What Was Christmas Like For America’s Enslaved People?

For some, it was a rare time of respite; for oth­ers, an oppor­tu­ni­ty for resistance.(writes Farrel Evans for History​.com)

How did Americans liv­ing under slav­ery expe­ri­ence the Christmas hol­i­days? While ear­ly accounts from white Southerners after the Civil War often paint­ed an ide­al­ized pic­ture of own­ers’ gen­eros­i­ty met by grate­ful work­ers hap­pi­ly feast­ing, singing and danc­ing, the real­i­ty was far more complex.

In the 1830s, the large slave­hold­ing states of Alabama, Louisiana and Arkansas became the first in the United States to declare Christmas a state hol­i­day. It was in these Southern states and oth­ers dur­ing the ante­bel­lum peri­od (1812−1861) that many Christmas tra­di­tions—giv­ing gifts, singing car­ols, dec­o­rat­ing homes — firm­ly took hold in American cul­ture. Many enslaved work­ers got their longest break of the year — typ­i­cal­ly a hand­ful of days — and some were grant­ed the priv­i­lege to trav­el to see fam­i­ly or get mar­ried. Many received gifts from their own­ers and enjoyed spe­cial foods untast­ed the rest of the year.

But while many enslaved peo­ple par­took in some of these hol­i­day plea­sures, Christmas time could be treach­er­ous. According to Robert E. May, a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Purdue University and author of Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas and Southern Memory, own­ers’ fears of rebel­lion dur­ing the sea­son some­times led to pre-emp­tive shows of harsh dis­ci­pline. Their buy­ing and sell­ing of work­ers didn’t abate dur­ing the hol­i­days. Nor did their annu­al hir­ing out of enslaved work­ers, some of whom would be shipped off, away from their fam­i­lies, on New Year’s Day — wide­ly referred to as “heart­break day.”

Still, Christmas afford­ed enslaved peo­ple an annu­al win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge the sub­ju­ga­tion that shaped their dai­ly lives. Resistance came in many ways — from their asser­tion of pow­er to give gifts to expres­sions of reli­gious and cul­tur­al inde­pen­dence to using the rel­a­tive loose­ness of hol­i­day cel­e­bra­tions and time off to plot escapes.

For slave­hold­ers, gift-giv­ing con­not­ed pow­er. Christmas gave them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to express their pater­nal­ism and dom­i­nance over the peo­ple they owned, who almost uni­ver­sal­ly lacked the eco­nom­ic pow­er or means to pur­chase gifts. Owners often gave their enslaved work­ers things they with­held through­out the year, like shoes, cloth­ing and mon­ey. According to Texas his­to­ri­an Elizabeth Silverthorne, one slave­hold­er from that state gave each of his fam­i­lies $25. The chil­dren were giv­en sacks of can­dy and pen­nies. “Christmas day we gave out our dona­tions to the ser­vants, they were much pleased and we were salut­ed on all sides with grins, smiles and low bows,” wrote one Southern planter. In his book The Battle for Christmas, his­to­ri­an Stephen Nissenbaum recounts how a white over­seer con­sid­ered giv­ing gifts to enslaved work­ers on Christmas a bet­ter source of con­trol than phys­i­cal vio­lence: “I killed twen­ty-eight head of beef for the people’s Christmas din­ner,” he said. “I can do more with them in this way than if all the hides of the cat­tle were made into lashes.”

Enslaved peo­ple rarely made rec­i­p­ro­cal gifts to their own­ers, accord­ing to his­to­ri­ans Shauna Bigham and Robert E. May: “Fleeting dis­plays of eco­nom­ic equal­i­ty would have con­tro­vert­ed the [enslaved work­ers] pre­scribed role of child­like depen­den­cy.” Even when they played a com­mon hol­i­day game with their own­ers — where the first per­son who could sur­prise the oth­er by say­ing “Christmas Gift!” received a present — they were not expect­ed to give gifts when they lost.

In some instances, enslaved peo­ple did rec­i­p­ro­cate with gifts to the mas­ters when they lost in the game. On one plan­ta­tion in the Low Country South Carolina, some enslaved house work­ers gave their own­ers eggs wrapped in hand­ker­chiefs. Yet over­all, the one-sided nature of gift-giv­ing between slave­own­ers and those they enslaved rein­forced the dynam­ic of white pow­er and paternalism.

Christmas Vacation and Freedom

For enslaved work­ers, Christmastime rep­re­sent­ed a break between the end of har­vest sea­son and the start of prepa­ra­tion for the next year of pro­duc­tion — a brief sliv­er of free­dom in lives marked by heavy labor and bondage. “This time we regard­ed as our own, by the grace of our mas­ters; and we there­fore used or abused it near­ly as we pleased,” wrote famed writer, ora­tor and abo­li­tion­ist Frederick Douglass, who escaped slav­ery at age 20. “Those of us who had fam­i­lies at a dis­tance were gen­er­al­ly allowed to spend the whole six days [between Christmas and New Year’s Day] in their society.”

Some used these more relaxed hol­i­day times to run for free­dom. In 1848, Ellen and William Craft, an enslaved mar­ried cou­ple from Macon, Georgia, used pass­es from their own­ers dur­ing Christmastime to con­coct an elab­o­rate plan to escape by train and steam­er to Philadelphia. On Christmas Eve in 1854, Underground Railroad icon Harriet Tubman set out from Philadelphia to Maryland’s Eastern Shore after she had heard her three broth­ers were going to be sold by their own­er the day after Christmas. The own­er had giv­en them per­mis­sion to vis­it fam­i­ly on Christmas Day. But instead of the broth­ers meet­ing with their fam­i­lies for din­ner, their sis­ter Harriet led them to free­dom in Philadelphia.

John Kunering

For enslaved peo­ple, resis­tance dur­ing Christmastime didn’t always take the form of rebel­lion or flight in a geo­graph­i­cal or phys­i­cal sense. Often it came in the way they adapt­ed the dom­i­nant society’s tra­di­tions into some­thing of their own, allow­ing for the purest expres­sion of their human­i­ty and cul­tur­al roots. In Wilmington, North Carolina, enslaved peo­ple cel­e­brat­ed what they called John Kunering (oth­er names include “Jonkonnu,” John Kannaus” and “John Canoe”), where they dressed in wild cos­tumes and went from house to house singing, danc­ing and beat­ing rhythms with rib bones, cow’s horns and tri­an­gles. At every stop they expect­ed to receive a gift. “Every child ris­es on Christmas morn­ing to see the John Kannaus,” remem­bered writer and abo­li­tion­ist Harriet Jacobs in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. “Without them, Christmas would be shorn of its great­est attraction.”

These pub­lic dis­plays of joy were not uni­ver­sal­ly loved by all whites in Wilmington, but many encour­aged the activ­i­ties. “It would real­ly be a source of regret, if it were denied to slaves in the inter­vals between their toils to indulge in mirth­ful past times,” said a white ante­bel­lum judge named Thomas Ruffin. For his­to­ri­an Sterling Stuckey, author of Slave Culture, the Kunering reflect­ed deep African roots: “Considering the place of reli­gion in West Africa, where dance and song are means of relat­ing to ances­tral spir­its and to God, the Christmas sea­son was con­ducive to Africans in America con­tin­u­ing to attach sacred val­ue to John Kunering.”

None of the Negroes Was Ever Forgot on That Day’

Enslaved peo­ple had a long mem­o­ry of Christmastime. They remem­bered how they used it to mark time around the plant­i­ng sea­son. They knew they could count on it for a mea­sure of free­dom and relax­ation. Their inabil­i­ty to par­tic­i­pate ful­ly in gift exchange — one of the most basic aspects of the sea­son — helped rein­force their place as men and women who couldn’t ben­e­fit from their labor. Some, like Harriet Tubman and the Crafts, saw it as a time best suit­ed to chal­lenge the whole society.

The adults remem­bered the gifts long after their child­hoods were stolen by this ter­ri­ble insti­tu­tion. “Didn’t have no Christmas tree,” recount­ed a for­mer­ly enslaved man named Beauregard Tennyson, in a WPA inter­view. “But they set up a long pine table in the house and that plank table was cov­ered with presents and none of the Negroes was ever for­got on that day.”

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