‘Twas the Night Before Christmas: Unfolding Ancestral Traditions

It's Christmas Day in an imaginary American town in 1850. Families are shopping and going to church, while wild young men are racing through the town square.

Happy holidays to you all! As I planned for this post, I intended something quick and simple about our ancestors’ holiday traditions. I thought it would be fun to pick a Christmas, any mid-nineteenth-century Christmas in my region of interest, and discuss how the local newspaper treated the holiday. I was in for a surprise.

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