A Childs Yankee Christmas

in Connecticut
by Andy Lang

n the first Christmas in New England,

Indians arrived at the doors of the
Pilgrims rustic meeting house bearing
barrels of a spiritous liquor distilled from
cranberries and pine needles. They found the
church doors locked, and the entire community
huddled inside their homes. Christmas, their
ministers had told them, was a paganish
Mummerie of indecent Revells and the Werke of
Antichrist, fit only for the deluded Hereticks of
the Romish Persuasion. So the Pilgrims spent
the entire day reading their Bibles and
petitioning God to cast the Pope of Rome into the
Lake of Fire. Disappointed, the Indians returned to
their villages, opened their gifts and drank toasts
to the Corn God.

The author and his sisters

It was not a propitious beginning for a region whose Christmas traditions were later
immortalized by Bing Crosby and the legions of New Yorkers who swarmed every
December into towns and villages across Connecticut to experience an authentic New
England Christmas. But by the end of the 1600s, the Puritans had reluctantly legalized
the holiday, and an American classic was born.
Superficially, the traditional Christmas in New England resembles the familiar holiday
celebrated everywhere in North America. But in fact, its customs had a radically different
origin in the unique social and religious history of the region. Although today Christmas
has been commercialized in New England as everywhere else, I still remember from my
childhood in the 1950s the somewhat eccentric but heart-warming family rituals of a real
Yankee Christmas in Connecticut. As a high school student, while these memories were
still fresh, I wrote the following prize-winning essay for the Future Patriotic Journalists
contest sponsored by the Legion of Sons of Veterans of Elective Foreign Surgery.

We knew Christmas was near.

e children always knew Christmas was near when our teachers released us
early from school one crisp December day and led us to the village green
where we were allowed to paint the faces of the prisoners shackled in the
community's stocks. Before long, the lawn between the Meeting House and the Grange
was a magical landscape of bright colors!
But this was not the only splash of Christmas color: in fact, every fir tree was
decorated with bright red ornaments, all resembling the letter A. The origin of this
custom may surprise you. You see, the day before Christmas was the only day of the
year when the Women Caught in Adultery, who had been banished to the wilderness,
were allowed to return. Before they passed through the village gates, however, they

were required to hang their scarlet letters on nearby treesthe first Christmas trees
in New England. The Adulterous Women then were led in procession to the Meeting
House where the minister harangued them for several hours about the Lake of Fire.
As Christmas Eve approached,
the children of the village
looked forward to one of our
favorite customs of the season:
the Winnowing of the Wiccans.
(The tradition was originally
called the Winnowing of the
Witches, but the genderinclusive term was substituted
after passage of the Equal
Repression Amendment by
Connecticuts General
Assembly.)
Suspected Wiccans (usually
Suspected Wiccan
anybody who had a cat) were
thrown into the river to determine
their guilt or innocence. If they floated, they were proven to be servants of the devil
and were summarily banished into the wilderness. But if they sank beneath the frigid
waters, they were exonerated, and a special prayer was said in their memory. Our
parents indulgently allowed us to jeer at the accused: this was the origin of the
expression Christmas Jeer.

ou can hardly imagine the excitement we children felt as

we woke early on Christmas morn. Like children
anywhere else, we rushed downstairs to see what was
lying beneath the Christmas tree! Now, Christmas gift-giving in
New England was a very different concept than in the rest of
the country. That was primarily because we didnt have a
Santa Claus. Our minister told us that Santa was an
irreverent Invention of the deluded Dutch inspired by the
fleshly Flummery of New Amsterdam. But we didnt feel
deprived, because we had something much better: Rant o
Flaws.

Ranta
Ranta was a jolly symbol of the season. During most of the
year, our parents told us, Ranta lived in the North Pole with his industrious helpers
(called deacons) compiling lists of all the sins committed by children all over the
world. Then, during the hectic shopping days before Christmas, Ranta appeared in our
villagea cadaverous figure dressed in a long black gown, black skullcap and black silk

stockings. How we cheered as he stalked through the village, fixing each of us in his
accusing stare! One by one we were summoned by Rantas bony, pointing finger to
climb up and sit on his skinny knee, there to be enraptured by his vivid stories about
Jesus casting sinners into the Lake of Fire.
On Christmas eve, while we slept snug and secure in our beds, Ranta would sneak
down the chimney and carry off the gifts our parents had laid out the night before.
That was, in any case, how our parents explained the mysterious non-appearance of
our gifts underneath the tree. But we had a wonderful time anyway as they described
the Last Judgment Fire and Brimstone Chemistry Set, the Sorrowful Barbie Wailing at
the Foot of the Cross, and all the other exciting presents they had bought for us!

n northern New England, children would wake on Christmas morn to find the
fields outside covered in a wonderful blanket of fresh snow. These White
Christmases were rare in the warmer climate of southern Connecticut, but we
never felt deprived. We looked forward every year to the impenetrably thick fog that
would roll in from Long Island Sound and immerse the village in a suffocating gloom
pierced only by the laughter of children and the groaning of prisoners shackled in the
village green. The fog was rank with the sulphurous smell of rotten eggs emanating
from the polluted clam beds outside of town, so we called it a Christmas Egg Fog.
You can imagine our
excitement as we
hurriedly put on our
buckled shoes and
wide-brimmed hats
and ran outside to
play in the fog. But
before long our
parents would
emerge and we
would walk together
as a family to the
Meeting House.
There, yet another
treat was in store!
The minister, no
doubt exhausted by
You can imagine our excitement!
his all-night
harangue of the Women Caught in Adultery, shortened his sermon from seven to only
six hours! By the time we left church at three oclock in the afternoon, it seemed as if
hardly any time had passed. Still bursting with energy, we rushed back home eagerly
anticipating our Christmas Dinner!

e always ate hearty meals in New England: my mothers fried turkey wattle
with lard drippings was famous throughout the county. But the Christmas
feast was something special. At the center of the table was, of course, the
steamed Christmas Cod garnished with stems and twigs. Plates piled high with boiled
cabbage, seemingly endless stacks of duck jerky and bowls of savory nettle soup
completed the festive scene. And yet, as we devoured the meal, we knew the best was
yet to come: the special Christmas dessert, served only once a year, of cranberry and
muskrat pudding!
Soon our plates were piled high with discarded cranberry pits and muskrat bones. But
the fun didnt stop there! The child who found the longest muskrat tail could look
forward to a special treat: the privilege of leading the other children through the
village for the final tradition of an old-fashioned Yankee Christmasthe Ridiculing of
the Religious Minorities!
Originally called the Browbeating of the Baptists, who were once the only religious
minority in our village, by the 1950s we had a variety of diverse minorities to ridicule.
In addition to the Browbeating of the Baptists, there was also the Aggravating of the
Agnostics, the Bullying of the Buddhists, the Character Assassinating of the
Charismatics, the Confusing of the Confucians, the Eschewing of the Episcopalians
(also known as the Avoiding of the Anglicans), the Mooning of the Muslims, the LegPulling of the Latter Day Saints, the Loathing of the Lutherans, the Nagging of the
Nazarenes, the Poking of the Papists, the Shunning of the Schwenkfelders, and so forth.
Finally, after an exhausting day of Christmas fun, we were ready for bed. We could
hardly keep our eyes open as the family knelt down for the customary three hours of
night prayers. After singing all 150 psalms, we prayed to God to keep mommy and
daddy safe and to cast the Pope of Rome into the Lake of Fire. Then we climbed into
bed, and almost immediately sleep stole across our young faces. We dreamed of
painted prisoners and scarlet letters, of floating witches and sulphurous fogs, of
cranberries and muskrat tails, and another magical Christmas was past!