Willow Glen resident Brian Earl, seen here with his son, has written a book based on his “Christmas Past” podcast, which explores the history of holiday traditions. Earl says he’s looking forward to carrying on his family’s traditions with his son, including building a gingerbread house according to his mother’s design specifications. (Courtesy photo)
During the holiday season, the mind starts to mull over certain traditions and how they came to be. What is a sugarplum? Do Americans actually like mince pie? What is Leon Day? How does one wassail?
Willow Glen resident Brian Earl, author and host of the “Christmas Past” podcast, can explain. Since 2016, Earl has done a deep dive into the stories behind many American Christmas traditions. He has just published a book called “Christmas Past: The Fascinating Stories Behind Our Favorite Holiday’s Traditions” from Lyons Press.
Both the podcast and book delve into the historical beginnings of major American Christmas activities like eating chestnuts, making yule logs or watching certain animated shows on television every December. Listeners are also encouraged to write in with their favorite holiday memories.
“Christmas may be the most wonderful time of the year, but it’s also the most fascinating,” says Earl. “No other cultural force has the same power to change the way we feel, behave and even speak. The world looks and sounds and smells different.”
Earl reads holiday stories on the podcast and interviews guests. Guests are typically knowledgeable about some aspect of Christmas, like the holiday crafters discussing Leon Day, which is June 25, the halfway point to Christmas. It’s known as the day that crafters fire up their glue guns and start creating. “Leon” is Noel backwards.
“Modern Christmas is largely an American invention,” Earl explains. “It’s the result of a melding of immigrant cultures coinciding with a period of increased industrialization, proliferation of print media and advances in transportation.”
Originally from Massachusetts, Earl grew up outside of Boston and before moving to the West Coast for his work in 2014.
“I consider myself lucky to have experienced not only my earliest Christmases in the suburbs of Massachusetts but also to have done so during the 1970s and 80s,” he says. “These two decades seemed to produce more than their fair share of popular culture.”
Earl’s mother made a gingerbread house from scratch every year.
“She got the recipe from a magazine, and she made a template for all the parts from a paper grocery bag. She’d make it the same way every year,” he says.
Having moved to Willow Glen with his wife in 2020, he currently enjoys cycling on the Los Gatos Creek Trail, and his son loves going to story time at the library. As a new father, Earl says he’s looking forward to carrying on his family’s traditions with his son. Last year he received a letter from his mother with the gingerbread recipe.
“It was the magazine page with the gingerbread recipe and the template,” he says. “She’d kept them for decades and handed them on to me.”
Visions of sugarplums
Earl’s book “Christmas Past” explores many food-related topics such as candy canes, fruitcake, mince pies, gingerbread and sugarplums.
“Many Christmas foods didn’t start out having any special connection to Christmas,” says Earl. “Fruitcake was once a common cake served at weddings during Victorian times. Eggnog was a basic wintertime/celebration drink. Gingerbread was a common food sold at fairs, not unlike how funnel cake is common at fairs nowadays. It was only over time that those foods disappeared outside the Christmas season and became more or less exclusively connected to Christmas.”
Sugarplums were first mentioned in a pamphlet published in England in 1608, according to Earl, but the pamphlet’s author wasn’t talking about candy or anything to do with Christmas. He used the word to describe a bribe given to keep someone quiet. No one knows for sure where the term “sugarplum” actually came from, but people eventually began using the word to describe “comfits,” or sweets.
‘Hygienic and safe’
The phrase “as American as apple pie” didn’t become widespread until the 1940s, according to writer Cliff Doerksen. Prior to the 1940s, mince pie—no longer made of meat at all, but full of fruit and alcohol—was America’s favorite.
“There is no other pie to take (mince’s) place,” said an editorialist for the Washington Post in 1907. “Custard pie is good and so is apple pie, but neither has the uplifting power and the soothing, gratifying flavor possessed by mince pie when served hot, with a crisp brown crust.”
The popularity and longevity of mince pie is surprising, says Earl, given that it was commonly thought to cause severe indigestion, hallucinations and vivid nightmares.
“In 1909, a New Jersey man even blamed the effects of mince pies for him shooting his wife,” he adds.
Doerksen also writes about finding a mince pie recipe from the 1890s with the “reassuring” headline: “Harmless Mince Pies: They Are Said to Be Hygienic and Safe to Eat.”
Eggnog Riot
According to Earl, in 1826 superintendent Gen. Sylvanus Thayer banned all alcohol from the West Point Academy campus, so naturally, cadets spiked the Christmas eggnog with whiskey. The mischievous plan eventually resulted in a melee where a patrolling officer was attacked, windows were broken and a gunshot was fired into a bedroom. Many of the cadets showed up for formation the next day barefoot, in torn uniforms and still drunk from the night before. President John Quincy Adams actually got involved with the court-martial verdicts stemming from the Eggnog Riot, also known as the Grog Mutiny.
In addition to holiday food, “Christmas Past” also discusses classic Christmas movies and animated TV specials; the Old English custom “wassail,”which can mean a number of things; and snow globes.
“I never would have guessed that snow globes were the result of a failed experiment to provide light to surgeons in operating rooms,” Earl says.
Originally published at Lisa Thorn