Evert Duyckinck on Christmastime festivities in Manhattan

Excerpted below from Life in New York City in its Later Colonial Days by Evert A. Duyckinck, as posthumously published in Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly Volume 17, June 1884 page 691. This installment was part of 

"a series of articles which present in a style full of attraction and charm the early annals of the City of New York. They were the literary work of one who was acknowledged for many years the finest literary scholar and critic of the city, and a work, too, for which he devoted the best gifts of his intellect, for he claimed descent from one of the earliest settlers of the city."

The series began in the January 1884 issue and was there represented as Duyckinck's "last work and one of which he felt a just pride." The Christmas matter would be reprinted two years later in Frank Leslie's Sunday Magazine for March 1886, on pages 203-6 of the article titled "The Origin of the New York Churches."

By Manhattoes Duyckinck means "New Yorkers":

There were several national or religious festivals kept by the Dutch in New Amsterdam: Christmas, New Year's Day, Paas or Easter, Pinxter at Whitsuntide, and Santa Claus or St. Nicholas Day. Some of the peculiar Dutch honors of the last have been transferred to Christmas ; particularly the visit of St. Nicholas, who, to the wondering children of Manhattan, on the eve of the sacred day, still, as of yore, a burly, benevolent figure, clad in his ancient furry habiliments, a pipe in his mouth, a capacious, well-filled hamper of toys on his back, rides in his airy sleigh, swiftly borne by his reindeer-team, over the roofs of the houses, descending, spite of narrow flues and modern contracted chimneys, to fill the stockings suspended, in expectation of his gifts, at the mantel corner.

The faith in the old legend of St. Nicholas, patron of the Manhattoes, would, with other superstitions of the past, doubtless have died out long ago were it not invigorated by these perennial gifts and bounties. There is practically no discrediting a belief which is backed by such unfailing beneficence. We,"children of a larger growth," hoodwink our perceptions and act upon it every day in our intercourse with society and estimate of character, feigning to believe in more doubtful virtues than those of the boy-saint. Besides, has not Weir painted the scene? and has it not been described by one of the best of men in most exquisite rhymes ?—

"The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave the lustre of midday to objects below,
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick. 

*        *        *        * 

And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof

The prancing and pawing of each little hoof—

As I drew in my head, and was turning around,

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound,

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot,

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;

A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,

And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.

His eyes—how they twinkled! his dimples how merry!

His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow:

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,

And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath,

He had a broad face and a little round belly,

That shook when he laughed, like a bowlfull of jelly." *

* Poems by Clement C. Moore, LL.D.: 1844, pp. 125-6.

This is the children's saint of the Manhattoes, fixed in his great lineaments for all time.

Saint Nicholas Day, if lost to the juveniles, is not forgotten by the elders, the representative men of the race of the older dynasty, the members of the venerable St. Nicholas Society of the city, who annually meet on the Saint's day—the 6th of December—to feast on the old dainties, and continue the old festive observances of the fatherland. The Society, as we learn from an oration delivered at one of its anniversaries by that worthy descendant from the old stock, Mr. James W. Beekman, had its public observance of the day in New York immediately preceding the Revolution, when the impending war, as in the season of struggle in Holland, taught men the virtue of joining hands in friendly association and of uniting their sympathies in cheerful enjoyment.

The old Dutch observance of New Year's Day also happily survives in the modern metropolis. It was, as it is now, a day peculiarly dedicated to family congratulations and the renewal of friendships in expressions of sympathy and goodwill, which, following so closely upon the sacred festival of Christmas, may well be inspired with a peculiar significance. On that day, in old New York, the citizens thronged to the Fort to pay their respects to the Governor, with their "compliments of the season"—a familiar and convenient phrase in use on these occasions time out of mind.* The clergy, too, were similarly honored, and with something more substantial in various hospitable gifts. The English," says Chaplain Wolley, in his narrative already cited, "observed one anniversary custom, and that without superstition. I mean the strenarum commercium, as Suetonius calls them, a neighborly commerce of presents every New Year's Day. Some would send me a sugar-loaf, some a pair of gloves, some a bottle or two of wine. In a word, the English merchants and factors were very unanimous and obliging." In the olden time, with the compact, neighborly arrangement of the town, hemmed in by its two rivers and clustering round the Fort, when an easy stroll of the pedestrian carried him in a few minutes from one end to the other of its fashionable streets, the friendly calls of the day were easily maintained.

New York, as Washington Irving has said, was then "a handy city," and "any one who did not live over the way was to be found round the corner." The good people of Manhattan were, in fact, almost as near to one another as the occupants of a modern mammoth hotel, and a regard for one another's feelings was essential to home comfort. The city has outgrown many old usages, and, it must be confessed, has in its "magnificent distances" rendered the observance of New Year's Day in the old style rather onerous, but still it is maintained in perhaps the most thoroughly kept holiday of the year. Nor, as a genuine record of these antique observances, should we forget the New Year cake handed down in its primitive shapes from our forefathers. 

* See a notice of the usage in a letter of Governor Colden to the Earl of Hillsborough, January 6th, 1770. Col. Doc. VIII., 200.

The Google-digitized volume 17 of Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly with Duyckinck's "Life in New York City in its Later Colonial Days" is accessible online courtesy of HathiTrust Digital Library

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/inu.32000000492084?urlappend=%3Bseq=710%3Bownerid=13510798895696212-722

Evert A. Duyckinck
via NYPL Digital Collections

Related post:

• Evert Duyckinck on Clement C. Moore: "one of the best of men"
  https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2017/02/evert-duyckinck-on-clement-c-moore-one.html 

Santa Claus comes on New Year's Eve

Howitt's Journal of Literature and Popular Progress - January 1, 1848

The picture above shows what Santa Claus will look like tonight, around midnight. Santa Claus comes on New Year's Eve, as explained in the 1848 article in Howitt's Journal that accompanies the illustration of Santa Claus "sitting before the empty fire-place of an American house."

In Germany, the servants of tradesmen come for New-Year's gifts, as they do for Christmas-boxes with us; and your baker sends you a large cake, like a couple of great serpents wreathed into two connected circles, perhaps originally intended to represent the old year and the new. 

The Dutch, a kindred nation, carried over their national custom to America; but singular enough, one of the chief features of their New Year's-Eve is the arrival of Santa Claus, with gifts for the children, and whose figure as represented by an American artist, and which has been handed to us by an indefatigable American friend we present to our readers at the head of this article.

Howitt's Journal gives Santa a good, practical excuse for not showing up in the U. S. until New Year's. He's been working hard all month and only made it to northern Europe a couple of weeks before Christmas:

Santa Claus is no other than the Pelz Nickel of Germany and the North; he is in fact, the good Saint Nicholas of Russia, the patron-saint of children; he arrives in Germany about a fortnight before Christmas, but as may be supposed from all the visits he has to pay there, and the length of his voyage, he does not arrive in America, until this eve. Here he is, sitting before the empty fire-place of an American house, with his foot on the old fashioned dog, a little after midnight, all the family having retired to bed to be out of his way, and having hung up the stockings that he may fill them with gifts. Here he sits, smoking his pipe, and delighting himself with the thought of what he shall leave for the children, and of the delight and surprise in the morning.  --"New Year's Eve in Different Nations" in Howitt's Journal Volume 3

More testimony for the expected arrival of Santa Claus on New Year's night may be found in the "Address of the Carrier" on New Year's Day 1819, as published in the Weekly Visitor, and Ladies' Museum (January 9, 1819):

While young and old so gay and pleasant
Exchange their New Year's wish and present;
While children round their parents press
With clamor,—anxious to possess
The Stocking, hoped with riches fraught;
Which good Old Santaclaus has brought;
Who yearly down the chimney comes
With Rods and Toys and Sugar-Plums,
And leaves for naughty girls and boys
The whips—but for the good, the toys—
--1819 Carrier's Address

To be clear, New Yorkers in the 19th century might expect Santa Claus at Christmas, or New Year's, or both. As a letter signed "Jeptha" in the New York American explained,

"he sometimes comes on New-Year's night to dispose of the refuse of his Christmas luggage."  --New-York American for the Country, January 3, 1824.

"A Visit from St. Nicholas" had only just appeared, anonymously, in the Troy Sentinel (December 23, 1823), so the 1824 description of Santa's physical appearance by "Jeptha" offers a nice, detailed view of what Santa looked like before the influence of Moore's "Visit." A similar conception may have influenced the artist Robert Weir, whose 1837 "Santa Claus, or St Nicholas" in part resembles the "little short hump-backed man" depicted in 1824 by "Jeptha":

"... this Saint Nicolas, for that is his proper name, he is the tutelary saint of this city, and chiefly favours the rising generation, to whom, on every Christmas eve, he brings various presents, adapted to the age or capacity of the receiver—he is a little short hump-backed man, with sharp grey eyes buried beneath ponderous black brows, which curve forward to join the sides of a long crooked hawk-bill nose, which overhangs a toothless trench beneath, that serves him for a mouth, though the beaked chin curves up so near the end of the nose, that it is difficult to conceive of any thing passing between without being impaled on the one or the other; his head is immensely large, and sets like a huge extinguisher upon his small body beneath, whose form is concealed by an immense wrapper coat filled with pockets, each stuffed to its limits with cake, almonds, raisins, toys, &c.; his feet are armed with a pair of skates, indicating that he comes from Holland, and, thus accoutred, he skates up and down the nursery chimnies, leaving his largesses behind him in every direction, and there's not a grown person but recollects with pleasure, nor a child but anticipates with delight, the well stuffed stocking of Santa Claus."

Saint Nicholas
1837 by Robert Walter Weir via Wikimedia Commons

Correspondence in Sedgwick Family Papers from the latter 1820's attests to the emerging custom, in western Massachusetts as well as New York, of receiving gifts from Santa on New Year's Day. As documented by Stephen Nissenbaum in The Battle for Christmas, Elizabeth E. Sedgwick wrote to her father William Ellery on January 12, 1828 that

Nothing could exceed the joy of the children on New Year's morning, when awakening with the first dawn of light, they jumped up eagerly to examine their stockings, which, certain of "Santa Claas" bounty, they had had suspended the evening before from the bed post--and which, according to their anticipations were full to overflowing." --quoted in The Battle for Christmas (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), page 163.

As discussed in another post, one extant letter from Sophia Hawthorne to her daughter Una shows that even as late as 1852, children could rightfully expect presents from old St Nick on New Year's morning, after his annual visit on New Year's Eve.

"St Nicolas says he cannot put any of his presents into your funny long stocking, & so he asks me to write you a note & put it in, that you may not be disappointed; for he is a very kind old gentleman. So as it is the end of the old year, & in a few hours the new year will begin, I will say a few words of loving counsel...." --Sophia Hawthorne, letter to Una Hawthorne [1852] with a New Year's message from St. Nicholas. Accessible online courtesy of The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

In any event, by New Year's Eve 1832 the various traditions about when Santa Claus comes were pretty well mixed up, even (or rather, especially!) in New York City. Christmas or New Year's? Wait, how about St. Nicholas' Day, December 6th? On New Year's Eve a Philadelphia newspaper reprinted this item, without comment, from the New York Courier:

Poulson's American Daily Advertiser - December 31, 1832
via GenealogyBank

SANTA CLAUS.—A correspondent inquires of us under this signature "whether Santa Claus, with his stocking is not confined in his pretended visits to the eve of the new year and of course his introduction on Christmas eve inappropriate." Santa Claus is Saint Nicholas and his visitations always take place in Holland on Saint Nicholas' day, which falls we believe on the 6th December. How the day came to be celebrated here either at Christmas or on New Year's day we are unable to say.—

The last chapter in The Book of St Nicholas by James Kirke Paulding makes a fractured fairy tale out of "The Ride of Saint Nicholas on New Year's Eve."


In 1844, correspondent "L. P." of the Boston American Traveller described New Year's festivities in upstate New York. "L. P." especially loved the tradition of social visits as then still practiced in Waterford and urged Bostonians to adopt the "glorious" New York mode of celebrating the New Year:

"let us Yankees copy the glorious New Year's hospitality of the New Yorkers, in exchange for the compliment they have paid us in adopting our Thanksgiving."

Waterford, New York still expected presents from "old Santa Claus that honest house-breaker" on New Year's day.

Boston American Traveller - January 9, 1844

"A happy New Year! a happy New Year!" blessings on old Santa Claus that honest housebreaker, braying of penny trumpets and other boisterous mirth of the younger children (we are all children to-day) attests that the good Saint has not been remiss in his annual visits, now comes the display of stuffed stockings which have been duly hung up to receive the old fellow's favors and now you are fairly waked by the clamor, up you jump quickly for New Year's day dawns on no laggard, and you have the busiest day of your life before you." --"L. P." on New Year's Day in Waterford, New York; from the American Traveller [Boston, Massachusetts] January 9, 1844 via GenealogyBank.

Under the heading "New Year's Day," the holiday editorial in the New York Truth-Teller (December 28, 1839) affirms among other things the persistent belief that Santa comes on New Year's night:

"The children will of course have their stockings in the chimney nook, to receive the innumerable bounties of the generous "Santa-Claus" or St. Nicholas, in loading whose huge panniers many a confectionary and toy shop will be stuffed."

22 Dec 1847, Wed The Buffalo Commercial (Buffalo, New York) Newspapers.com
On January 2, 1841 The New York Mirror published an illustration titled ST. NICHOLAS, ON HIS NEW-YEAR'S EVE EXCURSION (AS INGHAM SAW HIM,) IN THE ACT OF DESCENDING A CHIMNEY." Printer and bookseller Daniel Fanshaw wrote the prose essay (signed "D. F.") that was featured along with the front-page picture by "Ingham."

New York Mirror - January 2, 1841

"... we prevailed upon our friend Ingham to give us a sketch of him, just as he saw him one bright, frosty, moonlight night, as he was returning home late from a party of friends. As we had not time for a copper or steel plate engraving, we got our young friend Roberts to do his prettiest on wood, that our subscribers might have an opportunity of becoming familiar with the good-natured countenance of our old patron, who, in these degenerate days, is very seldom seen among us New-Yorkers; and we feel that our friend Ingham has been a very highly favoured mortal in being permitted to see him whom we have so many years longed to get a peep at. St. Nicholas knows how often we have hung up our stockings by the fire, and hied off to bed on New-Year Eve a full hour earlier than usual, lest he might pass our house because we were not yet asleep, and we find our stockings empty in the morning in consequence of our being night spooks. He knows how often we have anxiously and fearfully peeped up the chimney to see if he was not yet there; and yet he has never deigned to show himself to us, but has allowed friend Ingham to have a full and deliberate view...."

"Ingham" by the way is Charles Cromwell Ingham (1796-1863) the Irish-American painter and a founder of the National Academy of Design. On another page in the same issue of the New York Mirror (January 2, 1841), editor George Pope Morris reprinted C. C. Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas," altering the first and last lines to make St. Nicholas arrive on New Year's night.

 'Twas the night before New-Year, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse....

Related post:

• Sophia Hawthorne and St Nicholas to Una, 1852

Sophia Hawthorne and St Nicolas to Una, 1852

This 1852 letter to Una Hawthorne is filed with outgoing correspondence in the Sophia Peabody Hawthorne collection of papers, Call number Berg Coll MSS Hawthorne, S, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. Digitized images are available online via NYPL Digital Collections. Among other things Sophia Hawthorne's letter to Una shows that even as late as 1852, children may rightfully expect presents from St Nick on New Year's Day, after his annual visit on New Year's Eve.

Conjecture: perhaps originally, or in some early draft version, Clement C. Moore's holiday classic began "'Twas the night before New Year...." and ended with St. Nick's wishing "Happy New Year to all...." (The New-York Mirror for January 2, 1841 printed "New Year" for Christmas in both places.)
Taking good advantage of the window for parental instruction, Sophia Hawthorne asks that Una be nice to Julian, even when he's being a brat. So then, let's cut Clement C. Moore some slack and not misread his earlier verses on St. Nick, the loving manuscript poem From Saint Nicholas, as the sorry production of a mean Grinch of a father. Back then good children got gifts from St. Nicholas on New Year's Day--not too far off in Moore's early "From Saint Nicholas" poem to his daughter, and only hours away in Sophia Hawthorne's 1852 letter.

Julian and Una Hawthorne, c. 1850.
Boston Athenaeum via streetsofsalem

My darling Una,

St Nicolas says he cannot put any of his presents into your funny long stocking, & so he asks me to write you a note & put it in, that you may not be disappointed; for he is a very kind old gentleman. So as it is the end of the old year, & in a few hours the new year will begin, I will say a few words of loving counsel.

I hope you will enter upon the new year with a resolution to be kind to Julian. You lose a great deal of happiness, & deprive Julian of a great deal of happiness by not being always patient & gentle & kind to him. He has a heart very large & full of rich love, & if you would not push it back with frowning looks & harsh words, it would flow towards you & be a river of life & joy for you. When he teases or troubles you, try to ask him not to do so with a sweet voice, & I think he will stop in a moment.

Perhaps he will not at first, because he is in the habit of hearing you speak roughly; but soon he will find you are different. In the bible it says "A soft answer turneth away wrath." I wish I could write you a longer note for I have a great deal to say to my darling first-born but I cannot think very well to night of any thing but dear suffering Grandmamma.

Good night. St Nicolas asked me if I could not tell him of a better place than these miserable stockings for his presents, & I told him to look about him & he took a fancy to the fisher-boy, & has run off with him. When you are bathed & dressed you must find him & see what the old gentleman has done. Your loving Mamma.

--Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library. "Hawthorne, Una, ALS to. [1852]" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1852. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/08f59400-1c86-0131-9562-58d385a7b928

Image Credit: MCNY Blog

From Saint Nicholas

What! My sweet little Sis, in bed all alone;
No light in your room! And your nursy too gone!
And you, like a good child, are quietly lying,
While some naughty ones would be fretting or crying?
Well, for this you must have something pretty, my dear;
And, I hope, will deserve a reward too next year.
But, speaking of crying, I'm sorry to say
Your screeches and screams, so loud ev'ry day,
Were near driving me and my goodies away.
Good children I always give good things in plenty;
How sad to have left your stocking quite empty:
But you are beginning so nicely to spell,
And, in going to bed, behave always so well,
That, although I too oft see the tear in your eye,
I cannot resolve to pass you quite by.
I hope, when I come here again the next year,
I shall not see even the sign of a tear.
And then, if you get back your sweet pleasant looks,
And do as you're bid, I will leave you some books,
Some toys, or perhaps what you still may like better,
And then too may write you a prettier letter.
At present, my dear, I must bid you good bye;
Now, do as you're bid; and, remember, don't cry.

--Clement C. Moore

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• Santa Claus comes on New Year's Eve