10 Black Christmas Facts

I have tons of good memories of Christmas growing up and I definitely celebrate in a secular manner as an adult... but Christmas has a complicated history in the Black community, and our relationship to it is often omitted from historical narratives about the holiday in America. How has Christmas been a tool of liberation and radical action? How did we get Black Santas? Keep reading!

1. Christmas Break Varied by Plantation

Like all of slavery, the Christmas experience, though always a part of a traumatic and evil system, varied from location to location, master by master. There are accounts of no days off (rare), single days off, two days off, 3-5 days, and even two weeks. One extremely rare permission allowed the enslaved of a certain section of Missouri to have five weeks off for Christmas. Recalled an enslaved person, “[we could] come and go as much as we pleased and go for miles as we wanted to, but we had better be back by the first of February.” And that’s another thing— some enslaved were allowed to travel during their Christmas time off, whether that meant going to visit family on another plantation, going to get married (as marriage rates increased during this period of the year) or going to earn some money.

That’s right, some enterprising enslaved people used the time to capitalize on their labor, as it was believed by their enslavers that any money earned by a person during the holidays was their own to keep. Wrote Frederick Douglass in his autobiography, “The staid, sober, thinking, and industrious ones of our number would employ themselves in making corn brooms, mats,  horse collars, and baskets, and another class of us would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares, and coons.”

2. Alcohol on Christmas

For the majority of the enslaved in the South, whether it was a day or seven or more or less, the holiday season was a time of relaxation, and when that got boring, partying. Wrote Douglass, “By far the larger part engaged in such sports and merriments as playing ball, wrestling, running foot races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whisky- and this latter mode of spending the time was by far the most agreeable to the feelings our masters.” The hearty drinking was for a number of reasons. It was well known that southern whites drank to excess during the Christmas season, with diaries, letters, and newspapers revealing that even genteel white women and children were allowed to participate in leisurely drinking, which they were kept from the rest of the year. Take this quote from a 19th-century observer of Southern Christmas traditions.

Many slaveowners also allowed the enslaved to drink, even though it was illegal to do so. In fact, several slaveowners encouraged, if not downright forced their captives to drink. Wrote Frederick Douglass in his autobiography, “It was deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas.” Douglass explained that he believed Christmas —and definitely the drinking portion of it- to be a tool of oppression, in which people deprived of freedom and autonomy were overloaded with alcohol, degraded, made to be hungover, and then reminded by their enslavers that slavery was needed to keep them from making poor choices. One man who escaped to freedom named Francis Fedrick, backed this up, saying his enslaver would force his captives to drink for 4-5 days, and then say “Now you slaves, don’t you see what bad use you have been making of your liberty?”

3. Christmas as a Tool

In the 1830s, Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas became the first to declare Christmas a state holiday. For slaveholding states, Christmas was a tool to prevent rebellion or a way to keep the enslaved in line for the rest of the year. Wrote Douglass, “They do not give the slaves this time because they would not like to have their work during it’s continuance, but because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it.” Christmas on the plantation, like the institution of slavery itself was definitely paternalistic. Like paternalistic narratives about happy slave folk given shelter and food by their caring enslavers, Christmas reinforced the system itself. On one hand, enslavers could use the threat of withholding Christmas to make his or her’s enslaved people work harder, snitch on each other, or otherwise stay in line.

Gifts were given to enslaved as a way to alleviate guilt, or simply lend credence to the notion of the benevolent enslaver who loved his enslaved as if they were second-class members of the family. Wrote one Louisiana slaveowner in 1836, “We had a right merry Christmas..I am much more reconciled to my condition as a slaveowner when I see how cheerful and happy my fellow creatures can be in a state of servitude, how much I have it in my power to minister to their happiness…” Some enslaved played a game called “Christmas Gift”, where they would attempt to sneak up on their master and yell the phrase at them. If the enslaved said it first, they would receive a gift. One woman even recalled she and her family would sneak into the big house to hide around the house to jump out of corners at their white owners.

4. Eating Well on Christmas

Enslaved people were generally underfed, and therefore looked forward to receiving luxury food once a year.  Recalled one Georgia Baker, ‘“Oh what a time us [slaves] did have on Christmas Day! Cake of all kinds, fresh meat, light bread, turkeys, chickens, ducks, geese, and all sorts of wild game… there was always plenty of pecans, apples, and dried peaches too..” Eggnog, of course notable for having the illicit whiskey, was also highly expensive— requiring eggs, fresh cream, and sugar. Some enslavers made a big show of preparing the beverage and giving a cup to each of their enslaved, in a similar role reversal to the Roman enslavers of Saturnalia who served their enslaved once a year.  

In the 16th century, the Spanish told their Jesuit inspectors to gift bundles of clothing to Peruvian enslaved people at Christmas, similar to English enslavers gifting their victims in the 18th century. Also illustrating the long-running power dynamic of the holidays? There were European landowners treating a few of their peasants once a year to fine food and drink, as was customary during the Middle Ages. Especially when you consider that during some of these Christmas celebrations, field hands who were usually kept out of the Big House, were sometimes served food in them, or called inside to receive a gift.  Recalled one white woman in her journal in 1858, “Spent the day waiting on the negroes, and making them [as] comfortable as possible.” I’m sure she felt quite good about herself, regardless of the horror she otherwise inflicted on them.

5. Rebelling at Christmas

It is well known that there was an increased possibility of many enslaved being sold away from their families on New Years Day, sometimes known as Hiring Day or Heartbreak Day. New Years was the time that debts were collected and settled, meaning enslavers were more likely to move around their assets by selling enslaved people or renting them out. 

It’s no wonder that some enslaved used the holidays as a period to rebel. Taking into account the drunkenness of the white population and the assortment of distractions, plus the possibility of being sold on New Years, Christmas seemed to be like a good time to try escaping. The winter months in general meant less of a chance of being seen, but the drunken Christmas period was especially alluring. Harriet Tubman led multiple people to freedom during Decembers in the 1850s, including her family members, who she loved dearly. One of the most daring escapes took place by a married couple during Christmas of 1848. Ellen, the mulatto offspring of her master, posed as a disabled white man traveling with her slave, who was actually her husband William. The Crafts made it all the way to the North, only being detained once, miraculously walking free.

The relatively permissive atmosphere of Christmas began to diminish as the country inched towards war. Two other events had a major impact as well. Of course, Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831, which made more enslavers nervous and paranoid about the people they brutalized— popping their paternalistic bubbles and reigning in privileges they once allowed, like prayer meetings, traveling, and the enslaved working for their own money. The other was the Baptist War, or Christmas Rebellion of 1831, in Jamaica. It consisted of a 10 day strike of 60,000 enslaved people, about 20% of the population of 300,000, demanding freedom and wages. As a result of the failed rebellion, roughly 500 enslaved were slaughtered, which further strengthened white American paranoia and emboldened its conviction that they needed to be ready to murder the Black people they once considered to be “like family.” During the days of the Civil War, some enslavers wrote about their distaste for being too broke to hand out gifts to their enslaved.

6. The First Free Christmas of 1865

By Fall of 1865, a rumor spread that during Christmas, Black people would get land from the United States government, specifically the Freedman’s Bureau. It seemed plausible that such a grand gesture would be reserved for the time of year that these now freed people usually received gifts. Newspapers reported on these hopes and barely hid their anger that most freed people wanted land and to work for themselves, instead of signing horrible labor contracts to their former enslavers. Papers pontificated on whether or not the letdown of no land would lead to violent insurrection. An Atlanta newspaper said that alcohol and bad white men would make blacks “easily persuaded to… commit outrage and violence.” Quickly, these were followed up with printed rumors that there was a Black conspiracy to lead a Christmastime insurrection. Wrote a purported inside source to a New Orleans newspaper, “on the night before Christmas, [they would] wreak their vengeance on whites whose names had already been chosen. The victims were to be identified to their attackers by signs and marks placed on each house and place of business.” 

The Freedmen's Bureau then worked overtime to get word out to Black people that there was not going to be any 40 acres and a mule, no land reform. The federal government was focusing on wage labor, not land ownership for Black people. Said one bureau representative to a group of Black people:

Believing that the free people would not listen to this disgustingly awful advice encouraging them to accept wage slavery (which we all know turned to sharecropping) some whites manipulated the chaos to re-arm themselves or disarm and harass freedmen. They absolutely worked themselves up into the same paranoia that has accompanied white supremacy from the very beginning. For example, one woman heard singing near her former slave quarters during the holidays of 1865 and said that it “evoked expectations of a horde pouring into our houses to cut our throats and dance like fiends over our remains.”  So what happened during Christmas 1865? There were small confrontations and riots in some areas of the country, and in Alexandria, Virginia, two Black men were killed. But there was no insurrection— and these events of white violence were written off as mere Christmas rowdiness by men who would defend the South from Black people by any means necessary.

7. Reconstruction-Era Christmas

According to Booker T Washington, free people were engaging in negative behavior instilled in them during slavery. He wrote about his first winter in Tuskegee Alabama thusly:

Through his position as head of Tuskegee, he brought more piety to the holiday and promoted charity and good works. This would have a lasting effect on greater society at large, especially when combined with the generosity of Black churches during the holiday season. But sadly for Booker T Washington, new traditions of charity and piety would fuse with old traditions. For example, folk singer Huddie “Leadbelly” Ledbetter, hailed from a family of southern Baptists, recalled going to church on Christmas Eve to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus, and then going home to drink hard liquor and dance for the next week straight. 

8. Christmas Racism

On Christmas 1951, when two NAACP organizers, a married couple celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, were murdered by a bomb at their home in Mims Florida. Henriette and Harry Moore had helped grow NAACP membership in Florida to over 10,000, and as a 6th-grade teacher Henriette taught her students real Black history and exposed them to Black literature. But it was the couple’s investigation of lynchings that led to them being targeted by the Klan and killed on Christmas Day.

Speaking of the Klan, there is this really annoying story from 1948 showing a Talladega, Alabama division of the KKK gifting a radio to 107-year-old former enslaved man Jack Riddle and his 86-year-old wife, Josey.

The radio was so “Uncle Jack” could “hear the preachers”, with Grand Dragon Samuel Green elaborating that the klan “doesn't hate negroes.” The couple was also given a box of fruit, nuts, and candy, with a klan spokesperson telling them “we will provide you all the batteries you want all next year.” This publicized event served the same purpose as enslavers giving presents in the antebellum period: to show alleged benevolence and fairness. The Atlanta Constitution quoted Green as saying, “The Klan believes in white supremacy and segregation. The klan also believes in treating negroes fairly and honestly.” Of course, the newspapers spun the press, with one claiming that the bullshit PR move by the KKK “proves it’s fairness.” 

9. Christmas Boycotts

As the civil rights movement progressed, Christmas became a chance not just to buy PR for your racist organizations, or to buy gifts and be consumers— though this was soon the prevailing tradition. There was a chance to make a statement. In 1962, there was a Christmas boycott in Jackson Mississippi after the murder of Medgar Evers, in which the entire Black population refrained from patroning white owned businesses. The next year, this “Black Christmas” strategy was adopted by a group of Black artists in a national call to boycott Christmas altogether. The Association of Artists For Freedom was made up of writers John O Killens and James Baldwin, singer Odetta, journalist Louis Lomax, and actors Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis. To understand what pissed them off enough to call a nationwide boycott, we have to look at Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. 

The Birmingham Church Bombing took the lives of four Black girls- Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Carol Denise McNair - on September 15th. Though it was the first bombing to kill, it was the 28th unsolved bombing of black homes, churches, and businesses in the city overall. Many people know about these girls, but not the other victims from that day. That afternoon, after the morning bombing, two white teenagers leaving a cancelled anti-integration rally shot and killed one of two Black boys they saw on a bike. His name was Virgil Lamar Ware; he was 13, he played football, and he desired to be a lawyer. Shortly after that, a cop shot a black boy named Johnny Robinson in the back.

In the midst of all of this murder, the AAF called for a nationwide boycott of Christmas. It was meant to draw attention to racism nationwide, not just in Southern cities. It was supported by Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Martin Luther King Jr, but did not find the full necessary support from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, especially within the short timeframe of two months from October to December. No other major civil rights groups endorsed the call to boycott. Most importantly, white publishers and black publishers alike were reluctant to cover the boycott because it was at odds with their advertising income. Jet Magazine asked “Should Negroes Boycott Santa?” in October 1963, but the press was not persuasive or persistent. John H. Johnson, proprietor of Jet and Ebony, dismissed the boycott as coming from “a very small segment of the civil rights movement,” having “little chance of being put into effect.” Ebony magazine had tripled its advertising revenue during this period, by the way. So Christmas shopping of 1963 pretty much proceeded as usual.

10. Soul Christmas & Black Santas

In 1969, the economic progress arm of the SCLC, Operation Bread Basket, endorsed a different kind of Black Christmas with it’s Christmas campaign. Speaking to Ebony magazine in 1969, leader Jesse Jackson spoke of wanting to change Santa’s image and reshape Black people’s perceived dependence not just on the magical gift giver, but on white businesses as well. Jesse introduced a black Santa in a “dashiki of Black velvet trimmed in red, gold, and green.” They gave gifts to jailed black inmates and distributed candy from a Soul Power bag. All of this was critiquing the concept of “white Christmas” or the recent push to encourage Black people to spend their money during the holiday season, draining the Black community of precious resources. Said Jesse, “Instead of too many breakable toys, we need to give our children a savings account at a Black bank or savings and loan association.” He also promoted gifting fellow adults with Black news subscriptions and shopping from Black-owned businesses. Responses to Ebony magazine about “Black Christmas” in 1970 are eerily familiar. Wrote Miss F. Nesbit from Charleston SC,

Then there was an anonymous reader, who denounced Ebony magazine as militant and radical for the Black Christmas story and encouraging Black people to vote for Black interests.

Also in 1969, Shilettos Department Store in Cincinnati came under fire for refusing to hire a Black Santa, with the local population threatening a boycott. Said the store owner, “This has nothing to do with equality of employment. It just doesn’t fit the symbol as kids have known it.” He folded next year, and many other department stores in the 70s throughout the late 20th century began hiring Black Santas. Those in predominantly urban areas were quickest to do so.  It’s also worth mentioning that Blumstein’s Department Store in Harlem first employed a Black Santa Claus since 1943.

Did you learn some new facts about Black Christmas History? Check out the full video below!

Sources + Further Reading Available Here