It’s that time of year, when Concord bids farewell to pumpkin spice as our homes fill with the aroma of pine boughs and gingerbread. These smells evoke images of the distant past, but our colonial forbearers might be surprised—if not downright scandalized—to see the “profane and superstitious customs” that we enjoy at midwinter. 

Reverend Increase Mather, the stern voice of Puritan morality in 17th-century New England, admonished us that “The very name of Christmas savours of superstition. It can never be proved that Christ was born on December 25.” He condemned our December merrymaking as no better than “the Heathens Saturnalia” practiced by the pagans of ancient Rome.¹

Things got so bad that in May 1659, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared, “whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like [by] feasting, or any other way . . . shall pay for every such offence five shillings,” a hefty fine at that time.²

By the early 1800s, though, the influence of the Puritans was fading, and Concord families would gather friends and family around the hearth for festive holiday desserts and a cup of syllabub (whipped cream flavored with wine or sherry). An orange, fresh off a ship in the port of Boston, was such a rare treat that it might be welcomed as a precious gift.

In 1832, America saw its first Christmas tree just a short sleigh ride away from Concord. Rev. Charles Follen, minister of a church in Lexington, wanted to re-create a cherished tradition from his childhood in Germany, so he cut a small fir tree and placed it in the drawing room of his home. Family and friends all joined in making colorful decorations that covered the tree from top to bottom. Journalist Harriet Martineau saw Follen’s tree and brought it national attention in the popular magazine Godey’s Lady’s Book. “It was delightful. The children poured in,” she reported, “all eyes wide open, all lips parted,” and one little boy “leaped for joy.”³

The holidays aren’t just a time to treat ourselves, as Concord’s Louisa May Alcott reminds us. In her 1868 novel Little Women, the March sisters tumble out of bed on Christmas morning, eager for the hearty breakfast they had planned. But their mother tells them, “Not far away from here lies a poor woman with a little newborn baby. Six children are huddled into one bed to keep from freezing, for they have no fire. There is nothing to eat over there . . . will you give them your breakfast as a Christmas present?” Inspired by the season’s message of love, the March sisters hasten through the cold to deliver food and firewood to their less fortunate neighbors, and one of the girls declares, “That’s loving our neighbor better than ourselves, and I like it.”⁴

One Concord woman even found a way to put that holiday staple, the humble fruitcake, to work in the service of a good cause. Mary Merrick Brooks was one of the town’s most active abolitionists before the Civil War, bringing orators like Frederick Douglass to rally local audiences. To raise money for the cause, she baked and sold tea cakes laced with currants. Pro-slavery neighbors might have scorned this as “forbidden fruitcake,” but their resistance was as futile as that of the Puritans who tried to ban Christmas. One Concord resident described Brooks cake as “fit for a banquet of the gods.” In her honor, this popular treat is still called Brooks Cake.⁵

In November 1885, just in time for the holidays, Louisa May Alcott published a children’s story in St. Nicholas magazine. It’s the tale of a girl named Lily who takes a magical journey to “The Candy Country,” where the rivers flow with molasses, the rocks are made of chocolate, and even the people are made of sugar, “as if they had stepped off of wedding cakes.” From there she travels to Cake-land, where the gingerbread men and women live. Finally, she visits Bread-land, where she learns to make the “perfect loaf,” and returns home to show her mother her new baking skills. 

Alcott assured her readers that Lily grew up to become a “fine, strong woman, because she ate very little cake and candy, except at Christmas time, when the oldest and the wisest love to make a short visit to Candy-land.”⁶ Lily’s moderation sounds like better advice than the Scrooge-like prohibition of the early Puritans.

NOTES

 ¹  Increase Mather, A Testimony Against several Prophane and Superstitious Customs. London, 1687 ² Records of the General Court, Massachusetts Bay Colony, May 11, 1659 ³ Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel, Volume 2. London, 1838 ⁴ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women, Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1868 ⁵ Harriet Robinson, “Warrington” Pen-Portraits, 1877, ©2013, Concord Free Public Library ⁶ Louisa May Alcott, “The Candy Country,” first published in St. Nicholas magazine, 1885