Gothamtide: Christmas words and images in nineteenth-century New York

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 2002 by Sibyl McCormac Groff

The most famous Christmas images to evolve from magazines are the illustrations of Santa Claus that the political cartoonist Thomas Nast created annually for Harper's Weekly between 1863 and 1886. While his earliest images depict a Santa Claus dressed in stars and stripes bringing gifts to the Union troops in the Civil War, (36) Nast's later images, such as the one in Figure 4, depict the robust, jolly Santa Claus who became the familiar secular icon for Christmas. What many people do not realize is that Nast is also responsible for portraying Santa's "work-shop" in the North Pole, Santa looking through his telescope "for good children", and Santa's account book with "a record of behavior." Nast's Santa Claus images are still so much in demand that Dover Publications offers a reprint of Thomas Nast's Christmas Drawings of 1890.

Images of Santa Claus by other artists were subsequently illustrated in magazines as well. The one in Plate V, inspired by Nast, was published in 1891 on the cover of Judge (1881-1939), a magazine noted for its political and social satire as well as for its exquisite illustrations. Its Christmas issues were so popular that in 1887 one generated revenues of some $7,000 (more than $132,000 in today's dollars). (37)

Magazines also provided decorating instructions and suggestions, as seen in the illustration in Figure 6, from the December 25. 1880, issue of Harper's Weekly, which shows how to make holiday arrangements of greenery. This mode of decoration harks back two thousand years to the Druids, Romans, and Norse, who decorated their homes with evergreens because they flourished in the darkness and cold. (38) Increasingly used here to decorate churches, stores, and Civil War graves, as well as houses at Christmas, greenery had become so popular in New York City that one family alone sold eighty thousand yards of greenery rope at market in 1880. (39)

Interestingly, while printed images about the secular holiday are abundant, paintings and sculptures are quite rare. One of the few known examples is the painting of 1837 by Robert Walter Weir shown in Plate VII, which was exhibited that year at the National Academy of Design in New York City. (40) Inspired by A Visit from Saint Nicholas, it depicts Saint Nicholas as elf sized and a bit ghoulish, more akin to the early Dutch Saint Nicholas than to the jolly old Santa Claus of Nast (PL VI). (41) Intriguingly, the carved wooden statue of Santa Claus in Plate II, dating from the last quarter of the nineteenth century, shows the influence of both Nast and the earlier Dutch conception. (42)

The tradition of the Christmas tree originated in Germany before being brought to England and the United States. The New York engineer Charles Haynes Haswell (1809-1907) recalled, "I have a vivid remembrance of going over to Brooklyn [in the 1830s] to witness the novelty...of German families...dressing a Christmas tree," (43) One of the most widely recognized Christmas tree illustrations is the one in Figure 7. When it appeared first in the December 1848 issue of the Illustrated London News, it was entitled "Christmas Tree at Windsor Castle" and showed Queen Victoria and her German-born consort Prince Albert posed with their children around a potted Christmas tree adorned with candles, glass and paper ornaments, and tinsel. Two years later, the American magazine Godey's Lady's Book (1830-1898) featured the same illustration but with a shift in focus: minor alterations in clothing and ornament, including the removal of the prince's royal sash and medal as well as the omission of a border, were made so that the figures no longer represented the royal couple. (44) However, in December 1852, the Illustrated London News version was reproduced in Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion with the title "A Beautiful Representation of the Christmas Tree." The pervasiveness of this illustration confirms the significant role of the Christmas tree, decorated with tiny toys, edibles, candies, or handmade ornaments--the favorite one being paper cornucopias. The latter were replaced by glass, paper, and metal ornaments imported from Germany beginning about 1870 and subsequently sold at Woolworth's five-and-ten stores (founded in 1879).