The Conversation - How America got its Christmas

Christmas for me was a magical time when I was growing up in India. There was no imaginary Santa Claus with gifts, but my Christian friends would generously share the utterly delicious homemade plum cakes, filled with dried and candied fruits soaked in rum, a tradition going back to India’s British colonizers.

By the time my own children were growing up, Christmas had become a commercialized secular holiday, with parents, regardless of their faith, bringing home fake Christmas trees to keep up with the popularity of the festival.

Christmas celebrations have evolved in Europe and the United States as well. As Thomas Adam, a historian who has studied the emergence of modern-day Christmas celebrations, writes, it wasn't until the Civil War that rituals Americans now associate with Christmas became part of the popular culture. In addition to tree-lighting practices borrowed from Germany, an elaborate sketch of Santa Claus, with a big belly and a long white beard, in the Harper’s Weekly helped make today’s holiday what it is today.

Merry Christmas!