Welcome To The Festive Frontier: Here’s What A Wild West Christmas Would’ve Been Like
Have you ever considered cutting out the turkey in your Christmas dinner and instead opting for grizzly bear? Or maybe refusing to buy presents, electing to personally make your loved ones’ gifts? If you have, that’d make you a true pioneer of the Wild West. Christmastime was a different affair throughout the American frontier, even if some of its traditions have survived to the present. So let’s take a look at how cowboys and cowgirls celebrated the holidays in the Old West.
1. Deck the Halls
It won’t come as a surprise to learn that the Old West wasn’t decorated for Christmas in quite the same manner as we see today. It’s not like you could just visit a store to pick up some tinsel and baubles, after all. But when the Christmas song “Deck the Halls” became popular out west, people realized they could use “boughs of holly” to adorn their homes.
Holly and berries and pinecones, oh my!
“Deck the Halls” is a translation of an old song from Wales, supposedly dating back to the 16th century. And folk in the Old West took inspiration from the tune, deciding to dress up their abodes with plants and fruits. They used things like holly, berries, and pinecones – all things that we’d recognize as Christmas decorations today.
2. A visit from Santa
Nobody represents a contemporary Christmas better than Santa Claus. And as it happens, he was an important fellow for people in the Old West, too. This is because German and English folk brought their tales of old Saint Nick with them to the frontier where they settled. Back then he was also known as the bringer of gifts.
A right jolly old elf
Across the Old West, grown-ups and kids were aware of Santa Claus, and many of the legends surrounding the jolly man were quite similar to what we hear today. He may have even looked the same, as the contemporary image of Santa that we’d recognize nowadays emerged in the 19th century.
