However, in the early days, those of different denominational backgrounds were much more sharply divided about whether to celebrate Christmas or not.

Many early Puritans and later Protestants saw Christmas as a holiday created by the Catholic pope. Plus, the celebration led to unseemly revelry. The Scottish Presbyterians were among the skeptical, although over the years, they began to allow some religious observations after seeing other denominations celebrate. They might sing some hymns by Isaac Watts, even though he was Congregationalist.

Anglicans, Catholics, and those of Germanic descent, especially  the Moravians, were much freer in their celebrations. While Anglicans observed Advent as a time of penitence and expectation, including fasting all but one full meal a day (and that, often without meat), the feast of Christmas on December 25 began a season of the twelve days of Christmas with balls, hunts, and parties until Epiphany. Churches were decorated with boughs of holly, ivy, mountain laurel, and mistletoe hung from the roof, walls, pillars, pews, pulpit, and galleries. This was often done on Christmas Eve in “the sticking of the church.” Anglicans added lavender, rose petals, and rosemary and bay. Carols sung might have included early favorites such as “The Snow Lay on the Ground,” “The First Noel,” “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen,” “The Holly and the Ivy,” “I Saw Three Ships,” and “Lully Lullay” (the Coventry Carol).

Revelers traveled in noisy groups on Christmas, Second Christmas (the day after), and New Year’s Eve morning. Sometimes these groups were called “fantasticals” or New Year’s Wishers, and they might wear costumes, carry noisemakers, and fire guns. At times, they would set out at midnight on New Year’s Eve and stop outside the windows of neighbors, asking to grant the family a wish. After the spokesman offered a blessing and they group fired guns, they might go inside  for brandy, rum punch, wassail, mince pies, or cakes. Twelfth Night, January fifth, was an occasion for many fancy balls and weddings.

Moravians, an early sect of plain people I wrote about in The Witness Tree, brought some of the earliest Christmas traditions from their native Germany. They were among the first to make use of the Christmas tree, well before Queen Victoria. The Moravian diaries of the Cherokee mission at Springplace, Georgia, state: December 21, 1805, This was a very clear but unusually cold morning. Soon after breakfast we drove about three miles from here to the Conasauga River in our dray wagon with our pupils to fetch small green trees for Christmas as well as cedar wood for delivery. We were successful in finding both, and after we had spent a very pleasant day there, we stopped in at the mill on our way home.

Shortly before Christmas, a room of the house would be closed to children while the adults prepared the putz, a display of moss, evergreen, laurel, and a grotto with a manger scene including the magi and a star.

On Christmas Eve, Moravians held a “love feast,” primarily a song service opened in prayer. Sometimes there would be two, the earlier one for children with a simple lesson and the hymn “Morning Star.” The evening service could include an address by the minister and singing of “Silent Night.” Then coffee or tea was passed in mugs from the aisle, followed by a slightly sweetened bun. Men distributed the mugs, women the baskets of bread. Children would sing verses they memorized, then be presented a gift. Finally, cream-colored candles tied with red ribbons were lit and taken home. Christmas Day heralded another morning service in which string or brass bands might provide music.

Have you had an opportunity to attend a love feast or visit a Moravian historic site? Did your ancestors or settlers in your area pass down unique Christmas traditions? If so, share below! 

Read more about the Moravians in my marriage of convenience romance, The Witness Tree, https://www.amazon.com/Witness-Tree-Denise-Weimer/dp/1645260623/ .

Denise Weimer writes historical and contemporary romance from her home in North Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses.

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The Moravian Town of Salem, North Carolina

1784 Salem Tavern for the hosting of "strangers"

Arrive in Old Salem, and you know from the Colonial Germanic architecture and living history museum operating alongside a fully accredited university that you’re someplace special. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll learn that the Moravian roots of Salem—part of the modern city of Winston-Salem—make it unique among North Carolina towns.

In 1753, Bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg purchased just short of 99,000 acres in the forks of Muddy Creek for the Moravian Church.

Originally known as Unity of the Brethren, the church had been in existence since a Bohemian priest, John Huss, was burned at stake in 1415 for challenging the authority and ethics of the Catholic Church. The Hussite churches were scattered, persecuted, and eventually influenced by Pietism. Bishop John Amos Comenius called the faithful “the hidden seed.” Eventually these people found refuge on the Saxon estate of Count Nicholas Ludwig von Zinzendorf, where they practiced communal living. In 1727, a revival sparked the fire of the most comprehensive Protestant mission effort to date. The Moravians established settlements in Pennsylvania, which in turn led to those in North Carolina.

Earliest timbered houses in Salem

The first settlers arrived in the stockade fort of Bethabara in 1753. Residents soon expanded from the fort and outlying farms to a new town, Bethania. In 1765, the location for Salem was chosen. Salem became the seat of church government for the North Carolina settlements and a center for trade and industry in the Southeast.

By the establishment of Salem, Moravians no longer separated all residents into choirs—communal living arranged by age, marital status, and gender—but still provided dorms for single adult men and women. The system offered independence and employment. Children attended boys’ and girls’ schools. The boarding school for girls soon drew scholars from across the Southeast, while the town’s advanced, log-bored plumbing drew George Washington for a 1791 visit. Major decisions were prayed over by the elders, then taken before the lot—a system of drawing a paper that said “yes,” “no,” or blank for “wait”—out of a bowl or tube. Members considered the lot process representative of the will of God as evidenced in Numbers 33 and Acts 1. 

Single Sisters' House

You can learn more in Old Salem: The Official Guidebook, by Penelope Niven.

Can you imagine living in Old Salem? Keep an eye out for my upcoming novel, The Witness Tree, about a marriage of convenience in that very town that leads to an adventure in the Cherokee Nation. It will be published by LPC’s Smitten imprint in September 2019.

Represented by Hartline Literary Agency, Denise Weimer holds a journalism degree with a minor in history from Asbury University. She’s the managing editor for Smitten Romance of Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas and the author of The Georgia Gold Series, The Restoration Trilogy, and a number of novellas, including Across Three Autumns of Barbour’s Colonial Backcountry Brides Collection. A wife and mother of two daughters, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses! Connect with Denise here:

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The History of the Christmas Tree

by Tamera Lynn Kraft

Some believe the Christmas tree started during the Winter Solstice when Druids worshiped trees. But from the beginning, Christmas trees have been used as Christian symbols to teach about Christ.

The Upside Down Fir Tree

During the 7th century, a monk from Devonshire spent time there preaching the word of God. He used the triangular shape of the Fir tree to teach about the Trinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. By the 12th century, the Fir tree was hung upside down from ceilings in Central Europe as a symbol of Christianity at Christmas time.

Boniface and Thor’s Oak

St. Boniface became a missionary to the Germans in the 700’s A.D where he encountered Druids who worshiped trees. To stop their sacrifices at their sacred Donar Oak near Geismar, St. Boniface chopped the tree down in 725 A.D. With one mighty blow, Saint Boniface felled the massive oak, and as the tree split, a beautiful young fir tree sprang from its center. Saint Boniface told the people that this lovely evergreen, with its branches pointing to heaven, was indeed a holy tree, the tree of the Christ Child, a symbol of His promise of eternal life. He instructed them to carry the evergreen from the wilderness into their homes and to surround it with gifts, symbols of love and kindness.

The Paradise Tree

From the eleventh Century, religious plays called “Mystery Plays” including the popular Paradise Play depicting the story of the creation of Adam and Eve, their sin, and thier banishment from Eden. An evergreen tree was used for this winter festival and decorated with apples symbolizing the forbidden fruit. The play ended with the promise of the coming Savior. Wafers were also hung from the tree symbolizing the forgiveness of sins in communion making it now not just the tree of knowledge but also the tree of life. This resulted in a very old European custom of decorating a fir tree in the home with apples and small white wafers representing the Holy Eucharist at Christmas time. These wafers were later replaced by little pieces of pastry cut in the shapes of stars, angels, hearts, flowers, and bells. In some areas the custom, was still to hang the tree upside down.

In addition to the paradise tree, many German Christians set up a Christmas Pyramid called a Lichstock – a open wooden frame with shelves for figurines of the Nativity covered with evergreen branches and decorated with candy, pastry, candles, and a star. The star represented the star of Bethlehem, the candles represented the light of Christ coming into the world, the evergreens were the symbol of eternal life, and the candy, fruits, and pastries, the goodness of our life in Christ, the fruits of the spirit, etc. By the seventeenth century the Lichstock and the “Paradise Tree” became merged into the modern Christmas tree.

Luther’s Christmas Tree

There is a popular tradition that Martin Luther was walking on a bright snow-covered, star-lit night pondering the birth of Christ. Enthralled by the evergreen trees, the stars and the landscape, he took a tree inside and put candles on it to represent the majesty he felt about Christ’s birth as Jesus came down from the stars to bring us eternal life.

Moravian Christmas Tree

The Moravians were some of the first Protestant missionaries from Bohemia to share the Gospel with Native Americans. They brought many of their traditions with them including indoor Christmas trees. They decorated the trees with white candles with red ribbons tied around them and pieces of paper with memory verses on them. In the early 1800s, a Moravian teacher made a star to teach Geometry to his students and placed the star on the top of the Christmas tree. That type of star is called a Moravian star.

Tamera Lynn Kraft has always loved adventures and writes Christian historical fiction set in America because there are so many adventures in American history. She has received 2^nd place in the NOCW contest, 3^rd place TARA writer’s contest, and is a finalist in the Frasier Writing Contest.

Her novellas Resurrection of Hope and A Christmas Promise are available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

The Moravians: John Heckewelder

John Heckewelder

This is the third and final post in my series on the Moravian missionaries to the Native Americans during the 18th and early 19th centuries. These men and women were saints of sturdy faith, indeed, and they suffered many trials in their devotion to spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ. Like all humans, they also had flaws, as we’d expect. When he was only a youth, the subject of today’s post, John Heckewelder, went to the Muskingum River in Ohio in the spring of 1762 as Christian Frederick Post’s assistant in his mission to the Delaware Indians in the Ohio Territory. Like John Mark, the young man who accompanied Paul and Silas on their first missionary journey only to turn back when the going got tough, Heckewelder fled that fall when the Indians became increasingly hostile toward the Whites. At the end of the year, however, with the conflict known as Pontiac’s War looming, threats against Post’s life finally forced him to flee as well.

Heckewelder spent the rest of his life as a missionary among the Delaware at a crucial period of their history, while they were progressively being driven from their lands in Pennsylvania into Ohio, and eventually to Ontario. His book, History, Manners, and Customs of the Indian Nations, which published in 1818, is a classic work that offers readers and historians insights into the history and lives of the Delaware even today. I own a copy of it myself and am using it to do research for my historical series.

Moravian Baptism of Indian Converts

Heckewelder was born in England in 1743. His parents were German Moravians, and in 1754 they moved their family to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, the headquarters of the Moravian Church in North America. Young Heckewelder grew up among fellow believers who ministered to the Delaware living along the Susquehanna and Allegheny rivers. Heckewelder’s parents apprenticed him to a cooper as a boy, but in 1762 he accompanied Post on his journey into the Ohio Territory as his assistant. Under Post’s guidance and later that of David Zeisberger, Heckewelder lived among the Delaware Indians throughout the 1760s and 1770s, becoming fluent in their language and intimately acquainted with their culture.

After the French and Indian War, the colonists in Pennsylvania were hostile toward all Indians because of the devastating raids they had suffered. English settlers and soldiers also continued to move into the lands west of the Allegheny Mountains claimed by the Indians, pushing the original inhabitants ever farther west. In the early 1760s a Delaware prophet named Neolin came to prominence. He told of a vision in which the Master of Life had commanded him to call the Indians to abandon the ways of the Whites and cast them out of the Ohio lands, which he had given to them. Only then would they gain the blessing of the Master of Life, and he would restore their power and prosperity. In 1763, under the influence of this teaching, many of the tribes renewed their attacks against the English, led by the Ottawa leader Pontiac and the Seneca leader Guyasuta in a war that came to be known as Pontiac’s War. The Moravian missionaries and their Indian converts, who like the Quakers and Amish were nonresistant, found themselves under suspicion—and often attack—by both the English and the Indians.

Gnadenhutten Massacre

The American Revolution made their situation even worse. Although the Moravians remained neutral, the Americans suspected them of aiding the British because they would not fight on their side. At the same time the British accused Heckewelder and Zeisberger of treason, claiming they passed intelligence from the Indians to the American rebels. The two missionaries were arrested and hauled in front of British officers at Detroit and held there for months. Meanwhile, a group of soldiers in Pennsylvania’s militia brutally murdered 96 unarmed Indian converts, including women and children, at the village of Gnadenhutten.

Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Heckewelder assisted in reestablishing the Moravian Indian refugees from Pennsylvania in Ohio after the war. He also was instrumental as a negotiator between the Indian communities and the new United States government. After his retirement, he returned to Bethlehem, but continued to occasionally work as an interpreter and agent for the Indians for some years. He devoted his greatest energies to writing, however. He published 3 books between 1818 and his death in 1823, which were based on his intimate knowledge of the Delaware. Leading scholars sought him out for details of the Indians’ languages, customs, and legends. He essentially served as a bridge between his generation, who grew up while the Indians still inhabited Pennsylvania and other eastern states, and new generations whose only knowledge of the aboriginal peoples came from history books.

~~~

J. M. Hochstetler is the daughter of Mennonite farmers and a lifelong student of history. She is also an author, editor, and publisher. Northkill, Book 1 of the Northkill Amish Series, won ForeWord Magazine’s 2014 INDYFAB Book of the Year Bronze Award for historical fiction. Book 2, The Return, releases in April 2017. Her American Patriot Series is the only comprehensive historical fiction series on the American Revolution. One Holy Night, a contemporary retelling of the Christmas story, was the Christian Small Publishers 2009 Book of the Year.

First Schoolhouse West of the Alleghenies was for Everyone

The Schoenbrunn Schoolhouse

by Tamera Lynn Kraft

Schoenbrunn Schoolhouse

The first schoolhouse west of the Alleghenies was built by a band of Moravian missionaries that had come to Ohio to establish a community to minister to the Lenape (Delaware) Indians. The band was led by David Zeisberger who believed everyone had the right to an education. He translated the Bible in the Lenape language and opened the Christian school to teach white and native children alike. School was taught in German, the Moravian native language, and the Lenape languague.

In colonial times, most schools did not teach boys and girls together. Girls from prosperious families went to seperate schools that taught home-making skills. Public schools didn't allow girls to attend. Puritans believed in teaching girls how to read so they could learn Scripture, but that was as far as their formal education would get. Educated girls were considered to not be suitable wives. Schools where blacks and native Americans attended with white children were unheard of although there were some Quaker and missionary schools that taught black and native Americans.

The Schoenbrunn School bucked all of these colonial traditions. In Moravian schools, blacks, native Americans, and girls were taught together with white boys. The Moravians believed that all children should receive an education so they could study the Bible and minister to others. Schoenbrunn School was one of the first public schools in the United States to do this.

The school and village only lasted until 1777. At that time, British troops questioned Zeisberger's neutrality in the Revolutionary War. The Moravians were forced to move on to Sandusky County, but their legacy of equality in education of all races and both genders in the Christian faith lives on until today. The Moravians destroyed the school and church to keep British troops from using the buildings, but the village has been rebuilt as a historic site in it's original location in Tuscarawus County in Ohio.

Tamera Lynn Kraft has always loved adventures and writes Christian historical fiction set in America because there are so many adventures in American history. She is married to the love of her life, has two grown children, and lives in Akron, Ohio. Soldier’s Heart and A Christmas Promise are two of her historical novellas that have been published. She has received 2nd place in the NOCW contest, 3rd place TARA writer’s contest, and is a finalist in the Frasier Writing Contest. Her third novella, A Resurrection of Hope, will be released in March.

You can contact Tamera online at these sites.

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A Christmas Promise

by Tamera Lynn Kraft

A Moravian Holiday Story, Circa 1773

During colonial times, John and Anna settle in an Ohio village to become Moravian missionaries to the Lenape. When John is called away to help at another settlement two days before Christmas, he promises he’ll be back by Christmas Day.

When he doesn’t show up, Anna works hard to not fear the worst while she provides her children with a traditional Moravian Christmas.

Through it all, she discovers a Christmas promise that will give her the peace she craves.

“Revel in the spirit of a Colonial Christmas with this achingly tender love story that will warm both your heart and your faith. With rich historical detail and characters who live and breathe on the page, Tamera Lynn Kraft has penned a haunting tale of Moravian missionaries who selflessly bring the promise of Christ to the Lenape Indians. A beautiful way to set your season aglow, A Christmas Promise is truly a promise kept for a heartwarming holiday tale.” – Julie Lessman

You can purchase A Christmas Promise at Pelican Book Group.