CHRISTMAS IN THE CIVIL WAR

Whether in camp, in prison, or on the homefront, Christmas came–and so did Saint Nicholas!

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BY KEVIN RAWLINGS

Thomas Nast was in a quandary and his deadline was fast approaching. The editor of Harper’s Weekly, Fletcher Harper, wanted Nast to draw a “special Christmas picture” for the newspaper’s front page, a scene that linked holiday celebrations to the ongoing war effort. Nast, however, had a serious case of illustrator’s block and had no idea what to draw.

Nast discussed his predicament with his sister Bertha, a New York City schoolteacher who was visiting at his house. The two reminisced about their early childhood holidays in their native Germany. They talked about the differences between the German Pelznikel and the American Santa Claus, and Bertha mentioned that her class loved to prepare for Christmas each year by reading Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit From Saint Nicholas” (known today as “Twas the Night before Christmas”).

The conversation inspired Nast. After his sister went home, he worked feverishly through the night. The next morning, he delivered the finished drawings to the newspaper. The Christmas edition of Harper’s Weekly for 1862 hit the streets on January 3, 1863. The front page showed a wondrous holiday sight: Santa Claus, dressed in a patriotic Stars and Stripes outfit, visiting soldiers in camp to distribute Christmas gifts from his sleigh.

A flurry of activity surrounds Nast’s Santa. A soldier opens his Christmas box to find a fully loaded stocking, while a comrade behind him gets a meerschaum pipe. In the foreground, a sprung jack-in-the-box surprises two drummer boys. In the background, soldiers chase a greased pig while others climb a greased pole to reach a cash purse nailed to the top. Some play football; others prepare company Christmas dinners. The fort on the hilltop pays tribute to Santa’s arrival with an artillery salute.

An article inside the issue titled “Santa Claus Among Our Soldiers” explained the images on the cover as well as those in “Christmas Eve,” Nast’s illustration on the center spread. “Children,” the article cautioned, “you mustn’t think that Santa Claus comes to you alone.” In a blatant product promotion, the piece tells how Santa Claus has brought a stack of Harper’s Weeklys for the soldiers, “so that they, as well as you little folks, may have a peep at the Christmas number.”

So it was that Harper’s readers got their first look at what would become a Yuletide institution. Every year until his departure from Harper’s in 1886, Nast would create an elaborate Christmas drawing to delight children and adults alike. And in the early years of his Harper’s career, during the Civil War, Nast would standardize the basic image of Santa Claus that we relish to this day.

The Nast Santa Claus played a prominent role in all the wartime holiday centerfolds and annual Christmas issues except the 1864 illustration “The Union Christmas Dinner.” Leaving the foreground to an image of Abraham Lincoln welcoming Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee back into the Union, Santa Claus and his sleigh and reindeer team appear in silhouette before a rising moon behind the word Christmas. For a Christmas issue titled “Santa Claus and His Works” for 1866, Nast drew Santa Claus in his workshop and gave him a permanent address at the North Pole so no other country could claim him and use him for propaganda, as Nast himself did during the Civil War.

Many of today’s American Christmas customs are rooted in the early 19th century. Perhaps ironically, they came to maturity during the Civil War, when violence, chaos, and staggering personal losses seemed likely to drown out the choruses of “peace on earth.” And artists such as Nast who helped fire America’s imagination about how Christmas should be observed also documented what Christmas was like in the war-torn 1860s. Nast, Winslow Homer, Alfred Waud, and some illustrators forgotten to history created visual chronicles of the spreading influence of many holiday traditions we enjoy today, including Santa Claus, Christmas trees, gift-giving, caroling, holiday feasting, and Christmas cards. Homer and Nast drew scenes of the wartime practice of sending Christmas boxes filled with homemade clothes and food items to soldiers at the front.

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