BLUEFIELD, W.Va. -As settlers from Europe moved into the Appalachian wilderness in the1700s, they brought many of their Christmas traditions with them.
“All the ethnic groups brought their traditions, and, you know, we’re all just a big melting pot, and it all got mixed up together, and that’s what we got now,” says Richard Vogel, a history enthusiast and German immigrant.
However, if you were celebrating Christmas on the frontier, those traditions might have to come second to staying alive.
“For Christmas, you know, they were just barely trying to survive. This time of year, is a time where there was a lot of illness, and families just had to do the best they could to get by…” says Laura Mallory, education director for the Historic Crab Orchard Museum in Tazewell, Va.
“…It would have been a big deal back then just to make a feast, something special to eat, for the poor people. Yeah, the rich people, you know, they would have everything they needed, but I say just the average person on a little farmstead, if he had a good meal, he would have been happy, he would have been very happy.”
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, those who had the ability to decorate did so with the things they had or things they found in nature, like pinecones, garland, or, if one was around a forest, a real Christmas tree.
“The…idea of a Christmas tree was around back then. It kind of depended on your availability to a tree to put up in your home. There was no artificial trees like we have today to make it easy on us. But the Christmas trees were decorated with natural things, like, um, popcorn and maybe fruit. holly berries and holly branches. Maybe some string or paper shreds, anything like that would have enhanced the Christmas tree,” says Mallory.
But not everyone in the area back then was struggling. In the 1840s, the well-to-do Dr, Robert McNutt was able to celebrate the holiday in his two-hundred-dollar Princeton, W. Va. home.
“They would have had parties, and one of the parties would have always included a piano. And one of Dr. McNutt’s daughters played the piano extremely well, and she would play, and they would have taffy pulls, and they would have parties for the young people. And there are several accounts that we have been able to find where they had parties here and musicians, maybe a fiddle, there may be somebody who played a fiddle, or a banjo, and they would play, and she would play the piano, and they would entertain.” says JoAnna M. Fredeking, docent of McNutt House, which still stands in Princeton to this day.
If you couldn’t make any 19th century Christmas parties, Mallory says you could still connect with loved ones over the holidays.
“Christmas cards were a very popular way to express your season’s greetings to your friends, starting with about the mid to late 1800s onward. If you couldn’t travel to see your family, you could send them a Christmas card, very much like today,” says Mallory.
Fredeking says even for the rich, Christmas gifts would not be as lavish as they are today, with most being homemade.
“…We would find little toys with yarn on them and we know that those were homemade. We do know that they used that… you took a piece of string and you put two buttons on it, and then you tie it together, and then you, it’s whirligig and whirligig and pull it, and you can hear it. It sounds like a buzzsaw when you pull them apart. They played with those. They played with ragdolls,” says Fredeking.
If you were lucky, you might have even gotten an exotic fruit like an orange. However, if you were the author of the Little House on the Prairie series, Laura Ingalls Wilder, you might have been happy with a lot less.
“The gifts that she received in her stocking that year were a piece of peppermint candy, a brand-new shiny penny, and a new tin cup to drink out of, so that was a huge deal… but that was, to us today was very simple, but back in those times, was quite a treasure to get for Christmas,” Mallory recalls from Little House in the Big Woods.
Whether rich or poor, Christmas was celebrated by coming together with those you cared about, eating a meal, and listening to songs about the birth of Jesus or simply the joy of the Christmas season, which, in a way, isn’t so different than how it’s celebrated today.
If you would like to tour the Historic Crab Orchard Museum in Tazewell, you can visit them in the winter from Tuesday through Sunday 9:00 am – 5:00 pm, with the museum also open on Sunday afternoons in the spring.
Tours of the McNutt House in Princeton can be arranged by calling 681-282-5348 or 304-425-2368.
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