Since the arrival of Christians in Western Pennsylvania, Christmas has been a cause for celebration, inspiring goodwill, gift-giving, and family and community gatherings. It has been a welcome respite from work (for some) and an occasion to pass on to a younger generation traditions carried from the British Isles and Germany.

	Click illustration for larger image.

Today we look back at some of the more secular ways Christmas was prepared for and observed over the past 2¹/₂ centuries.

Dec. 25, 1758: "The people in the camp prepared for a Christmas frolic, but I kept Christmas in the woods by myself."

-- Journal of Moravian missionary Christian Frederick Post, stationed at Fort Ligonier, recording the first Christmas celebrated by the English in the area near the fort. He had arrived there Dec. 8, returning from Pittsburgh and his second peace mission with the Lenape.

"Dec. 25, 1785, we crossed the Allegheny river and marched 10 miles into the woods and halted for the night. It snowed and we made a large fire by the side of an oak tree and had jirked beef and two swallows of rum for our Christmas dinner."

-- Journal of Sgt. Joseph Buell, written while he served at Fort McIntosh (Beaver County)

"Among the Presbyterians, celebrations of Christmas, New Year's Day and Easter were rare, as such festivities were deemed 'Popish' practices," write Solon and Elizabeth Buck in their 1939 book "The Planting of Civilization in Western Pennsylvania."

The Pittsburgh Zoo was a gift to the city from political boss Christopher L. Magee in 1895. Click photo for larger image.

"Although the Presbyterians made little or nothing of Christmas, the Virginians [living here] and the Germans celebrated that season in the English and Teutonic traditions."

Just after New Year's Day in 1773, the authors note, Presbyterian minister David McClure preached to a gathering of Virginians and later wrote: "Several present, appeared almost intoxicated. Christmas & New Year holly days, are seasons of wild mirth & disorder here."

The German Christmas was a family festival, the Bucks write. "However busy the father might be, he took the time some days before Christmas to go hunting and usually was able to provide a turkey for the Christmas feast. Some of the chestnuts, hickory nuts and walnuts gathered by the children in the fall had been saved for the occasion, as had also sugar-maple cakes made in the previous spring. On Christmas Eve the Christmas story was solemnly told to the children, and then they were directed to hang up their stockings for 'the Belsnickel man' -- Santa Claus -- to fill. Into the stockings went the nuts and sugar, sometimes doughnuts, and apples when the orchards were old enough to bear. Toys were seldom given as presents, although occasionally a new and exceptionally charming 'rag baby' might go into the stocking of a small girl.

"Sometimes when related families lived not too far apart, they joined in celebrating Christmas at the home of one of them. In that case the different families went to the house on the afternoon before Christmas, and in the evening one of the men dressed up as the Belsnickel man for the children's benefit. The costume might consist of a black bearskin cap, a mask and a large panther skin worn as a cloak, the tail trailing on the floor. After much bellowing and talking and pulling of ears, the apparition wished the children a merry Christmas, told them to hang up their stockings, and warned them to get to bed early, as he would not come into the house to fill their stockings if a light were burning. Even today [1939] in the rural parts of Western Pennsylvania among some families of German descent, the Belsnickel man is almost as familiar as Santa Claus."

	Pittsburgh-born composer Stephen C. Foster gave himself an old prayer book for Christmas in 1856. Click photo for larger image.

"The most widely accepted translation of Belsnickel is 'Nicholas in his furs,' referring to St. Nicholas," according to the Web site of the Landis Valley Museum in Lancaster. "The major difference between Belsnickel and Santa Claus was that Santa was a jolly, bewhiskered adult-sized elf. Belsnickel carried a whip or switches and was as likely to smack a poorly behaved child as he was to provide goodies such as candy and nuts to good children. Belsnickel, of course, was a friend or relative dressed as hideously as possible to hide his identity. Male Belsnickels often dressed as women and vice versa."

"The English have brought the country dances and the more formal ballroom dances popular in Colonial times. They also have brought the tradition of celebrating Christmas through feasting and good cheer, old carols and blazing logs. The wassail bowl, a mixture of hot ale, spices and apples, was prepared for friends who moved from one open house to the next on Christmas Eve, singing the traditional carols. From England, too, came the plum pudding, which was supposed to bring good luck if served on Christmas Day or thereafter. Some of these customs we find in the homes of English-Americans today, and in many other homes they have been adopted as American customs."

-- "Allegheny County's Americans by Choice," edited by Margaret E. Hartford, circa 1944

"There are 44 blast furnaces in Allegheny County, and unless a suspension is caused by some extraordinary or unforeseen occurrence, every one is in blast 365 operating days in the year, not excluding the Christmas and Fourth of July holidays that the other workmen still enjoy."

-- "The Steel Workers," John A. Fitch, 1910

"Only two formal holidays were recognized by the mill owners: Christmas and the Fourth of July. A few millworkers missed even these holidays: for example, blast furnace workers had none at all. For most, these days were great occasions, times when the entire family could be together with no one leaving for the next shift. ...

"Married sons and daughters returned to their parents' house to celebrate. Particularly at Christmas, the women cooked and baked more than usual to celebrate the respite from work (for men), the holiday and the family gathering. The holiday was a holiday for men but entailed additional work as well as a break from routine for women. It was joyous, but hard work. ...

"Unfortunately, not all families could afford the lavish meals and gifts warranted by these occasions. One elderly Slovak woman reminisced that the only way she knew a holiday from an ordinary day as a child in the early years of [the 20th] century was that her mother managed to trade a few eggs for a cake of yeast so that she could make white bread instead of the hard cornbread that was their normal fare."

-- "The Shadow of the Mills," S. J. Kleinberg, 1989

"As Christmas drew near [during the lockout and strike of 1892], public sympathy was more and more keenly aroused in behalf of the Homestead sufferers, A few days before that holiday of holidays, the children in Homestead public schools were instructed to write letters to Santa Claus, asking for whatever they most desired. Nearly all the letters contained requests for shoes and other necessaries. Many of them were published in the newspapers and spoke volumes for the unhappy condition of the poor class of strikers and their families.

"Santa Claus was not missing, however, when the eventful morning came, nor were the other essentials of a merry Christmas conspicuous by their absence. One thousand Christmas turkeys came from the kind-hearted workingmen of McKeesport and 300 from Mrs. Gusky, and the heart of every child was gladdened by the gift of a picture book and a box of candy from Kaufmann Bros. of Pittsburgh.

-- "Homestead, A Complete History of the struggle of July 1892," Arthur G. Burgoyne, 1914

For workers in Pittsburgh's candy and stogie factories, many of them women, the weeks before Christmas were especially grueling ones, as they put in long hours to increase output for holiday shoppers.

"The largest Hill [District stogie] factory is open until 10 p.m., but no compulsion is exerted to keep women employees after six. As a rule, the factories work overtime only for the Christmas trade, 22 of them having a 10-hour day during the year," wrote Elizabeth Beardsley Butler in "Women and the Trades, Pittsburgh, 1907-1908."

The skilled female candy dippers worked their day shifts and then well into the night, putting in 75 hours a week.

"Butchered 5 hogs for Christmas dinner on the 21st. Hauled dirt from ice pond on the hill for top dressing for lawn. Had our usual Christmas dinner: roast pork, mashed potatoes, celery, apple pie, candy and apples. Moved apples from ice house to vegetable cellar. Erected an elevator for food, west end of main building to supply male hospital and male insane ward No. 3. Repaired floor of corridor first floor female side. Cut and hauled 6 1/2 inches ice from Terrel's pond on the 30th."

-- Report of the Superintendent of the City Home and Farm, Claremont, O'Hara (near Aspinwall), December 1899

"As the river was the natural highway from the South, many [Sewickley Academy] students were drawn from that section, some coming even from as far as New Orleans. Mrs. S. M. Glenn, a daughter of [schoolmaster Joseph] Travelli, tells of the barrels of sugar-cane and other home products that used to come up the river by steamboat for the Southern boys who remained at the academy over the Christmas holidays. For weeks the whole school enjoyed the luxury of chewing sugar cane."

-- "The Village of Sewickley," Franklin Nevin, 1929

"At Christmas time we used to bar the teacher out and wouldn't let him in till he would sign a paper for a treat, and we would bring it up to Mrs. Garrison's store and get eider and gingerbread and apples for Christmas," said Capt. John C. Anderson, then a centenarian, to Nevin, who recorded his reminiscences in "The Village of Sewickley."

But one can't help think that "eider" is a typo or misinterpretation of handwriting. Surely the children would rather have had cider than a duck. Then again, maybe they were taking that eider home to mother for dinner.

"An old custom in the country schools was that the master should 'treat' his pupils at Christmas. The treat consisted of candy, sugarcakes, apples, or nuts or whatever might be convenient. One of the teachers of [Brant's School] refused to comply with the custom, and the older pupils concluded to force him to their terms. Accordingly, the pupils went early the next morning and barred the door against the master, and kept him out till one o'clock, when they permitted him to come in. But in place of resuming their studies, the pupils all ran out and barred the teacher in. At evening the girls had to have their wraps to go home, and one of the strongest of the pupils who was full-grown, consented to go in and hold the pedagogue while the girls got their wraps. A hand-to-hand encounter ensued. The pupil tripped on a bench and fell to the floor, whereupon the teacher escaped. The next morning the master came with a good supply of rods, and the barring out ended the usual way."

-- "The Old and New Westmoreland, Vol. 2," John N. Boucher

Brant's School, about two miles south of Ligonier, first was called "the Dutch meeting school" because it was near two German churches.

"About 1807 another school-house was built on the old Ludwig Miller farm [in Salt Lick Township, Fayette County], where Peter Frick taught the first school. Later William Arthur and James McCloy taught in that house. The latter was an Irishman, a good teacher, but one who thoroughly detested the custom of barring out at Christmas, a custom to which the German teachers graciously conformed."

-- "History of Fayette County," edited by Franklin Ellis, 1882

"On the inside of an old French Catholic prayer book which has been preserved is written in his hand: 'Stephen C. Foster, Christmas gift to himself, Dec. 25, 1856. And underneath its later presentation date to John D. Scully in October of 1859 he added: 'A specimen of good binding, good paper and printing.' "

-- "The minstrel of the Alleghenies," Harvey B. Gaul, 1934

"By far the most precious gift ever received by me up to that time came about in this manner. Dear Mrs. Wilkins [wife of Judge William] began knitting an afghan, and during her work many were the inquiries as to whom it was for. No, the dear queenly old lady would not tell; she kept her secret all the long months until, Christmas drawing near, the gift finished and carefully wrapped up, and her card with a few loving words enclosed, she instructed her daughter to address it to me. It was duly received in New York. Such a tribute from such a lady! Well, that afghan, though often shown to dear friends, has not been much used. It is sacred to me and remains among my precious possessions."

-- "Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie," 1920

Pittsburgh's biggest Christmas present ever likely was the "Zoological Gardens" in Highland Park, offered to the city in 1895 in a Christmas Eve letter to Mayor Bernard McKenna from political boss and Magee-Womens Hospital founder Christopher L. Magee, who also was president of the Consolidated Traction Co. The zoo would be a gift from Magee and his associates at the Fort Pitt Traction Co. It was also something of a gift to themselves: Like Kennywood Park, founded in 1898 by the Monongahela Street Railway Co., the zoo would encourage trolley ridership.

"If Christmas is to be happy, it must first be safe. Extra watchfulness should be observed with children, to see that their pleasures do not turn into accidents. We urge that the custom of lighting candles on the Christmas tree be abolished, as it often leads to serious fires or fatal burns.

"Overeating is another frequent source of distress. Christmas candy and cake must be held responsible for many a digestive upset during the holidays, both in adults and children. These delicacies should be used in moderation."

-- "Pittsburgh's Health," monthly journal of the city's Department of Public Health, December 1930

The Historic Pittsburgh Web site contributed to this story.