Christmas in American History: Colonial Times to the Present

3 units

This January intercession course will explore the history of Christmas and its discontents in America, from colonial times to today. Topics will include: early Puritan opposition to a distinct Christmas holiday; indifference toward the holiday in much of the colonial Chesapeake; the association of Christmas celebrations with pranks in the early-national United States; the rise of a consumer-centered Christmas in the nineteenth century; harrowing celebrations of Christmas in times of tragedy and war (from George Washington's crossing of the Delaware in 1776 to the 1972 Christmas bombing in Vietnam); the music, television, and filmography of Christmas in America from the late nineteenth century; and histories of inclusion and marginalization by non-Christians, atheists, and agnostics. The course will also look at celebrants of other religious and cultural winter holidays etc., along with ongoing cultural and political battles over the secularization of Christmas, with historical roots extending all the way back to Benjamin Franklin's lament in 1743: How many observe Christ's birth-day! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments.