The first Virginia Christmas found the English adventurers far from home and far from merry. Although it was spring when the three English ships landed in the New World, the men neglected the fundamentals of survival in their rush to find gold and silver, and winter found them – like the grasshopper in Aesop’s fable – cold and starving, dependent upon the generosity of the native Powhatan Indians for their food. To make matters worse, that winter in Jamestown, Virginia was one of the coldest on record.
There was little in the way of Christmas celebration during those early years at Jamestown – people struggling for their very existence tend to neglect anything beyond the essentials. Food and shelter were their priorities, their faith in God their mainstay.
It wasn’t until the later part of the century, when tobacco had set the struggling Virginia colony on its feet, that life became marginally livable – even comfortable for the fortunate few. Landowners could afford to indulge in holiday observances, and many of the old English Christmas customs were transplanted to Virginia’s fertile soil.
Excerpted from Four Centuries of Virginia Christmas, Mary Miley Theobald and Libbey Hodges Oliver, Dietz Press, Petersburg, VA, 2000, (http://www.dietzpress.com/)
Brought to you by Encyclopedia Virginia at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities.
For Further Reading:
Traditional Christmas Customs, Katharine L. Brown, Staunton, VA: American Frontier Culture Foundation, 1997.
Colonial Virginians at Play. Jane Carson, Williamsburg, Va: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1989,
Saving Christmas in the Colonies, James a. Cox, Colonial Williamsburg Journal, Winter, 1990-1991
The Battle for Christmas: Stephen Nissenbaum, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
We Were Marching on Christmas Day: A History and Chronicale of Christmas During the Civil War. Kevin Rawlings, Baltimore, MD: Toomey Press, 1995
Life Under the “Peculiar Institution”: Selections from Slave Narrative Collection. Norman Yetman, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, Inc. 1970.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Harriet A. Jacobs, (Harriet Ann), 1813-1897
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly. Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1811-1896.
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