Stars, Lovefeasts, and The Celebration of the Season

Moravian Christmas in the South, Nancy Smith Thomas

This is a beautiful coffee-table sized book about people of the Moravian faith who settled in Salem (now Winston-Salem), North Carolina, and their Christmas customs. The Moravian sect was founded in Prague by Jan Hus, and they originally emigrated from Europe to Pennsylvania, where they founded three towns, including Bethlehem, now the center of the Moravian community in the United States. The Moravians have a very distinct way of observing the Christmas season, centered of course on the birth of Christ, and including a celebration called a "lovefeast" and a decoration of a multipointed "Moravian star." However, unlike some other Protestant sects, which rejected Christmas because of the drunken revelry that came with it, Moravian society has embraced much of the secular side of Christmas that does not "go overboard," including Santa Claus, Christmas trees, caroling, etc.

So one of the treats of this book is that not only does it chronicle how Moravians have celebrated Christmas over the years, with excerpts from pioneer journals and Native American narratives, but it's also a pocket history of Christmas as it developed in the United States (Santa Claus spreading from the Dutch tales of St. Nicholas and reaching Pennsylvania as "Bellsnickle" or "Pelznichol," the Christmas tree coming from German immigrants and then given popularity by Prince Albert, etc.). The volume is illustrated liberally with drawings, artwork, exhibitions in New Salem, North Carolina, photographs, paintings, handbills, and documentation of historic Christmas celebrations.

As a publication of the Old Salem museum in North Carolina, this is a marvelously informative and very "kringly" overview of a specific society's Christmas customs.