How did people celebrate Christmas in 18th- and 19th-Century Ridgefield?
Basically, they didn’t. For some, it was just another workday and for others, just a day of rest, like a Sunday.
The diary of farmer Jared Nash of Silver Spring Road shows how ordinary Christmas Day was in the 1860s. On Monday, Dec. 25, 1865, he wrote: “Clear and quite warm. Went and carried Emily up West Lane and left her. Then went up to Bailey’s store, got gallon oil and chimneys for lamp.”
A year later, when Christmas was a Tuesday, he wrote: “Clear, not verry cold. Emily went to church. Emmie went up West Lane with her. Boiled up cattle’s feet for neats foot oil. Father drove Hiram’s hog home.” (West Lane was where Emily’s parents lived.)
Samuel G. Goodrich, whose pen name was Peter Parley, spent 200 pages of his 1856 autobiography describing life in Ridgefield around the year 1800. He said nothing about celebrating Christmas. And his father was the minister of the First Congregational Church.
However, in 1839, he wrote “Peter Parley’s Tales about Christmas,” one of his more than 100 books. So at least there was a storytelling tradition.
Anna Marie Resseguie kept a diary from 1851 to 1867, and had little to say about Christmas, other than going to church and visiting friends. However, she reports Dec. 26, 1851, that the Rev. Clinton Clark, minister of the First Congregational Church, led an evening service at which he explained that many Christian churches did not observe Christmas because the Bible neither commanded nor authorized any celebration.
The editors of the diary, called “A View from the Inn” and published in 1993 by the Keeler Tavern, said: “The uncelebrated Christmas of the early Protestants in this country is notable throughout the journal.”
Besides the lack of Biblical authorization, the editors said, “there was difficulty with the date itself. Long before the conversion of Britain to Christianity, Dec. 25th was the day of the heathen celebration of the winter solstice. According to Bede, it was also the calendar date on which the ancient Angles observed the beginning of their new year …”
The editors also said the secularization of the Christmas celebration was offensive to the Reformation leaders, who viewed the traditional “wassailing, feasting, dancing and masquerading, all presided over by jesters and the Lord of Misrule,” as pagan in nature. Puritans disliked the “outward and visible ceremonial traditions of Catholicism,” including Christmas celebrations.
However, Christmas apparently was fine for getting hitched. Resseguie reports Dec. 25, 1854, “A marriage at the Episcopal Church this afternoon, Jeremiah Mead and Sarah Bouton.”
By the end of the 19th Century, Protestant churches took a more tolerant view of Christmas celebrations. In December 1899, Jesse Lee Methodist Church was elaborately trimmed with evergreens and laurels. First Congregational’s children gave an “Xmas” recital and received gifts of oranges and candy. And by then, local stores like Bissell’s were advertising Christmas gifts such as “fine confections, calendars and perfumes from foreign and domestic manufacturers.” —J.S.
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