Merry Christmas!

Christmas was not a Federal Holiday until 1870, but during Colonial and early statehood, it was celebrated with good food and merriment.  One of Thomas Jefferson’s ledgers showed him spending on Christmas gifts. This post is, however, on George Washington. He too liked good food, and partying. One year he rented a camel for his guest’s enjoyment, but he was away from his home on Christmas much of the time during the formation of the United States.

How Washington Observed Christmas

There seems to be an appeal, universal in its extent, about Christmas which stirs in the heart of everyone a desire to celebrate that day at home with his family. It is an appeal which can be understood by all men for it is experienced by all in common. As the Christmas season approaches this year, with the celebration of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Birth of George Washington so imminent, the thoughts of all Americans are directed toward the founder of this country and the manner in which he observed the Yuletide during his lifetime.

No man ever had more love for his home or a keener desire to be there with his family than George Washington, and yet his duties kept him from this enjoyment to an extent, perhaps, experienced by few other men. This was especially true of Christmas. There are comparatively few recorded instances after 1774 when the Father of his Country was able to observe this occasion in the happy quiet of his own home. On the contrary, this day often found him far from his estate under conditions hardly to be considered desirable. Once he was in the cold cheerless wilderness near Fort le Boeuf on the Ohio River when Christmas overtook him. Another time he was at Boston laying siege to the British in that city. Again he is found celebrating the day by attacking the Redcoats at Trenton, and the following year in Valley Forge, now one of America's dearest shrines.

But regardless of the circumstances in which he found himself at Christmas time, Washington was always ready to meet the exigencies which arose. If he had to treat with the savages in their home, the forest, he did it; if a battle had to be fought as at Trenton, he unhesitatingly accepted the task; if he was cold and poorly supplied as at Valley Forge, he made the best of it and refused to become discouraged. Whatever the demand, Washington was prepared for it and he was never unequal to the occasion.

During his boyhood Washington experienced much the same Christmas joys which usually make that occasion so important to every young person, but the death of his father when George was but 11 years old left the boy with responsibilities which early developed and matured him. He was soon facing a man's problems, and it may be assumed that many of these simple pleasures were prematurely displaced by other and more weighty considerations.

When George was 19 years old, he made the journey which took him out of this country for the first and only time he ever left it. This was when he accompanied his brother Lawrence to the Barbados on the latter's futile quest for health. Incidentally, it was at this time that George Washington observed the only Christmas he ever spent outside the United States, and it was celebrated on the Atlantic Ocean aboard the ship "Industry," just three days out from Barbados. His diary contains the information that the dinner eaten that day consisted of an Irish goose which had been fattened for the occasion, "Beef &ca. &ca.," and states that all on board drank toasts to their absent friends. This was a Christmas novel that it surely would have appealed to any youth, and young George no doubt thoroughly enjoyed it.

Vastly different from this one was the Christmas which two years later found Washington on his way home from Fort le Boeuf, where he had gone as a messenger to the French from Governor Dinwiddie of Virginia. Washington's record of this journey places his little party in the forests of western Pennsylvania. The journal makes no mention of what was eaten or what festivities were observed this Christmas day, but certain it is that there could have been very little to furnish the men with Yuletide cheer.

Washington was married on January 6, 1759. He had just returned from the expedition against Fort Duquesne, and his time during the holidays of 1758 was absorbed with the preparation of his report of the affair and his resignation from the army. With the date of his wedding so near it is not supposed that the young Virginia colonel was anything but all too impatient to be with his fiancée to be very deeply concerned over the celebration of this Christmas. It was the last one he spent as a bachelor.

In the summer of 1758 Washington was elected to the Virginia House of Burgesses and he took his seat the following February. He served in this assembly until the meeting of the first Continental Congress and must have spent some Christmas days at Williamsburg or at Fredericksburg with his mother. At least one Yuletide found the young legislator together with Mrs. Washington and the Custis children taking Christmas dinner in Fredericksburg with the Colonel's brother-in-law and sister, Colonel Fielding Lewis and Betty Washington Lewis, for Washington's diary records the event. This was in 1769 when the Washington family was on the way back to Mount Vernon from Williamsburg, where the House of Burgesses had been in session.

During this period Washington enjoyed the pleasures of home life more fully than at any other time in his entire career. His records are filled with notes which reveal the interest he took in caring for his estate and the satisfaction that he obtained from this labor. In these years of comparative freedom from the cares of public duty, Washington no doubt found his happiest Christmas days. With a capable and efficient wife to preside over his home and to entertain his many guests he must have been superbly happy. But perhaps Christmas as a day of pretentious celebration did not mean as much then as it does now; or it may have been only because there were fewer visitors to Mount Vernon during the Yuletide that Christmas Day itself was apparently so quiet and Sabbath-like. His diaries during these years merely state that he "Went to Pohick Church and returned to Dinner," or "At home all day." The latter entry was made in 1774. It was the last Christmas the Father of his Country observed "At home" for eight years.

In 1775 the ominously darkening clouds of conflict between Great Britain and her Colonies broke in the fury of the Revolutionary War, and George Washington left his beloved Mount Vernon to lead his country's armies to victory. That year, as has been seen, Christmas found him at the siege of Boston, holding the British at bay with an undisciplined army so inadequately supplied with ammunition that it would have been impossible for them to repel an attack had one been made by General Howe.

After this there followed the memorable Christmas at Trenton when General Washington presented his country with a victory that saved the Revolution. Then came the unforgettable Christmas at Valley Forge— a dark and gloomy day, heavy with suffering and privation— when the Commander in Chief dined with his officers on a meagre supply of veal, mutton, "fowls" and a small quantity of potatoes and turnips. The General's baggage had not yet appeared, so that there was an inadequate supply of utensils and tableware. There was nothing but water to drink at this dinner, and there was no dessert. A cheerless Christmas it was. On subsequent Christmas days, at his winter quarters at Morristown, New Windsor and Newburgh, the Yuletide season was undoubtedly brightened by the presence of Mrs. Washington. Only twice during the eight years of the war did General Washington enjoy a Christmas dinner outside his own camp. Once in 1778, when he was at Philadelphia; and again in 1781, when he and Mrs. Washington dined with Robert Morris at the same city.

After the war was over, Washington returned to Mount Vernon in 1783 just in time to celebrate Christmas at home, and the happiness on that occasion must have been great. The diaries then tell of some more Christmas days "at home," and then comes his election to the Presidency of the new Republic. After eight years in this high office, George Washington in 1797 again returned to his estate. But his life was nearly done—spent as it had been in the glorious service of his country. Only two more Christmas days remained to him, and these were quiet days for the weary old General. The last Christmas dinner he ate was shared by Gen. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney at Mount Vernon.

In the story of George Washington's Christmas days is written an account of supreme devotion to ideals of freedom and liberty. The welfare of his country was always foremost in his thoughts, and no personal considerations ever swerved him from what he conceived to be his duty. In the light of this knowledge every American must feel grateful for the example of this great man whose achievements have accomplished so much for the United States.

Special news releases relating to the life and time of George Washington, as prepared and issued by the United States George Washington bicentennial commission. vol. I, United States George Washington Bicentennial Commission, 1932.