Rouviere Media

All across America, Civil War Christmases are being reenacted at museums and historical sites. So what was a Civil War Christmas and how was Christmas different from Christmas today?
On January 3, 1863, Harper’s Weekly had the first illustration of Santa as we know him today, in a cartoon drawn by Thomas Nast called "Santa in Camp" that showed Santa with his reindeer and sleigh giving gifts to soldiers.

In 1864, Benjamin Russell Hanby wrote the Christmas song “Up On the Housetop,” which further contributed to the Santa myth that had been brought to life by Clement Clark Moore’s 1821 poem “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

This was the first Santa-themed Christmas carol.

Among other popular Christmas carols were “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing” (1840), “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” (1850), “Jingle Bells” (1857) and “We Three Kings of Orient Are” (1857).


The use of evergreens as Christmas decorations had become popular in the years before the Civil War as a result of British monarch Queen Victoria and her husband Prince Albert’s decorating of a Christmas tree every year. In addition, people decorated their houses with plants,

Christmas trees were real. They were small tabletop trees decorated with glass ornaments, popcorn, candles, fruit and mistletoe. Soldiers in camp decorated evergreen trees with their rations – salt pork and hardtack.

Gifts were small hand-carved toys, oranges or apples, nuts or cakes, and Santa sometimes had to run the blockades to get small gifts to Southern children, according to diary accounts of the time. Gloves and scarves often were given as well.

Many families sent gift boxes with necessities and treats to to soldiers fighting in the war.

Soldiers suffered miserably during the winter, sleeping in tents if they were on the march. Many became ill and died.

Nonetheless, they tried to make gifts to send home to family members, sang and had someone dress up as Santa. Some soldiers arranged truces and traded items.

General William Sherman’s soldiers attached tree-branch antlers to their horses and mules and delivered food to starving families in the war-ravaged South at Christmas.

The most famous Civil War Christmas gift was given by Sherman to Abraham Lincoln on December 22, 1864. In a telegram, Sherman wrote to Lincoln: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 100 and 50 guns and plenty of ammunition, also about 25,000 bales of cotton.”

Civil War Commemoration

In 1961, reenactors relived battles such as Manassas and Gettysburg in an atmosphere of honoring figures such as Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. This year’s commemoration is far more contentious, sober, diverse, and thoughtful.

Whether to put Christmas decorations on a soldiers’ monument or display a Confederate flag are topics for heated public discussion. The Internet has provided a new venue for those arguments on all sides to be aired.

The old narrative of the Lost Cause as glorious and slaves as loyal is gone.  Segregation kept African Americans almost completely out of the 1961 commemorations on the Civil War. Today, only a small minority of African Americans are involved in Civil War re-enacting, but some major books about the African American civil war have come out, many more museums are dealing with their experience and new historical sites that deal with their experience have been dedicated. Fort Monroe, Virginia, and the African Meeting House in Boston, two of the most important African American historic sites in America have been added to the list of Civil War touring spots.

While some of the same controversies over slavery and the Civil war are still discussed, the vast majority of historians now agree that slavery was at the heart of it. African Americans now serve in public offices they were barred from in 1961, including the U.S. presidency. Key public sites have been renamed after African American heroes.

John Brown’s raid at Harpers Ferry was commemorated with a number of events, including a reenactment of Brown’s execution.

Even among reenactors, the mood has changed dramatically, with their organizers taking pains to invite African American reenactors, insist that their interest is in depicting history rather than choosing up sides, and characterizing Confederate boosters as fringe elements. Many reenactors have become true experts who work in concert with museums and historical sites to depict as accurate a picture of the Civil War as they can rather than being partisans in a 150-year-old fight.

Museum exhibits on the Civil War are far less simplistic, more scholarly and more balanced and thoughtful in dealing with the uncomfortable realities of the war.
In addition to African Americans, Americans of other ethnic persuasions have held commemorative activities.

Emancipation Proclamation

The original copy of the Emancipation Proclamation will be displayed in Tennessee in 2013 to mark the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the end of slavery.

The first Emancipation Proclamation signed by President Abraham Lincoln will be in Nashville as part of an exhibition of Civil War documents at the Tennessee State Museum. The  proclamation signed by Lincoln on Jan. 1, 1863, ended slavery only in the 11 Southern states that were occupied by Union troops, but it was a beginning.

Statue Head returned

The missing head from a Civil War statue in Bridgeton, New Jersey, has been found in a nearby pond. Maintenance crews found the damaged head in the pond. Police are still looking for any information on who may have been responsible for knocking off and damaging the head. The statue was reported missing last week.

No one could remember the last time the statue’s head was in place. However, the police chief offered a reward and area residents stepped up to offer contributions for information leading to the head’s recovery of the head and the vandal’s.

An anonymous woman has pledged $250,000 to help build a civil war park on a site now occupied by a Domino’s Pizza restaurant and a strip shopping center in Franklin, Tennessee. On November 30, 1864, Union and Confederate troops met there, now occpied by a Domino’s Pizza restaurant and a strip shopping center in Franklin. The Battle of Franklin was fought on November 30, 1864, at Franklin, Tennessee. It was one of the war’s worst defeats for the Confederacy.

Officials of the  Civil War Trust are committing an additional $250,000 to buy the land if a nonprofit group named Franklin’s Charge can raise $500,000 by May 1.

Franklin’s Charge has a six-month window to raise the money, and would like to have a new park on battlefield land in time for the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Franklin.
The donor has never been to Franklin or to Tennessee, officials say.

Musket returned

In an odd twist, a Civil War musket has been returned to the 1870 Town Hall of Berlin, Massachusetts, from which it was taken in 1955. Walter Bickford says he and a friend watched a man take one of several Civil War-era muskets from the hall when he was 13 and then helped  themselves to one each. Bickford used the one he had for three years and then traded it to a friend. He recently got it back from the friend by trading him another firearm and $600 worth of tree removal work. He then told local officials he wanted to return it. At the time Bickford traded the rifle, they were very common and could be bought for a few dollars, the friend said.

Local officials are happy about it, because  all of the other muskets at the town hall were taken as well, so Bickford's is the only one left.