Christmas as Lost Cause propaganda

Plus: Children of classic Christmas movie stars share memories |

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By Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Amid a heated national debate over how much of the full history of slavery and its legacies should be taught in American public schools, one aspect of that history that is often overlooked is Christmastime. According to historian Robert E. May, author of the 2019 book Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory, propagandists penned rosy stories of Christmastime on plantations to help promote the Lost Cause. We talked to May about the myths about Christmas week on plantations and the dark reality of what enslaved people endured during that period. Click here to read the full story. Here’s more history to know:

HISTORY ON TIME.COM Column: What History Reveals About Vaccine Hesitancy Today By Jeanne Abrams and Hilary Smith The agonizingly slow upward creep of the U.S. COVID vaccination rate, coupled with the emergence of the Omicron variant, has observers speaking in tones of… Read More » Children of Classic Christmas Movie Stars Share Memories of Their Parents’ Beloved Films By Melissa August The children of Jimmy Stewart, Cary Grant, Natalie Wood, Judy Garland and more on special memories of their parents' classic holiday films Read More » 'Baby, It's Cold Outside' Was Always Controversial. Here's What to Know About Consent in the 1940s By Olivia B. Waxman The song is seen by many as describing a man pressuring a woman on a date Read More » The Surprisingly Sad True Story Behind ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’ By Olivia B. Waxman Copywriter Robert L. May dreamed up Rudolph during a particularly difficult time in his life Read More » Christmas Wreaths Are a Classic Holiday Decoration With a Surprisingly Deep History By Kat Moon Together, the circular shape and the evergreen material make the wreath a representation of the cycle of life Read More »

FROM THE TIME VAULT This week in 1967: Bob Hope “At 64, Hope is the Will Rogers of the age, a kind of updated, urbanized farmer's almanac of political and social currents. Rogers was the sly rustic, a humorist with a lariat; Hope is the self-caricaturing sophisticated comic with a paradiddle patter. Rogers was show business, and so is Hope, and they share the same understanding of what is unique in American humor: a healthy irreverence for pomp and position. And they both succeeded by pitching their personalities across the footlights to touch their listeners with something close to folk wisdom. Some of Hope's lines even sound like Will Rogers'. ‘I like to see politicians with religion,’ he says. ‘It keeps their hands out where we can see them.’” (Dec. 22, 1967) Read More » This week in 1972: Skiing “Nonskiers cannot comprehend why otherwise rational people rise at dawn in order to buy a $10 ticket for the privilege of shivering in a slow-moving lift line to ascend slowly a hill that they will quickly slide down. Or to careen down a narrow, bumpy trail in a blinding snowstorm, watching for the hidden icy spot that could send them crashing into a tree trunk. The explanation is simple. Skiing is a feast for all the senses. It promises exhilaration, fresh air and muscle-taxing exercise; an hour of downhill skiing can burn up as many as 500 calories… Peter Seibert, chairman of the company that runs Colorado's Vail area puts it this way: 'Skiing is a total experience. You can be completely absorbed in what you are doing. You can take a problem onto the golf course with you, but you can't take it with you onto the slope. It's kind of cleansing.'"(Dec. 25, 1972) Read More » This week in 1980: John Lennon “For all the official records, the death would be called murder. For everyone who cherished the sustaining myth of the Beatles—which is to say, for much of an entire generation that is passing, as Lennon was, at age 40, into middle age, and coming suddenly up against its own mortality—the murder was something else. It was an assassination, a ritual slaying of something that could hardly be named. Hope, perhaps; or idealism. Or time. Not only lost, but suddenly dislocated, fractured…" (Dec. 22, 1980) Read More »

HIGHLIGHTS FROM AROUND THE WEB Democracy: Historian Joanne Freeman writes a Washington Post op-ed on congressional inquiries that provide context for the commission investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Dark history: The Associated Press’s Peter Smith reports on Red Cloud Indian School in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and its efforts to acknowledge its troubling past as an institution that forced Native Americans to assimilate to English-speaking Christian culture. Holiday history: For the Atlantic, scholar David S. Reynolds writes about how Abraham Lincoln gave Christmas celebrations new meaning. Photos: On LIFE.com, browse a quirky 1961 photo essay of a Santa Claus school in the upstate N.Y. town of Albion. Season’s greetings: Writer John Hanc writes about how holiday cards became a tradition for Smithsonianmag.com.

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