The God-given prosperity and charity elevated around Christmas are reminders of who Americans truly ought to be as a people.
The God-given prosperity and charity elevated around Christmas are reminders of who Americans truly ought to be as a people.
Contemporary Christmas celebrations have often served as a time for reflection and introspection in American society. At the same time, the perception that American consumerism increasingly animates the season is highlighted and criticized more and more each year. Gift-giving and receiving divorced from the commemoration of the incarnation of Jesus Christ are lamented by conservatives as evidence of an increasing irreligious population. It’s also lamented, in turn, by progressives as evidence of an inherently “greedy” and “materialistic” telos animating American society.
Yet, while criticisms of American consumerism, irreligiosity, and materialism have their place, each is overstated in many ways. The United States remains the most religiously observant major Western democracy. Nearly 70 percent of Americans state that religion plays a role in their daily lives (compared to a mere 20 percent of Western Europeans). Americans also remain incredibly generous compared to the rest of the Western world. Indeed, the United States was the most generous nation over the last decade, and the American tendency to give only increased following the Covid-19 pandemic.
The tie between the religious foundation of Christmas, charity, and a strong American economy is obvious to charities and institutions that rely on year-end giving. Historically, Christians gave gifts to celebrate Advent’s end and to mark the incarnation of Christ, which began the Christian year and heralded salvation for mankind. Jews likewise feast and give gifts at Hanukkah to celebrate the liberation of the Jewish people from tyranny. Citizens of the modern United States — Christian, Jewish, and secular alike — continue the celebratory and generous spirit of these rich traditions.
As the development leader of Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, Sarah Haney notes, “The holiday season is our largest time of giving . . . because people are inspired by the holiday season and want to give back.” The Judeo-Christian inspiration behind giving, and the fact that the United States ends its fiscal year at roughly the same time that the Christian calendar does, has a practical aspect as well. According to Sam Worthington, CEO of the charity InterAction: “It’s the end of the year and people want to make sure their giving is done before a new calendar year, and there’s the fact that we spend time with our families, we think about others and want to have an impact on the world around us.”
The tie between American charity and Christmas is nothing new. From the outset of the republic, Americans have associated Christmas with feasting, giving, and prosperity without regard to necessarily sectarian religious observances.
Perhaps surprising to modern Americans, Christmas in the United States often didn’t include church services. New England Congregationalists and Scottish Presbyterians believed the religious celebration of the holiday was uncomfortably Roman Catholic and instead gathered their families to celebrate and feast on New Year’s Day. Even if America’s Puritans didn’t celebrate Christmas in their churches, they still participated by giving to needy neighbors and the poor at year’s end. Puritans might not have celebrated Christmas liturgies or marked the holiday in their churches, but they could not escape the need to give in thanksgiving for prosperity. Bountiful harvests meant bigger feasts and greater charitable giving, so even the most hardened Presbyterian found himself giving charitably in thanksgiving to God at the end of a prosperous agricultural year.
Scholar Allan Axelrad notes that in the late 18th century, Christmas was celebrated in a variety of ways by different groups, and sometimes not celebrated at all. Christmas trees, Santa Claus, or stockings with presents for children were absent from the Christmas season at the time. Religious Americans “celebrated Christmas in church; some variously by feasting, drinking, and sporting activities,” while their less religious, or at least rowdier brethren, followed the tradition of public rambunctiousness associated with holiday merriment.
As America grew and people from Europe came to the United States, a uniquely American take on Christmas also began to develop. German Lutherans who immigrated in the middle of the 19th century brought a host of Christmas symbols unknown to British Christians — most notably the “Tannenbaum” or Christmas tree. American folk tales and children’s stories from the beginning of the 19th century, such as Clement Clarke Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” initially used British folk imagery (the titular character in his poem is likened to a sort of elf) to complement and celebrate the holiday.
But no American influenced the national celebration and practice of the Christmas holiday to the same extent as Washington Irving. Although Irving is most famous for his short stories such as “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” his most lasting contribution to the modern United States is his mainstreaming of Christmas. Irving’s biographer Brian Jay Jones stated that “Americans embraced Irving’s vision of Christmas as their own,” which marked “the revival of a holiday that had been banned in parts of the country for the excessive drinking and fighting it spurred in the populace.”
Irving saw Christmas as a divinely given prerequisite for a functioning virtuous society. “He who can turn churlishly away from contemplating the felicity of his fellow beings, and can sit down darkling and repining in his loneliness when all around is joyful, may have his moments of strong excitement and selfish gratification,” but the person who rejected the conviviality of Christmas ultimately “wants the genial and social sympathies which constitute the charm of a merry Christmas.”
“Genial and social sympathies” still animate Americans nearly two centuries after Irving described them. The American predilection for charity — and the religious foundations that drive that charity — can still be found across the United States during the holiday season. Indeed, during the Christmas season, the United States’ best virtues are on full display. Christmas, said Irving, awakened a people’s “strongest and most heartfelt associations.” The God-given prosperity and charity elevated around Christmas are reminders of who Americans truly ought to be as a people. We should celebrate this spirit during Christmas and aim to uphold it in the new year.
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