Lecture | Christmas Ain鈥檛 What it Used to Be with acclaimed social historian & best-selling author, Judith Flanders
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Whatever you know about Christmas, you can be absolutely certain that it鈥檚 鈥� wrong?
Everyone knows that Christmas used to be a day of religious observance, until the commerce and modernity corrupted it. We know that Santa was Dutch. We know that Christmas trees were first introduced to the English-speaking world by Prince Albert.
In truth, as Judith Flanders explores in her new overview of Christmas, and how it came to be, none of this is remotely true. Religious observance? Thirty years after the first recorded Christmas, the Archbishop of Constantinople was already warning that too many people were spending the day, not in worship, but in partying and eating to excess. Santa was Dutch? That would have surprised the anti-saint Dutch Reformed Church. As to trees, there may have been Christmas trees erected in the USA when Prince Albert鈥檚 father was still a child.
Some things, however, never change. In 1805, on the Lewis and Clark expedition, the first US government-sponsored expedition of discovery, Lewis gave Clark 鈥榓 present of a Fleeshe Hoserey' 鈥� fleece hosiery, that is, socks.
And other things are more varied than we expect. In the 1620s and 1630s Champlain presided over Christmas feasts of venison, squirrel and wildfowl, eel and salmon, and ate sweets made with maple-sugar, that new-world culinary innovation. A century later, Pennsylvania Germans brought their kn枚del to south-eastern New Brunswick, where it was transformed into a 鈥榯raditional鈥� Christmas dish, poutine rap茅e.
Christmas is all things to all people: a religious festival, a family celebration, a period of (over)-eating and -drinking. In her new book, Christmas: A Biography, bestselling author and acclaimed social historian Judith Flanders casts a sharp eye on myths, legends and history to draw a picture of the season as it has never been seen before.
Judith Flanders is the author of the bestselling听The Victorian House: Domestic Life from Childbirth to Deathbed(2003);听A Circle of Sisters听(2001), which was nominated for the听Guardian听First Book Award; the听New York Timesbestselling听The Invention of Murder听(2001), shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for Non-fiction;听The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens鈥� London听(2012), shortlisted for the听Los Angeles Times听History Book of the Year; and听The Making of Home听(2014). She is also the author of Christmas: A Biography (2017). In her copious leisure time, she also writes the Sam Clair series of comic crime novels.
This lecture is brought to you by the Friends of the McGill Library.
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