Etiquette, Oranges and Winter Holidays

“The stocking in which the Christmas treasures of our small boys and little girls are placed is capacious enough to satisfy any reasonable child, while it is not so large as to overtax the pockets or energies of parents. Could the same sort of stocking be imported and acclimated in New England and the West, Christmas trees would no longer have any excuse for being, and the stocking would be universally accepted as precisely the thing needed to fill every household with juvenile happiness on Christmas morning.” Life Magaxine, 1883

“In the nineteenth century, poor children dreamed all the year round of getting the precious, scented present of an orange for Christmas. Most of them did not know what an orange tasted like, or even if they would dare eat that golden, almost magical fruit.” - www.foodtimeline.org 

Why give oranges at Christmas?

Food historians trace the practice of proferring fresh fruit gifts for major celebrations to ancient times. These exquisite, perishable objects were expensive and reflected the giver's wealth and status. Indeed, before the age of speedy transportation and reliable refrigeration, fresh citrus fruit was out of reach of the average person. As time progressed, fresh fruit out of season (including oranges in Northern Europe and/or North America) was possible, but still rare. This made these items perfect Christmas gifts. Today, when oranges are inexpensive and readily available throughout the year, this little history tidbit is overlooked. A child today who encounters an orange at the toe of his Christmas stocking is unlikely to appreciate the message unless someone takes the time to share the history.

Special utensils and holders for eating and serving oranges were a sign of wealth in the Victorian era... “In these days of modern refrigeration and air-shipped produce, we tend to take perishable items for granted. But oranges and other citrus fruits were once a precious luxury in Europe and North America, enjoyed for only a brief period each year. Bright, sunny, and bursting with fragrant juice, oranges, clementines, mandarins, and other citrus made welcome Christmas gifts, especially in the midst of cold winter.” – www.spruceeats.com

"Strange and exotic fruits had begun to reach Britain...through trade with southern Europe where oranges, lemons and pomegranates were cultivated. The original home of the citrus fruits lay in northern India. They had been known to the Romans under the name of "Median apples', having apparently arrived from Persia; and their juice had been used as a medicine, and occasionally also to sharpen the tang of vinegar...The first Englishmen to enjoy oranges, lemons and 'Adams apples'... were probably crusaders who wintered with Richard Coure-de-Lion in the fruit groves around Jaffa in 1191-2. About a hundred years later citrus fruits had begun to arrive in England itself...

Also on the spice ships from southern Europe came great raisins, 'raisins of Corinth' or currants...prunes, figs and dates. All were consumed in vast quantities by the well-to-do, for the sweetness of dried fruits was greately appreciated while sugar was still rare and expensive. Poorer people ate them principally in festive pottages and pies during the twelve days of Christmas, but the rich enjoyed them at other times , too." — From “Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to the 19th Century,“ C. Anne Wilson [Academy Chicago:Chicago IL] 1991 (p. 332-4)

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia©️ Etiquette Encyclopedia 

Gilded Age NYC‘s New Year’s Customs

“The politicians will have all their constituents down on them like a swarm of locusts and there is no avoiding it. No etiquette will answer to repulse them, for hunger is at their back, and their charge is the ravenous rush of the famishing wolf.”— New Year's, 1871 

Change of New Year's Day Customs in New York of 1871 

Part 3
The General Crows

Meantime the canaille will hunt in couples and crowds, as usual, and prey on the great part of our people who foolishly adhere to the custom of furnishing forth immense tables with dainty commissary stores in quantity sufficient to satisfy a battalion of hungry troopers. Every livery-stable carriage in the City was engaged two weeks ago, and the “roughs” especially have taken care to form their little parties and engage their conveyances in time. The politicians will have all their constituents down on them like a swarm of locusts and there is no advoiding it. No etiquette will answer to repulse them, for hunger is at their back, and their charge is the ravenous rush of the famishing wolf.

Temperance Movements

Public prejudice has done a great deal toward reforming custom this year, as far as wine and whisky drinking at New-Year’s tables goes. Many will abandon the flowing bowl for this one time, in disgust with the effects of “cheering spirits” on the late callers: but the great mass of those who receive calls will cling to their rum as of yore. The result of course, will be a maudlin aspect of affairs when the gas-lights begin to illuminate the depleted decanters and the remains of the New-Year’s feasts. The retail liquor trade for holiday uses is reported as fully equal to that of any previous year, which is a good showing, we take it, for King Alcohol, after all the boasts of his Temperance toes.

New fashions for the 1870s —On New Year’s Eve the New York Times in 1871 publicized the outcome of “cheering spirits” and the public prejudice toward such behavior with the result of how rum can be disruptive with no conscience of etiquette politeness. 

Part 4
Reception of Callers by the Sheriff

The Mayor will not receive New-Year’s Day officially. Sheriff Brennan will take possession of his Department on Monday morning, and he and County Clerk Loew will receive jointly in the Sheriff’s office, between the hours of 11:00 am and 1:00 pm on Monday.

Suspension of Public Business

The Custom-house will be closed on Monday, except between The Sub-Treasury will be closed during the entire day, and the Gold and Stock Exchanges adjourned over yesterday until Tuesday morning. The various public offices will also be closed to-morrow, together with the National and State Courts.

New Year at Newark

Last night the Methodists of Newark, according to custom, held watch meetings to usher the old year out and the new year in. This morning the chimes at St. John’s Church will be rung, and at many of the churches special services will be held and sermons preached appropriate to the occasion. Monday will be observed as a legal holiday, and the banks, as well as most of the other places of business, will be closed. The Mayor and Senator Taylor will receive calls at the City Hall, and most of the City Fathers will keep open house for their constituents. Rev. Alfred Taylor of New-York, will make an address at the New Year’s celebration of the Sabbath-schools connected with the First Reformed Church, Market Street Newark, to-day.

Observed at Brooklyn

The following chimes were sung at St. Ann’s Church on the Heights of Brooklyn, about midnight, as greeting to the New Year:

• Ringing the Changes on Eight Bells 
• Old Dog Tray 
• Blue Bells of Scotland 
• Yankee Doodle 
• Life Let Us Cherish 
• Once in Royal David’s City 
• A Happy New Year to Thee 
• Watchman, What of the Night 
• The Christmas Tree From Greenland’s Icy Mountains 
• Hosannah to King David’s Son 
• Carol Christians 
• Home Sweet Home 

To-morrow the city dignitaries of Brooklyn, including the Alderman, Supervisors and Park Commissioners, will celebrate New-Year’s Day by a reunion at the District-Attorney’s office.

Part 5
Trinity Chimes

The chimes at Trinity Church did not attract a very large crowd last night. There seems to be a feeling among Americans that it is best to forget the past, live in the present, and look to the future. As the bells rang out the old year, there were but few to listen to the artistic music. The clear star-lit night made the melody very entrancing to a reflective mind, and as the old year, whose dying song, which seemed to blend harmoniously with the joyous anthems of the new, became a thing of the past, one could fancy that the firmament participated in high hopes of the future and assumed a more glorious aspect.


This might be the mere effects of imagination, in the thought that such an eventful year as 1870, with its holocaust of slain and its wonderful changes in the map of Europe, was dying out in this peaceful land to the music of merrily-peeling bells, while on the bloody-dyed fields of France 1871 may be welcome with the deadly boom of cannon, belching death and destruction.

The Decline of Brooklyn

On the whole, however, it is apparent that New-Year’s Day is fast losing its jolly characteristics and becoming a dreary, formal period of platitude and palaver, instead of a day of innocent mirth, merriment and congratulation, as in the olden time. As an institution the New-Year is slipping away from us fast. Even today the olden customs are so modified as to be scarcely recognizable. And What remains is devoid of spirit – a mere meaningless bacchanalian orgie on the one extreme, or a formal senseless dropping of cards in baskets on the other. It is the New-Year’s Day of the future that we see not the New Year’s Day of the past. — From New York Times January 1, 1871

Note — In 1871 New Year Day fell on a Sunday, thus the public offices and officials observed the holiday on Monday.

                                         

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Gilded Age New Year's Day Etiquette

New Year's Celebrations in New York, 1871 — "No calls after 9pm will be permissible, according to the new etiquette of the day. From all that can be learned, therefore, it appears that in “high circles” the celebration is to be about the dullest and dreariest formality that could be conceived." 

The Celebration this Year 

In New-York

Part 1— The Customs of the Day

The celebration will not prove less general this year as far New-York is concerned, but there will be noted considerable change in the customs of the day. From all that can be gathered from Brown and other wise men of the inner social circle, it appears that there will be a dull tone respectability pervading the observances. It will not be the rollicking carnival of the olden time, when everybody, however genteel, felt warranted in coming down from his stilts and engaging with impunity in a wild revelry that would be tolerated on no other day. 

A remarkable falling off in enthusiasm has marked New-Year’s Day celebrations for the past five years. But before that, even, croaking prophets had begun to presage the decline of the festival; though; notwithstanding, “calling” continued general, among high and low, and the streets afforded the usual midnight scenes and sounds of bacchanalian uproar. There was a change in custom, however, for all the outward signs remained as strong as ever.

What Brown Says

Many of our first families, according to Brown, are going further still. Forestalling the fashion of the future, they entirely abandon the customs of their fathers. They close their doors against all comers, of whatever quality, affording not even the poor cheer of a social glass. The reception of cards, not of persons, will be encouraged by these ultra-exclusive fashionables. 

For such as do call in high circles, Brown says that full evening dress will be necessary: claw-hammer coat, black necktie and the display of shirt bosom equal to one-third the square inches of the caller’s surface. No calls after 9pm will be permissible, according to the new etiquette of the day. From all that can be learned, therefore, it appears that in “high circles” the celebration is to be about the dullest and dreariest formality that could be conceived. But it must not be supposed that the first “society” is in the majority. Although it sets the fashion for all, that fashion has a year or so to run before its general adoption.

The Card-Droppers

The cards of the callers are being gotten up by the Broadway engravers in various unique styles, comic effects predomination in the designs, though a few attempts at poetical graces in delicacy of workmanship and suggestiveness of allegory are to be remarked. The orders for such cards have been filled by the million. There never was such a demand as that which prevailed last week among the trade in bristol board. This is accounted for by those best acquainted with the rules of social etiquette, by cards, instead of calling and gorging and guzzling in proof of good feeling for the at whose expense you gorge and guzzle. A very sensible reform, truly – at least so think the engravers.

A Victorian calling card salver —The New York Times in 1871 has published a new reform of social etiquette to send an invitation on a card instead of calling (per “Brown” in the above article). One would wonder how the unique styles would be used, according to the station in society. But then again the importance of receiving one would show the request of your presence.

Part 2 — Society Alarmed

The wealthy classes – those among them, at least who delight in the lacteal pedigree, crème de la crème – had begun to draw pertly within their shells. Merchants and manufacturers no longer set immense tables, and threw open their doors for the admission of their workmen, and often a general rabble composed of fire boys and corner loafers. Their wives and daughters began to doubt the propriety of making their usual concessions to the rude customs of the days culture was at work lopping of the gnarled branches of the social tree. Mrs. Grundy commanded exclusiveness in New Year’s receptions fashion indorsed Mrs. Grundy. So high society closed its doors to the world in general and limited its hospitalities to a select set.

Change of Customs

This was the first step of a reform that is gradually undermining customs of the New Year, working its changes almost imperceptibly, yet so surely that in five years more the custom of calling and gorging may have fallen back into misty tradition of the manners of an olden time. Today’s celebration will be pretty general – there can be no doubt of that; but there are significant changes of custom to be noted.

There will be fewer tables set than ever before, among the society leaders; there will be less display of culinary temptations in the parlors of the parvenus. It is the style of thing, this time, to fill your house with young women in superb toilets, and offer your guest a simple glass of wine; and in no case must this guest be a partial stranger, nor must strangers be introduced on this carnival time, no matter what their social standing. 

High society has taken the alarm, and fearing she has been too free in the past, does not mean to let her feelings carry her away again; hence the tighter drawing of the lines on this day, which once was marked by an utter abandonment of the rules of social exclusiveness. — From New York Times January 1, 1871

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia