Colonial Christmas and Hogmanay

Finding things to share about colonial Christmas celebrations can be an interesting experience. Others have written about the importance of Advent to colonial folk, and how Christmas was seen more as a season with a spiritual focus rather than a particular holiday or event. The Colonial Williamsburg history website has an excellent article discussing colonial Christmas traditions, which I found very useful when researching for my Pioneer Christmas novella, Defending Truth. Along with the spiritual focus, and various traditions that included decorating the churches with green boughs, Christmas included plenty of gaeity and frivolity, especially in the eastern, more populated parts of the colonies. Presbyterian missionary Philip Fithian shared in a 1774 diary entry:

When it grew to dark to dance. . . . we conversed til half after six; Nothing is now to be heard of in conversation, but the Balls, the Fox-hunts, the fine entertainments, and the good fellowship, which are to be exhibited at the approaching Christmas.

But Christmas was considered so strongly a Catholic or even Anglican tradition (Christmas does, after all, come from the term "Christ Mass") that many denominations either didn't think it worthy of notice (Peter Kalm notes that the Quakers ignored the holiday at first) or because of doctrinal differences, felt it ungodly to indulge in the frivolity of the holiday. David DeSimone mentions how after sharing eastern Virginia's lavish Christmas celebrations, Philip Fithian must have been disappointed while serving in the backcountry of Virginia the following year:

Christmas Morning--Not A Gun is heard--Not a Shout--No company or Cabal assembled--To Day is like other Days every Way calm & temperate-- People go about their daily Business with the same Readiness, & apply themselves to it with the same Industry.

Robbie Shade - Fireworks over Edinburgh (Wikipedia)

The Scots-Irish Presbyterians in particular frowned upon Christmas, but there's evidence that the New Year was well observed. The Scottish New Year, or Hogmanay, a word which means the last day of the year, roots from Norse, Gaelic, and French terms and traditions, some of which involve children going door-to-door to request small gifts and sweets (sound familiar?), and some which involve giving special gifts to the poor. There's also much made of the "first foot," or the first person to set foot inside your house on the new year, beginning at midnight, and the traditional giving of gifts to the household for good luck, and then the hospitality shared with guests

We really don't have any way of knowing how extensively Scottish settlers held to the old traditions, but in recent years Colonial Williamsburg has included Hogmanay in its New Year's celebrations. With such a rich history of Advent, Christmas, and New Year's combined, is it any wonder that the month of December often feels like one long party?

The American Long Rifle: The Gun That Made a Nation

Yes, the first American long rifle came from Amish country!

It remains one of my favorite opening scenes: the image of a young woman, armed with a rifle as long as she is tall, feeding an escaped enemy at gunpoint. This is the first chapter in my novella, Defending Truth, from the recently re-released A Pioneer Christmas Collection. My heroine is surprised while out hunting, providing for her younger siblings while her father is away fighting alongside Shelby and Sevier at Kings Mountain. The gun she carries is a type variously known as a Lancaster or Pennsylvania rifle, later called the Kentucky rifle for its popularity with Daniel Boone and other longhunters; but the rifle's place of probable origin is the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, area.

Various aspects of the long rifle

It's impossible to trace the origin of the rifle with complete accuracy (pun not intended!), but most historians agree it was developed by German and Swiss gunsmiths. The rifle's range and accuracy stood in sharp constrast to the more commonly used musket, which was the standard issue of the British army. The term "rifle" referred to the curved grooves carved into the inside of the barrel, designed to put a spin on the ball as it was shot from the gun. The smooth-bore barrels of muskets required a heavier ball, more powder, and while faster on load time and perfectly adequate for laying down a heavy volley of gunfire in battle, could not provide for any reasonable accuracy.

"I...can pick a squirrel off a branch at two hundred yards, easy," is the statement by Rob MacFarlane in my long historical, Loyalty's Cadence, and it was no idle boast. It's easy to see, then, how the rifle became the weapon of choice all along the American frontier. But can we really say the rifle was the gun that made America?

... lock, stock, and barrel. The entirety of a rifle.

Story has it that George Washington discovered the intimidation factor of colonial farmers armed with rifles rather than muskets and used it to his advantage against the British army. Patrick Ferguson--yes, of Kings Mountain fame--had developed a breech-loading rifle, but his higher-ups disdained to put it to proper use. But it's agreed that the colonial victory at Kings Mountain was due largely to the accuracy of riflemen under Shelby and Sevier. The American sharpshooter was definitely legendary. In fact, the British had employed the German Jaegercorps as counter-snipers to match the skills of the riflemen fighting for American independence.

Another article, The Kentucky and Pennsylvania Long Rifle, further discusses the role of the rifle in westward expansion--including a nice tie-in with the Great Wagon Road, which I wrote about a few months ago.

The American long rifle was a weapon not just of great accuracy and distance, though it took longer to load than a musket, but they were elegant and beautiful, often works of art in their own right. Any online search for the history of the Kentucky or Pennsylvania rifle, and a click on images, will unearth a wealth of photos of various historic examples. One of my favorites is this beauty, billed a cap-and-ball Kentucky rifle by gunsmith John Parks, Jr. The beautiful curly maple which comprises the stock is not uncommon among rifles of its type, but the detail of the inlay is nothing short of incredible.

Each rifle was a work of art (Courtesy of the NRA museum)

More can be found at the links I've provided. YouTube is also a good place to find videos of what it's like to load and fire these historical lovelies.