A Holiday Season Primer

Did you know that Christmas was banned on Long Island at one time? That Thanksgiving was a holiday celebrated only in New England? And that old fruit cakes never die, they just get passed around for 27 years?

Storyteller Janet Emily Demarest put old chestnuts like the fruit cake slander to rest with her telling of the story behind many holiday traditions we celebrate at the South Huntington Public Library on Sunday.

"We sing Christmas carols, we make dreidels, and we have no idea why we do. I'll make you the smartest person at the holiday party," she told the audience after she came onstage wearing a cape and bonnet, dressed like a character from Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol."

There's a reason we have an image of a Victorian Christmas as our template for celebrating, Demarest said. Dickens' story was successful immediately. "He brought Christmas to England in a big way. He loved Christmas, not so much as a religious holiday but as a warm and sentimental view."

Queen Victoria did, too. Her husband, Prince Albert, helped make the German tradition of a fresh tree popular when he introduced it in 1841.

In America today, Thanksgiving is seen as the start of the holiday season. But in the early days it was the holiday of choice, Demarest said.

"Christmas was illegal," she said. The Pilgrims in the Plimoth Plantation decided when they came to America that they would not celebrate the holiday, since how to celebrate it had caused problems in England. "In the time of Henry VIII, Yuletide, as it was called, was celebrated more like Mardi Gras is today."

Besides, they were thankful to the Native Americans for showing them how to survive winter and grow crops such as corn. In gratitude after the harvest, they invited them to share a meal. "In those days before freezers, they had to share," she said. There were 37 Pilgrims and they were expecting maybe 30 Native Americans -- 97 showed up. "Everybody scrambles. They had hunting contests, and that delayed things enough that they had time to bake."

Thanksgiving was special in New England, but not elsewhere. George Washington and John Adams celebrated the holiday, but Thomas Jefferson didn't and it fell out of favor, although states could celebrate it if they wanted to. Sarah Josepha Hale, who composed "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and seved as the influential editor of Godey's "Lady's Book," (like "Vogue" in the 1800s, she explained to the audience), campaigned to have it declared a national holiday and wrote five presidents to make it happen. She finally was successful with Abraham Lincoln, who declared it a national holiday in 1863.

Emily May said her daughter, Molly, 7, was excited when Demarest talked about Sarah Josepha Hale since she had done a book report on her.

"My teacher gave me a book on it and we had to do a report," said Molly, who attends the Long Island School for the Gifted.

She wasn't the only one who was engaged. Nine-year-old Katie Long was able to explain that Native Americans had taught the Pilgrims to add a fish for fertilizer when they planted corn. Her sister, Beth Perry, 12, said she was surprised learning where some of the traditions came from, "and the fish thing," she said.

Christmas celebrations as we know them became established in the mid- to late-1800s, Demarest explained. Eastern Long Island had followed the settlers in Massachusetts, so to them Christmas was just another day, while western Long Island had many Quakers and Germans, so they followed different traditions. By the 1880s, Christmas was celebrated more like it was in Victorian England. Christmas trees became common in many homes after the 1840s, although they were small and sat on tabletops, she explained.

Among the other holiday terms and customs she explained:

* Wassail, a drink made with sweet wine, beer or punch, is a toast meaning be healthy, and started as a salute to the apple trees to insure a good crop.

* Candy canes apparently were first distributed by the choirmaster in Cologne Cathedral in 1670, handed out to his singers. Demarest said it's unclear if the shape was based on a shepherd's crook or a J for Jesus.

* Fruit cake started in the Middle Ages as a way to show your wealth by using dried fruit. Over time as people became more propsperous, more fruit was added and then brandy for taste.

* Animal crackers were originally served as an edible Christmas ornament.

* The precursor to the elaborate porcelain village scenes available today was a carved wooden baby Jesus. The "Christmas putz," or village, started in America with the Moravian community in Pennsylvania, where it was common for the father to carve baby Jesus. "Over time, people wanted to add more -- sheep, cows, the three wise men," she said. "But then we're putting all these carved things under the little Victorian tree that sat on top of the table. As time went on people incorporated more secular things into the putz. Then they started carving things they saw every day, and in the rural countryside that was trains. And that was the beginning of model railroading," she said.

* "Silent Night" was written in a mountain village in Austria 200 years ago when the church organ broke and they needed a simple song for Christmas Eve.

Demarest has been doing shows for about four years. She will be performing at Old Bethpage Village this holiday season, and at the Dickens Festival in Port Jefferson on Dec. 3-5.