Recommendation!
Stephen Nissenbaum takes wassailing, an English custom, to the early American colonies where Christmas was a day for reversing roles, and the gift giving was more like a Halloween trick or treat. Perhaps the idea was to let off resentment?
Christmas as we know it to be was invented by New Yorkers who leaned on a myth that the holiday was from the Dutch heritage of early residents of Dutch New York. In early new England the day was not celebrated because the festivities were not considered to be Christian behavior.
Perhaps no better a day of the year existed for slaves. A good portion of this book by Stephen Nissenbaum, a Professor of History at the University of Massachusettes, is devoted to the relations between slaves and their masters.
Genealogists will learn more about the Freedman Bureau too!
Maybe you'll want to read this one after the holidays?
Book is C 1996 by the author Stephen Nissenbaum and published by Borzoi/Alfred A. Knopf.
