The Battle for Christmas (57 page)

27.
Essex Quarterly Courts
, VII, 331–332. For a follow-up to this episode, see ibid., VII, 424.

28.
Braybrooke, a weaver, was taxed in the lowest 15 percent of Salem Village rate payers in 1681, and in 1700 he was renting a small parcel of land from a local landowner, Thomas Putnam, Jr. Fuller was the son of a bricklayer; in 1690 he was taxed in the lowest quartile. Flint was the younger son of a sturdy farmer, and would later inherit the less desirable portion of his parents’ estate; he did not flourish. And Foster was assessed the minimum for the 1683 county rate. (Data are from
Essex Institute Historical Collections
51 [1915], 190–191; ibid. 53 [1917], 336; Paul S. Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, eds.,
Salem-Village Witchcraft: A Documentary Record of Local Conflict in Colonial New England
[Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1993], 321–322, 353–355;
Essex Quarterly Courts
, VII, 424; Sidney Perley,
The History of Salem, Massachusetts
[3 vols., Salem, 1924], III, 422.)

29.
Boyer and Nissenbaum,
Salem-Village Witchcraft
, 262 (anti-Parris petition) and 350 (list of villagers withholding taxes).

30.
Samuel Sewall,
The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729
. (2 vols., New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1973), I, 90 (Dec. 25 and 28, 1685); 1, 128 (Dec. 25, 1686).

31.
John Tully, “Tully 1687. An Almanac” (Boston, 1687); John Tully, “Tully 1688. An Almanac …
Imprimatur
Edw. Randolph, Secr.” (Boston, 1688).

32.
Ibid., 15–22. Selections from these prognostications are reprinted in Harrison T. Meserole, ed.,
Seventeenth-Century American Poetry
(Stuart Editions, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1968), 512–515. The copy of this almanac I have used (from the “Early American Imprints” series on microfilm) was purchased and used by Samuel Sewall himself.
Other copies lack the “Prognostications,” which may have been copied from an English almanac. There is a good discussion of early New England almanacs, and Tully’s in particular, in Hall,
Worlds of Wonder
, 54–61. See also Bernard Capp,
English Almanacs, 1500–1800: Astrology and the Popular Press
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979).

33.
Mather wrote: “The impious and mischievous men, against whom the Inspired Writer is now engaged [in the sermons text, are guilty of the following:] First The Ungodly Men stand charged with Filthiness. They were, that I may use the most agreeable Term, which the French Translation leads me to, A very
Dissolute
Generation. I take notice, by the way, that the Greek term, here used for,
Lasciviousness
, or
Wantonness
, is derived from the name of the town
Selga;
a Place infamous for such dissolute Practices.” He concluded this series of euphemisms by admitting, “I am lothe here to explain my self too particularly.” C. Mather,
Grace Defended,
2
.

34.
Cotton Mather,
Advice from the Watch-Tower; in a testimony against evil customes. A brief essay to … offer a … catalogue of evil customes growing upon us
(Boston, 1713), 31–40.

35.
Ibid., 34–35.

36.
See John Demos, “Families in Colonial Bristol, Rhode Island: An Exercise in Historical Demography,” in
William and Mary Quarterly
, Third Series, 25 (1968), 56–57. The seasonal rhythm of conceptions is from a paper delivered by Kenneth Lockridge at SUNY, Stony Brook, in 1969. For a fine account of premarital sex and marriage at the end of the eighteenth century, see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich,
A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785–1812
(New York: Knopf, 1990), 134–161. The laments of such ministers as Cotton Mather have conventionally been interpreted as mere “jeremiads,” an irrational response to the decline of Puritanism. But recent scholarship supports my own sense that these were part of a reasonable response to the reemergence of popular culture in New England. The best recent study is Gildrie,
The Profane, the Civil, and the Godly
. This is the only work which shows that Christmas itself was making a comeback at the turn of the eighteenth century.

37.
William Brattle, “An Ephemeris … for … 1682 (Cambridge, 1682). The verse actually concluded with a couplet that ridiculed those who believed its message.

38.
Titan Leeds, “The American Almanac for … 1714” (Boston 1714). This was a Boston reprint of a Philadelphia imprint.

39.
Samuel Clough, “The New-England Almanack” (Boston, 1702); Nathaniel Whittemore, “An Almanac” (Boston, 1719).

40.
Nathanael Ames, “An Astronomical Almanac for … 1749” (Boston, [1748]); George Wheten, “An Almanac for … 1754” (Boston, [1753]).

41.
Nathaniel Whittemore, “Almanac” (Boston, 1719). It is interesting that this admonition does not challenge the legitimacy of the ritual. By warning householders not to let their dependents “run
too much
abroad at Nights,” it seems only to be admonishing them not to stay out
all night
, or
every night
.

42.
Nathanael Ames, “An Almanac for … 1746” (Boston, 1746).

43.
Historians once believed that “Yankee Doodle” was the work of British soldiers who were satirizing New England rustic manners, but it now seems likely that its words were a local American product:—a kind of sophisticated rural self-parody. Evidence also suggests that the earliest of these verses date not from the era of the American Revolution but from a full generation earlier—from the early 1740s. The preeminent argument for the American origins of the verse is J. A. Leo Lemay, “The American Origins of ‘Yankee Doodle,’”
William and Mary Quarterly
, 33 (1976), 435–464. Lemay dates at least some of the verses to the 1740s (even though they were not actually published until the late 1760s and 1770s and later), using references to events that took place in King George’s War, especially the capture of Louisburg (on Cape Breton) in 1745 (ibid. 443–447).

44. This verse—and several others cited below—comes from a version of “Yankee Doodle” called “The Lexington March,” published in London, probably in 1775 (the only copy is owned by the Huntington Library). For evidence that these verses were of American composition, see Lemay, “Yankee Doodle,” 436–438.

45.
For election day: “Lection time is now at hand, / We’re going to Uncle Chace’s, / There’l be some a drinking round / And some lapping lasses.”
(Yankee Song
Broadside, Essex Institute; quoted in Lemay, “Yankee Doodle,” 450. For cornhusking: “Yankee Song” (owned by Essex Institute), quoted ibid., 448. For a late-eighteenth-century rural New England diary that records the association of cornhuskings with “abandoned drinking and sexual liaisons,” see Ulrich,
Midwife’s Tale
, 146–147.

46.
This verse is from “The Lexington March” (Huntington Library copy). “Mother Chase’s” corresponds to “Uncle Chace’s” in the election verse quoted in the previous note. The verse quoted above continues with the following: “Punkin Pye is very good / And so is Apple Lantern; / Had you been whipp’d as oft as I, / You’d not have been so wanton.”

47.
Mather relegated to a footnote in the published text of this sermon (probably an indication that it was not part of the sermon as he originally delivered it in church) his demonstration that Jesus could not have been born in December.

48.
Mather,
Grace Defended
, 19.

49.
As early as 1706, Daniel Leeds warned in an almanac published in New York that “More health is gotten by observing diet / Than pleasure found in vain excess and Riot.” (Lines at Dec. 26–29; in Daniel Leeds,
Leeds, 1760. The American Almanack
[New York, 1706].) Twenty years later, in a Philadelphia almanac, his son Titan Leeds attacked both gambling and “surfeiting.” (Titan Leeds,
The American Almanack for … 1726
[Philadelphia, (1705)].)

50.
Other New England almanacs, while not sounding the dietary urgency of Nathanael Ames, typically combined notes of moderation with those of mirth, as when the “Bickerstaffe” almanac for 1777 assured its readers that “to keep your stomach warm / A moderate glass can do no harm.” ([Ezra Gleason,
Bickerstaffe’s Boston Almanack, for…
1777
[Boston, 1777].)

51.
As Eric Foner has pointed out, Franklin urged men like himself “to remember that ‘time is money,’ and condemned [the old] practice of observing the traditional pre-industrial ‘holiday’ of ‘Saint Monday’ and spending the day at the alehouse.” (Eric Foner,
Tom Paine and Revolutionary America
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 35). Another self-made New Englander who urged temperance in his almanacs is Roger Sherman of Connecticut.

52.
Robert R. McCausland and Cynthia MacAlman McCausland, eds.,
The Diary of Martha Ballard 1785–1812
(Camden, Maine: Picton Press, 1992), 742 (1807); 828 (1810); 852 (1811).

53.
Ibid., 565. “Ephraim” and “Cyrus” were Martha Ballard’s still-unmarried sons; Patty Town was a grown-up granddaughter who was spending a few months at her grandmother’s in order to help with the housework (see entries from Oct. 15, 1801, to Feb. 8, 1802, ibid., 559–569 passim). Cyrus Ballard remained a bachelor all his life.

54.
Ibid., 320. For Dolly and Sally Cox, see Ulrich,
A Midwife’s Tale
, 144–145, 220–221. Only a few months later Barnabas Lambard would marry Martha Ballard’s daughter Dollie.

55.
Ballard,
Diary
, 320 (Daniel Bolton); 217 (Mrs. Lithgow); 596 (“pumkin and apple pies” and clothes-mending); 624 (“puding and roast”).

56.
Ibid., 217 (1791); 770 (1808); 771 (“childn here”).

57.
Ibid., 714. A goose was clearly a special gift, and a seasonal one at that. According to the index to the published diary, there is only one record of a goose in the entire
document; but the index is inadequate, failing to note either this New Year’s goose or a Thanks giving goose mentioned on page 621.

58.
Ibid., 743. For further examples, see entries for Dec. 24, 1808, Dec. 30, 1810, and Dec. 22, 1811.

59.
Ibid., 770.

60.
Ibid., 396. This is the first example I have found in the history of New England of a commercial Christmas present. But see
Chapter 4
, p. 133.

61.
Milton wrote this poem as a young man, in 1629, but he remained sufficiently proud of it to place it first in a later collection of his poetry.

62.
Increase Mather, manuscript diary, Dec. 19, 1664 (in Mather Family Papers, American Antiquarian Society, Diary Typescript: Box 3, Folder 1, 48–49). I have inferred the subject of Mather’s sermon from circumstantial evidence. Much of his reading the previous week (as recorded in his diary) had dealt historically and critically with Christmas. It included Rudolf Hospinian,
De Festiorum
(Tiguri, 1592), William Prynne,
Histrio-Mastix
(London, 1633), and two references I have not been able to trace: Stuckins’ [?]
De Antiq
. and Caudrey,
De Christmass
(the reading is recorded in the entries for Dec. 12–14, 1664). This episode is alluded to in Michael G. Hall,
The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather, 1639–1723
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988), 66.

63.
J.B. [Joseph Browne], “An Almanac … for … 1669” (Cambridge, 1669); J.D. [John Danforth], “An Almanac … for … 1679” (Cambridge, 1679).

64.
Edward Holyoke, “An Almanac … for … 1713” (Boston, 1713: “Licensed by His Excellency the Governour”); Titan Leeds, “The American Almanac for … 1714” (Boston, 1714); Increase Gatchell, “The Young American Ephemera for … 1715” (Boston, 1715). The James Franklin almanacs are: Poor Robin, “The Rhode Island Almanac for … 1728 (Newport, 1728) and “The Rhode Island Almanac for … 1729” (Newport, 1729). In his Boston newspaper, the
New England Courant
, Franklin had featured a front-page poem in defense of Christmas in the issue of Dec. 17–24, 1722.

65.
Nathanael Ames, “An Almanac for … 1760” (Boston, 1759). The ads are in the
Boston Post-Boy
, Dec. 3, 1759 and the
Boston News-Letter
, Dec. 6, 1759.

66.
Roger Sherman,
An Astronomical Diary … for … 1758
(New Haven, 1758), 1.

67.
Purcell set many of Tate’s poems to music, including what may be his greatest vocal solo, “The Blessed Virgin’s Expostulation.” Nicholas Brady wrote the libretto to Purcell’s 1692 “Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day.”

68.
Nicholas Brady and Nahum Tate,
A New Version of the Psalms of David, Fitted to the Tunes Used in the Churches
(Boston, 1720). The printing history of this collection can be traced most easily through Clifford K. Shipton and James E. Mooney,
National Index of American Imprints Through 1800: The Short-Title Evans
(2 vols., Worcester: American Antiquarian Society, 1969). On Dec. 24, 1722, James Franklin printed two other Christmas hymns in his Boston newspaper, the
New England Courant
.

69.
Isaac Watts,
Hymns and Spiritual Songs
(Boston, 1720). One of these Nativity hymns was placed third in this lengthy collection (It opens: “Behold, the grace appears, /The promise is fulfilled; / Mary the wondrous virgin bears, / And Jesus is the child.” It also reports that the “promis’d infant” is “born to day”). The second hymn, from
Horae Lyricae
[Lyric Poems] (Boston, 1748), begins: “Shepards rejoice, lift up your eyes.”

70.
Joseph T. Buckingham,
Personal Memoirs and Recollections of Editorial Life
(2 vols., Boston, 1852), 1, 19; quoted in Hall,
Worlds of Wonder
, 37. The folklorist Peter Benes has estimated that by 1780 almost half of the New England churches were singing the Watts version; another 25 percent were using Tate and Brady; and most of the remaining churches were singing from the old Bay Psalm Book. (Peter Benes, “Psalmody in Coastal Massachusetts and the Connecticut River Valley,” in
The Bay and the River, 1600–1900 (Annual proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife
, vol. 6 [Boston: Boston
University, 1982], 117–131; esp. 125.) Like the Anglicans Brady and Tate, the great English hymnist and religious poet Isaac Watts (1674–1748), though a steadfast Congregationalist, designed his verses to evoke powerful emotions rather than to offer plain and strictly faithful translations of the original biblical texts.