The American Civil War destroyed slavery, but the battle to shape public memory of the institution continued for decades thereafter.
In the late 19th century, for instance, an avalanche of antebellum memoirs rolled off the presses. Masters, mistresses and their descendants used every conceivable device — including the plantation’s holiday season — to depict slaveholders as benevolent and thereby conjure wistful feelings for the Old South.
Frederick Douglass, the runaway-slave-turned-civil-rights-leader, penned one of the few dissenting accounts of Christmastime on the plantation. And he could do this, in part, because he understood what Christmas really means.
Born a slave on Maryland’s Eastern Shore — probably in February 1817 — Douglass escaped and fled north in 1838. He later joined the abolitionists and became well acquainted with legendary figures such as John Brown. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln welcomed Douglass to the White House several times.
With the publication of his first autobiography in 1845, Douglass’ recollections of life in slavery had earned him substantial notoriety. In later years, he expanded or republished those recollections to combat a growing corpus of pro-slavery literature.
A surprising percentage of that literature showcased the purported joys of Christmastime on the plantation.
In a 2021 interview with Time magazine, historian Robert E. May, author of the 2019 book “Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory,” explained how postwar Southern revisionists used antebellum holiday traditions to help sanitize the Civil War’s origins.
“Scores of authors would devote whole chapters to Christmas in memoirs, novels, and short stories,” May said.
“They aren’t just about Christmas, but Christmas was a major focus — one of the most important components of these works trying to defend slavery and southern customs before the Civil War. And they did win over a lot of hearts with it,” he added.
For instance, published postwar Southern recollections emphasized gift-giving and even shared celebrations at Christmas.
“There were all sorts of stories about masters inviting their enslaved peoples up to the porch of their homes to watch fireworks together,” May said.
No doubt some masters and mistresses showed more generosity and kindness than did others.
Douglass, in fact, reserved some of his fondest memories and highest praise for “Miss Lucretia,” the daughter of his former owner.
“I have reasons for thinking this lady was very kindly disposed toward me, and, although I was not often the object of her attention, I constantly regarded her as my friend, and was always glad when it was my privilege to do her a service,” he wrote of Miss Lucretia in his second autobiography, published in 1855.
Kindness, therefore, did prevail at times, even in the context of slavery.
Still, the postwar Southern narratives told a story of Christmastime on the plantation that did not square with Douglass’ memories.
In 1845 and again 10 years later, he had shared those memories in his first two autobiographies. At that time, slavery still existed.
Thus, when Douglass revisited those recollections for his third and final autobiography, “Life and Times of Frederick Douglass” — published in 1881 and later expanded by 13 chapters to cover his life down to 1892, three years before his death — they appeared, in effect, as an answer to the postwar Southern revisionists.
“We regarded this time as our own by the grace of our masters, and we therefore used it or abused it as we pleased,” Douglass wrote of the week between Christmas and New Year’s.
Of course, the perception that freedom came from the master’s “grace” suited the master’s purpose rather well.
Likewise, the phrase “as we pleased” had limits. For instance, families separated by distance used that week to visit one another on nearby plantations. In some cases, husbands, wives and children reunited for a week.
Indeed, to all slaves, the holidays offered a taste of freedom that fell short of the real thing.
“These holidays served the purpose of keeping the minds of the slaves occupied with prospective pleasure within the limits of slavery,” Douglass wrote. And that preoccupation helped “keep out thoughts and wishes of a more dangerous character,” he said.
Antebellum Christmas traditions, therefore, served as auxiliaries of the slave system.
Worse yet, slaves themselves often unwittingly chose the method by which that system reinforced itself at Christmastime.
A “sober, thoughtful, industrious” slave, for instance, might try to make money during the week. But an industrious slave “was thought by his master undeserving of holidays,” Douglass wrote. Self-improvement was out of the question.
Thus, “the majority spent the holidays in sports, ball-playing, wrestling, boxing, running, foot-races, dancing, and drinking whisky; and this latter mode was generally most agreeable to their masters,” Douglass recalled.
In fact, during the holidays, masters regarded a slave’s sobriety as “disgraceful.”
As a young man, Douglass took part in those activities. Nowadays, of course, we might regard many of them — sports, dancing, etc. — as harmless or even healthy. In a different context, Douglass probably would have too.
Time and distance, however, made him see that masters who allowed such things had degrading intentions.
“Everything like rational enjoyment was frowned upon, and only those wild and low sports peculiar to semi-civilized people were encouraged,” he wrote.
Above all, the memory of dispiriting drunkenness stayed with Douglass years later.
“We were induced to drink, I among the rest, and when the holidays were over we all staggered up from our filth and wallowing, took a long breath, and went away to our various fields of work, feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go from that which our masters had artfully deceived us into the belief was freedom, back again to the arms of slavery,” he recalled.
In short, while former slaveholders wrote of shared joy and fireworks, Douglass remembered only degradation. To him, slaveholders had perverted Christmastime to suit the slave system’s evil purposes.
And now comes a crucial point.
Having experienced the perversion of a holiday that celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ, Douglass might have dismissed that holiday or faith in general as nothing more than an instrument of his oppression. After all, if anyone had a right to feel oppressed, the slave did.
But Douglass took a different path.
As a teenager, he recalled being “seriously awakened to the subject of religion.” In his “loneliness and destitution” he sought “a father and protector.” A white Methodist minister in Baltimore taught him “that in God I had such a friend.”
Do you agree with Douglass?
Now aware of Christ, Douglass “consulted a good colored man named Charles Lawson, and in tones of holy affection he told me to pray, and to ‘cast all my care upon God.’” Lawson prayed three times a day and introduced young Douglass to the Holy Spirit.
“I loved all mankind, slaveholders not excepted, though I abhorred slavery more than ever,” Douglass recalled.
Thus, forced to “celebrate” Christmas in degrading ways, Douglass nonetheless learned and kept the day’s true spirit.
