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2016 Home For the Holidays
LINCOLN DAILY NEWS November 23, 2016 Page 39
above the crowd . . . to shield them from the pressure.”
It was on New Year’s Day 1863 after several hours
of shaking hands in which Lincoln slipped upstairs
to his office to sign the Emancipation Proclamation.
Perhaps equally significant: the 1865 New Year’s
White House reception witnessed the first time Black
Americans were allowed to attend any social event in
the White House.
President Lincoln did take the holiday time as an
opportunity to recognize the wounded troops. On
several Christmas days through the war, President
and Mrs. Lincoln devoted afternoons to visiting
Washington DC hospitals to deliver food, care for the
wounded, and to lift the morale of the despondent sick
and wounded soldiers who experienced little if any
joy, and no sympathetic bedside visits.
Tad accompanied his parents on at least one occasion.
Lincoln was so moved by the experience that once
back at the White House, he arranged to have
Christmas gifts, including books and clothes, sent to
the soldiers in hospitals with the signature, “From Tad
Lincoln.”
As with soldiers stuck in the hospitals, young men
in uniform away at camp shared an equally gloomy
outlook. With the holidays, the soldiers felt nostalgic
for what they were missing at home, as many were
apart from family at Christmas for the very first time.
One Union private wrote home, “My health is good
with the exception of homesickness, a disease, I am
thinking will never be cured.” Soldier Henry Hawes
wrote home in 1862 to family in Logan County,
Illinois, that Christmas “was a lonesome day.”
Families across the miles also felt the painful parting
from their sons, but comprehended the duty to their
country which precluded any thoughts of holiday
reunion. From Atlanta, Illinois, the Hawes family
wrote to Henry at war, “I know it is all well enough
for some to say it is best for you not to come home but
I cannot say that I think it is because I think it would
be very pleasant to have you to take Christmas with us
but I do not want you to do any thing that your better
judgment tells you not.”
The cartoonist Thomas Nast provided what might
be one of the war’s biggest morale boosters. Nast
would solidify his career as a newspaper cartoon
illustrator attacking government corruption. He also
gave us the elephant as the Republican Party symbol
and popularized the donkey for the Democratic Party.
But his certain image of a holiday staple might be his
biggest contribution.
Nast witnessed the low morale of boys many miles
away from loved ones in the holidays during the war,
and decided to use his pen to lift spirits in the yuletide
season. Gift giving inspired by the famed St. Nicholas
was already en vogue and part of the Christmas
tradition.
Nast took the then little-known poem by Clement
Moore, “AVisit from St. Nicholas” and gave the
fabled St. Nicholas a new look. First depicting Santa
Claus in a suit of stars and stripes handing presents to
children and grateful soldiers, Nast then drew for the
January 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly the image of
Santa that we recognize, complete with the red suit,
full white beard, jolly face, round belly, with a bag on
his back. It caught on.
Nast hoped with his image of Santa Claus that despite
the lack of cause to celebrate, Americans might still
find something in the spirit of the season to rejoice.
Testament to the power of hope and joy in dark times,
it is remarkable that one of the greatest and most
enduring symbols of holiday cheer was produced in
the middle of one of the unhappy times in our nation’s
history.
Ron J. Keller is associate professor of history and
political science at Lincoln College, and managing
director of the Abraham Lincoln Center for Character
Development, which is housed at the Lincoln Heritage
Museum.