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Stephen Nissenbaum—a professor emeritus at UMass Amherst and author of the Pulitzer Priz nominated book, "The Battle for Christmas"—sits down with Ben Tumin of the History News Network to discuss the jolliest icon of Christmas: Santa Claus. The two discussed the debauchery that used to characterize Christmas, and how elite New Yorkers in the early 1800s invented Santa Claus to quiet growing social unrest. 

He says: 

Earlier, when peasants would go around demanding gifts from the rich in their villages—wassailing also occurred in the northern colonies—each side knew the other on a personal basis. But entering the 19th century, Christmas traditions underwent their biggest transformation in the last thousand years, at least as far as I can tell.

The change coincided with the rise of industrial capitalism. As the industrial revolution accelerated in the late 18th century, cities like New York exploded in growth. Accordingly, the tradition of wassailing became more impersonal, and the rich increasingly viewed groups of young people in the streets during the Christmas season as threatening mobs. In fact, by the late 1820s, in direct response to gang activity in New York during the Christmas season (think Gangs of New York crossed with wassailing), the city introduced a professional police force.

So that was one way of changing and controlling Christmas during this new era. Let’s call that the stick. Wealthy New Yorkers decided that the carrot to go along with the stick ought to be new Christmas traditions; traditions that moved Christmas from outdoors to indoors and changed the recipients of the wealthy’s largesse from poor peasants to members of their own families. That way, the ritual of social inversion would still exist, but the rich would no longer have to interact with the poor.

Continue reading the Q&A.