by Jeff Guinn
“America”: The New World
In 1621, the main Dutch settlement was Fort Orange in the northern part of what eventually became the state of New York. The people there welcomed Felix and me. Right away they told us they were sorry we’d just missed their celebration of Christmas, when they’d had great feasts and exchanged presents. A little boy named Hans added that on December 6, Saint Nicholas had brought marbles for him and a hoop for his sister.
“The good Saint Nicholas doesn’t forget the little children in America,” laughed Hans’s father. I smiled; obviously, parents in Fort Orange had brought Saint Nicholas’s spirit with them to America, and provided little gifts to their children when I hadn’t been around to do so. Well, come next Saint Nicholas Day, I promised myself the pleasure of giving these children their presents.
Felix was quite proud of himself for bringing us to Fort Orange. We decided to stay for a while. We didn’t trap animals for their fur, which was what most of the other men in the settlement did. Instead, Felix made some money with his carving, and I spent my days exploring the hills all around the settlement. The Indians were friendly to me once they understood I didn’t mean them any harm. It was a pleasurable, peaceful time. I missed Layla terribly, of course, as well as the rest of my longtime friends, but as soon as they learned Felix and I were in Fort Orange they sent letters on every ship that sailed there from European ports, and Felix and I wrote letters back.
Our letters to Europe were filled with happy news, all about how Saint Nicholas and America—at least the Dutch parts of America—were a perfect match. But the letters Layla, Francis, Arthur, and Attila sent us weren’t as pleasant.
Europe was still torn by war. When people weren’t fighting armies from other countries, they were fighting among themselves. Arthur in particular warned that England was bound to be split apart by civil war. King Charles was unhappy with his Parliament—the elected leaders who helped him govern the country—so he’d simply told the members of Parliament to go home while he ruled all by himself. The Puritans in England opposed Charles. “Sounds like Plymouth all over again to me,” Felix commented.
Layla’s advice was that Felix and I should stay in America and continue establishing our mission there. The rest of our group would continue on as best they could in Europe. I was pleased to have more time in America, and reluctant to be away from Layla for so long. But my wife and I apparently had thousands of more years to spend together, so Felix and I remained among the Dutch colonists.
These people were, mostly, a very friendly, happy group, and we enjoyed their company. But they weren’t perfect, either. As early as 1619, some Dutch colonists earned their livings by importing African slaves to the colonies, where they were often sold to British settlers.
It was about this same time that Dutch leaders met with some trusting chiefs of Indian tribes and bought from them the island called “Manhattan.” It was hardly a fair exchange. The colonists got a large island guarding a wide natural port, and the Indians got a few bags of cheap beads. But they’d never seen anything like these beads and considered them to be treasures. The Dutch were careful to have the Indians mark all sorts of legal documents. By European law, the sale was legal.
As soon as the island was theirs, the Dutch sent word back to Holland that more colonists should sail for America. In 1626 a whole fleet arrived, dozens of ships bringing people of every age and profession. These newcomers made up most of the population of a new village on the southern tip of Manhattan Island. The village was named “New Amsterdam” after the most important city in Holland.
Felix and I were watching on the shore as the ships arrived. The leading vessel was called Goede Vrowe, Dutch for “Good Housewife.” Like all ships of this time, Good Housewife had a carved wooden figurehead nailed to its front, since sailors believed these figureheads would protect them from storms. Usually they were the figures of mermaids or other sailors. But as Felix peered at Good Housewife, he suddenly blurted, “Nicholas! Look at that figurehead!”
“It looks rather familiar,” I replied. “The face, and the robes that are painted such a bright shade of red. I wonder who it’s supposed to be?”
“It’s you!” Felix shouted. “These settlers carved a figurehead of Saint Nicholas to safely lead them to the New World! It’s a sign, Nicholas, don’t you see? Christmas has arrived in America, and it’s never, ever going to leave!”
But Christmas had to leave England for a while. Even as the Dutch settlers built a statue of Saint Nicholas in their village of New Amsterdam, the Puritans in Britain began an armed uprising against King Charles I. Led by Oliver Cromwell, they eventually captured Charles and executed him. Just like Saints in Plymouth, those Puritans didn’t approve of celebrating Christmas with feasts and gifts. In 1645 they ordered everyone in England to treat Christmas like an ordinary day, and said anyone who tried to celebrate the holiday would be punished.
“People all over England are very unhappy with this law,” Arthur wrote. “There have been riots in some cities. Canterbury was the worst. Quite a few people were hurt in the protest there. About ten thousand protestors signed a proclamation that they’d have their holiday back even if it meant they had to have a king again, too. I’ve decided to close down the London toy factory for a while, since these Puritans don’t like toys, either. But don’t worry; we’re just biding our time. Christmas will return to England.”
And it did. In 1660, after more civil war, England had a new king, Charles II. Soon afterward, Christmas was restored.
But as Arthur and Layla both wrote, the holiday there wasn’t quite the same. Afraid that the Puritans might come back to power, lots of English families stopped openly celebrating December 25, preferring quiet family dinners to singing carols in the streets. Owners of many British companies had taken advantage of the Puritan law to require their employees to work on Christmas Day. Even after King Charles II took the throne, these owners continued to insist that Christmas be an ordinary working day.
“I think we should go back to England for a while,” I told Felix. “Something has to be done to make Christmas there what it used to be. Let’s find a few special people among these Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam and teach them the ways of gift-making and gift-giving. Then we can return to Europe and rejoin our friends.”
But this plan had to be postponed. England and Holland got into a war, one that raged in Europe and affected their colonies in America. England got the better of it. In 1664, the Dutch colonies of Fort Orange and New Amsterdam had to be surrendered to England. The English renamed both villages. Fort Orange was called Albany and New Amsterdam became New York. Fortunately, the English settlers who arrived along with these new names weren’t stern Puritans. They not only allowed the Dutch colonists to continue celebrating Christmas with gifts and feasts, they enjoyed joining in the fun. Holland and England continued their war in Europe, which meant Felix and I couldn’t safely take a ship back to London, and fighting still occasionally broke out in America between colonists from those two countries. In 1673, the Dutch even retook New York for a little while, but in 1674 the English won it back for good.
New York grew from a village into a city, one of the three largest in America. The other two were Boston to the north and Philadelphia to the south. Colonists flocked to the New World. The hope of religious freedom and lots of green, fertile land was irresistible to people tired of crowded, war-torn Europe.
Late in the 1600s, two new, wonderful names became part of the New World’s vocabulary. In 1697, a minister in Boston named Cotton Mather described all New World settlers as “Americans.” And, about the same time, English settlers arriving in New York and Albany and other villages established earlier by Dutch colonists found themselves gladly swept up in the Christmas celebrations that had become traditions there. Because most of these settlers had been born after the Puritans banned Christmas in England, they didn’t know any legends about a Christmas gift-giver. Their children were thrilled to learn they migh
t have surprise gifts when they woke up on Christmas morning, and begged the Dutch children to tell them all about it.
Since the British now ruled what had been Dutch colonies, English became the official language there and the Dutch had to learn to speak it. This wasn’t easy. They had trouble pronouncing certain words in the new language. So when they earnestly began to tell the Christmas stories to their newly arrived English neighbors, they couldn’t quite say “Saint Nicholas” clearly. What the English listeners heard was “Sintnicklus” and walked away thinking the gift-giver was “Sinta Klass,” which they soon pronounced in a more traditional English way.
For the first time in America, some children began believing that their Christmas presents were delivered by “Santa Claus.”
“Oh, really?” General Washington asked again, now leaning so far forward it appeared he might fall out of the chair onto his face. “They’ll spend all Christmas night singing, and drinking, too?”
EIGHTEEN
Reunion in America
A knock on the door of our log cabin woke Felix and me up from a sound sleep. It was a cool spring night in the thriving village of New York. We’d spent most of the day making toys and had gone to bed feeling very tired.
“I hope it’s not another fire,” Felix muttered. There had been several blazes in the past months. As New York grew, so did the number of careless people living in it who didn’t put out their fires properly before turning in for the night.
Still half-asleep, I stumbled to the door and opened it. Layla rushed in and was hugging me before I realized it. Thrilled to be with my wife again, I hugged Layla back enthusiastically while Felix jumped up to welcome Willie Skokan and Leonardo da Vinci, who came into the cabin behind her.
“Whatever are you doing here?” I asked. “We’re happy to see you, of course, but I thought the plan was for Felix and me to train some new helpers here in America and then rejoin you in Europe.”
“You weren’t the only one eager to see America,” Layla replied briskly, taking off her scarf and not looking a bit older, even though I hadn’t seen her for eighty years. “Francis, Attila, and Dorothea have everything in Europe under control, and I’m sad to say that Arthur needs very little help right now in England, since they’re still not openly celebrating Christmas there. We decided that it’s time to spend the holiday in this country, and we didn’t want you and Felix to have all the fun of doing it.”
“A new land means a need for new toys,” Leonardo added. “Willie Skokan and I want new challenges.”
“It would be challenging to fix up these walls a little bit,” Willie muttered, feeling along the edges of the logs with his callused fingertips. “Who built this cabin, anyway? There are gaps between the logs.”
“Thank you for the compliment, Willie,” Felix laughed as he bustled about getting drinks and food for everyone. “Santa and I have been busy learning about this country and making gifts for the many children who are growing up here. We haven’t had time for little things like making our own home very comfortable.”
“What did you call my husband?” Layla asked, tilting her head to the side as she sometimes did when she heard something that surprised her.
“Santa,” Felix answered. “We’ve told you in our letters about the Sinta Klass mispronunciation, and how some children around New York expect Santa Claus to bring their presents. It’s a good nickname for Nicholas, don’t you think?”
“Santa,” Layla repeated thoughtfully. “Yes, it really suits him. I suppose we all ought to call him that from now on.”
The five of us spent the rest of the hours before dawn chatting excitedly, catching up on each other’s news and making plans for further adventures in America. Felix and I astonished Layla, Leonardo, and Willie Skokan by serving them hot cocoa, a new drink that had become very popular in America but wasn’t yet common in Europe. They smacked their lips, enjoying the chocolate taste. When we also served fresh bread with homemade blackberry jam, Leonardo sighed with pleasure.
“Does everyone in America eat so well?” he asked. “When Nicholas—excuse me, when Santa—gives his gifts all over the colonies, do children leave him delicious snacks as they’ve started to do in Europe?”
“Actually, we haven’t had much chance to find out,” I admitted. “Because the English now control the colonies along the coast, those unhappy Puritan traditions still are common almost everywhere. Except for New York and Albany and other areas where Dutch Christmas celebrations took hold, December twenty-fifth is almost as poorly celebrated in America as it is in England.”
“We think that’s just because most of the American colonists haven’t heard about Santa Claus yet,” Felix chimed in. “Give us a century or two to recruit the right helpers, and every American will look forward to December twenty-fifth. And with three of you here to help us now, it can happen that much sooner!”
The five of us had good intentions, but other events prevented us from accomplishing much in the next few decades.
The American colonies had grown, both in territory and population. By 1700 there were 275,000 settlers. New York had five thousand residents; six thousand people lived in Philadelphia, and seven thousand in Boston. In the next few years, the first American newspapers were published. Farther to the west and south, French-Canadian trappers founded New Orleans and Spanish missionaries built San Antonio. All over the American continent, men and women with ambition and energy wanted to create their own great nations.
But the nations where they had come from weren’t eager for these new Americans to become too independent. England, in particular, which had by far the most colonists, also had the strongest interest in keeping them under control. In the 1740s the first great cotton mills were built in England, but American colonists were forbidden to build their own mills. This meant they would have to buy their cotton cloth from England. Next, the English government told its American colonists that they couldn’t settle anywhere west of the Allegheny Mountains, because if settlements were too far inland it would be hard for British soldiers to be stationed there.
Naturally, the colonists felt resentful. They became even angrier when, in 1754, England and France became embroiled in a war over boundaries between each other’s American colonies. While the French government cleverly recruited Indians to fight on their side, the English ordered their colonists to enlist and go to war. A lot of them didn’t want to fight and were forced into battle. During this nine-year war, a young Virginian named George Washington was made an officer for the English. In fact, he fought in the very first battle of what became known as the French and Indian War.
As usual, we found our powers weakened by being near the fighting. Leonardo and Willie Skokan spent most of their time making gifts, while Felix, Layla, and I began to travel around in hopes of meeting people who could become new helpers. And, of course, all five of us enjoyed those special nights when we delivered our gifts; December 6 in a few communities, December 25 in others, and, for a few years, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in some Dutch settlements. It so happened that, for whatever reasons, their children hoped for gifts on those two new dates, and, since it made them happy, we were pleased to oblige. After only a hundred years or so, though, almost all children in America wanted their stockings filled when they woke up on Christmas morning.
We recruited our first American helper in 1727. Sarah Kemble Knight was a schoolteacher who wrote the first book about traveling around the country. It was called A Private Journal of a Journey from Boston to New York in the Year 1704. That doesn’t sound like much of a trip now, but in those days it was a journey that took the better part of two weeks, and required stagecoaches and canoes. Sarah filled her book with comments about the towns she passed through, and the customs of the people who lived in them. Layla happened to meet Sarah in New York in 1726. Over several weeks she explained our mission, and a year later Sarah left her old life behind and joined us. She was wonderfully helpful. It was a great advantage to have someone
with us who knew so much about the country and its people.
Sarah Kemble Knight
In 1768 we added another member to our group, though not as a full member who knew all our secrets. Daniel Boone was the first great explorer who had been born to settlers in the colonies. Daniel—he and everyone else really pronounced his name “Dan‘l,” so that’s what I’ll call him for the rest of this story—had a restless spirit that reminded me very much of Francis, although Francis was well educated and Dan’l could just read and write simple sentences.
Felix ended up traveling with Dan‘l for several years. In 1769 they began to explore the mountain country west of what would be known as North Carolina, and in March 1775, Dan’l led the first settlers along the instantly famous “Wilderness Road” that curved through mountain passes to the rich grasslands of Kentucky. Felix left him there to return to us in New York. When Felix came back, he reported that there seemed no end to how far the American continent stretched toward the western horizon. Someday, Felix predicted, we would need many more helpers to deliver hundreds of thousands of gifts to American children.
“I’ve asked Dan’l to keep in touch with us so we’ll know where new settlements are when we’ve got enough helpers to deliver presents there,” Felix said excitedly. “As soon as this current war business is over with, we can help all Americans learn how to celebrate Christmas properly!”
But what Felix called “this current business” wasn’t going to be over as soon as we wished.
For several years, it had been obvious that the American colonists wanted to break away from English rule. In 1774, the group calling itself the First Continental Congress met in Philadelphia. This group, made up of elected representatives from each colony, voted for Americans to stop buying all goods shipped to their country from England. The English weren’t pleased. They sent more soldiers to America and, in April 1775, tried to seize a warehouse full of ammunition in Concord, a village in Massachusetts. A silversmith named Paul Revere and several others made frantic, nighttime horseback rides to warn people living in and around Concord that the British were coming. On April 19, 1775, the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.