Female abolitionists and Christmas

Did you know that many of our most enduring Christmas traditions were popularized by abolitionist women from Lexington and the greater Boston area?

LexObserver spoke with Ken Turino, Manager of Community Partnerships and Resource Development for Historic New England and a lecturer at Tufts University, who has been writing about the history of Christmas for nearly 30 years. He recently gave a talk about female abolitionists and Christmas at Follen Church in Lexington. The event was co-sponsored by the Lexington Lyceum Advocates and LexSeeHer.  

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

Q: Can you start by giving us some context about the abolitionist movement here in the Boston area? 

A: Abolitionism in America dates back to the 17th century. As a political movement it is usually dated to the first issue of The Liberator, the famous abolitionist newspaper started here in Boston by William Lloyd Garrison in January 1831. Originally the abolition movement was basically a northern movement, and it was basically all men who were involved.

Q: How did women get involved in the movement?

A: Women’s role in the early 19th century was to be at home and care for the family, and they were allowed to do some charity work. Men were in the worlds of business and politics.

Garrison saw this huge pool of women, and because of their position as role models for good, he embraced their participation in the abolitionist movement.

This was in the 1830s. Women had no right to vote, but they started using their right to petition. They also formed sewing circles, where they would read abolitionist literature and sew. 

Q: So how does this all relate to Christmas? 

A: Abolitionist writer and activist Maria Weston Chapman comes up with this idea to hold an abolitionist women’s bazaar — a Christmas fair. 

Called the Anti-Slavery Fair, the first of these was held in Boston in 1834, and it was a major fundraiser for Garrison’s Liberator, and for sponsoring men to go out on the stump and speak. Remember, this is before radio, before TV, before the Internet, so people going out and speaking about abolition at lyceums like you had here in Lexington was a great way to get the word out.

Chapman developed this network of women’s sewing circles, which would create goods to be sold at the fair. This brought women out of the designated domestic sphere (not without controversy) and into the economy.

There were fairs in places like Cincinnati, Rochester, Philadelphia, but the Boston fair was the largest. We know that women from Lexington were involved. Eliza Follen and her husband Charles Follen, the first minister at what is now Follen Church, were prominent local abolitionists. Lexington sisters Julia and Ellen Robbins promoted abolitionism while creating goods for sale as well as helping to organize the fairs.

Christmas had been a fairly rowdy holiday, particularly in Dutch New York and in Philadelphia — less so in more puritanical New England. At one point in the 17th century, celebrating Christmas was actually illegal in Massachusetts. The women promoted the idea of Christmas as a family holiday.

Q: Are there other enduring traditions that were popularized by these women abolitionists? 

A: The Christmas tree! The first way many Americans learned about Christmas trees was by reading about them in national publications like Harper’s Weekly or Godey’s Lady’s Book, which published an illustration of the British royal family with a Christmas tree in 1850. 

The female abolitionists glommed onto this and advertised that they would have a Christmas tree at the fair. People came out in throngs. They could not even get into the hall in Boston because it was so crowded.

Think about when a child sees a Christmas tree for the first time, how their eyes light up. Well, that was happening even for adults  — with the candles, and the ornaments — they had never seen that before. 

So that’s how they helped popularize the Christmas tree. 

They also popularized the giving of gifts. First it was the things that they were selling at the fair, then — and this is a little controversial —that evolved from mainly homemade goods to these imported fancy goods that Chapman got through her connections in England and in Europe — soaps and glass and other fancy goods, and it was all advertised in The Liberator. The famous abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe, in one of her stories from the 1850s, lambasts the commercialization of Christmas.

Q: Beyond things like trees and gifts, what is the deeper lasting legacy of this movement?

This all helped get women into the political arena, into the workforce — in factories mostly among the lower classes, or as teachers for the more middle class. In Boston, some of the female abolition groups were integrated, Black and white. During the Civil War, women still supported the cause with their sewing circles. There was the Sanitary Commission, which sewed goods like socks and bandages, and then they also became nurses. These women abolitionists, many of them also became suffragettes and fought for women’s rights. So there is a lasting effect.