New Paltz Historical Society - Rennie Scott Childress

“Cross-Dressing, Misrule, and Mayhem: Christmas Before Santa in Colonial America"

Reynolds Scott-Childress

Just in time for the Holiday Season, The New Paltz Historical Society welcomes Reynolds Scott-Childress for an enlightening presentation on Colonial Christmas celebrations, and how they evolved into the traditions we know now. The title of his talk, “Cross-Dressing, Misrule, and Mayhem: Christmas Before Santa in Colonial America," will paint a different picture of how the season was celebrated in those days of yore.

Our Puritan forebears did not like Christmas celebrations. They feared that the anarchic drinking and lewd celebrations of the season by agricultural laborers, craft workers, and servants would spoil their dreams of perfecting the “City on a Hill.” This talk will explore the topsy-turvy Christmas practices of cross-dressing, public fornication, and particularly wassailing—songs through which the revelers presented their wealthy neighbors a yuletide choice: provide the best wine of their cellars, the whitest bread of their kitchens, the finest clothes of their closets for the merrymakers or face the consequences of smashed windows, stolen livestock, burned barns. The talk will also explore how these practices evolved in the early 1800s into the domestic celebration of Christmas we know now.

Our Guest Presenter: Reynolds Scott-Childress teaches history at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He has explored the meaning of Christmas through both historical research and over fifty years of participant observation.

Join us on Wednesday, December 4, 2019

at 7:00 pm

New Paltz Community Center

3 Veterans Drive,

New Paltz, NY

Refreshments will be served.

This event is free and open to the public.

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