A Treasury of African American Christmas Stories
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When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy.
And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshiped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts: gold and medicine and perfume.
And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to England, they departed into their own country another way.
Save one, and he was black. And his own country was the country where he was; so the black Wise Man lingered by the cradle and the new-born babe.
The perfume of his gift rose and filled the house until through it and afar came the dim form of years and multitudes. And the child, seeing the multitudes, opened his mouth and taught them, saying:
Blessed are poor folks for they shall go to heaven.
Blessed are sad folks for someone will bring them joy.
Blessed are they that submit to hurts for they shall sometime own the world.
Blessed are they that truly want to do right for they shall get their wish.
Blessed are those who do not seek revenge for vengeance will not seek them.
Blessed are the pure for they shall see God.
Blessed are those who will not fight for they are God’s children.
Blessed are those whom people like to injure for they shall sometime be happy.
Blessed are you, Black Folk, when men make fun of you and mob you and lie about you.
Never mind and be glad for your day will surely come.
Always the world has ridiculed its better souls.
A CAROL OF COLOR
Mary Jenness
In the introduction to “A Carol of Color,” Mary Jenness explained that the poem was written from the point of view of people of color, or “as the brown races see it.” Pointing to the Christian tradition made familiar by Ben Hur, she emphasized “that the three wise men came from Egypt, India, and Greece; thus typifying the worship of the Christ-child by the black, brown and white races.” Published in the magazine Opportunity, in the 1920s, during the Harlem Renaissance, “A Carol of Color” asserts that Jesus Christ was black. It was during that time that some African Americans began to challenge the notion and image of a white Christ. Using biblical scripture, which included, among other things, physical descriptions of Christ, the argument was made that Christ was black.
In the early 1930s, Opportunity described Mary Jenness as an “influential poet of the Harlem Renaissance.” Among her most celebrated poems were “The Negro Laughs Back” and “Secret.” Although we know little about Jenness, her “Carol of Color” reflects the new African American ideology that emerged in the 1920s and explains black history, religion, and color in a positive vein.
A Carol of Color
I may not sleep in Bethlehem,
Your inns would turn me back—
Because,” said Balthazar, unsmiling,
“My skin is black.”
“I may not eat in Bethlehem,
Your inns would frown me down,
Because,” said Melchior, uncomplaining,
“My skin is brown.”
“Alone I ride to Bethlehem,
Alone I there alight,
Because,” cried Gaspar, all unheeding,
“My skin is white.”
Not one, nor two, but three they came,
To kneel at Bethlehem,
And there a brown-faced Christ-child, laughing,
Welcomed them.
THE CHRISTMAS REUNION DOWN AT MARTINSVILLE
Augustus M. Hodges
In “The Christmas Reunion Down at Martinsville,” Augustus Hodges presents an African American version of a Christmas poem.
Hodges was a prominent New York writer, well known to readers of the major black newspapers, magazines, and journals of his time. In The Afro-American Press, and Its Editors (1891), I. Garland Penn stated, “He has few superiors in the journalistic field.” Hodges’s extensive news columns appeared regularly in black newspapers under his pen name “B. Square,” and his poems, jokes, and short stories were widely represented in the leading black and white press of the time. A graduate of the Hampton Normal and Industrial Institute, Hodges distinguished himself as a politician, journalist, and fiction writer.
In 1876, Augustus Hodges was elected to the Virginia House of Delegates, where he served one term. During the 1890s, Hodges was a candidate for the position of US minister to Haiti, receiving the endorsement of more than five hundred leading Republicans. Failing to receive the appointment, Hodges continued to write and publish his fiction, and he served as a columnist for several black and white newspapers and periodicals, including the Indianapolis Freeman and Baltimore Afro-American. In 1890, he established the Brooklyn Sentinel, which for three years was considered one of the leading African American newspapers in New York State.
In 1894, Hodges and several other black literary figures formed a stock company known as the Augustus M. Hodges Literary Syndicate to publish black novels and short stories in what he described, in the Indianapolis Freeman, as “cheap paper-cover book form.” From 1894 to 1905, the Freeman purchased many of his stories through this organization.
Hodges’s stories reflect the full spectrum of black life and culture, and incorporate his belief that “an author must use the words of others in his song or story, and more especially if the said song or story is a true one.” Thus, his poems and stories, such as “The Christmas Reunion Down at Martinsville” (1894), “The Blue and the Gray” (1900), “Three Men and a Woman” (1902–1903),” and “The Prodigal Daughter” (1904), mirror the beliefs, values, speech, habits, and traditions of African Americans. Hodges prided himself on the realism reflected in his writings. His fascination and respect for the rich black vernacular expressions is evident in all of his writings. In 1897, in a preface to “ ’Twas Not to Be! Or Cupid’s Battle for Miscegenation,” he stated that one of the motives that prompted him to write was fame, and that if he reached his goal, it would be “by facts, not fiction; by truth, not imagination.” Moreover, repeating Hodges’s claim, one Freeman editor asserted, “All of his novels are founded upon facts. The leading characters are real and their doings real. Their names and locations have, however, been changed; their doings painted with fiction and the links of the events connected with the romantic imagination of the author, guided by twenty odd years of careful study of the doings of both races.”
“The Christmas Reunion Down at Martinsville” is set in Kentucky, around 1893. As three generations of a family gather to celebrate Christmas, Uncle Joe Moore, the narrator and patriarch, reminisces about how he and Aunt Sallie met some forty years earlier. Hodges presents the characters Uncle Joe and Sal as bound by the restrictions of slavery, particularly as it affected patterns of courtship and marriage. He demonstrates the types of risks enslaved men and women took to be together. Hodges also develops certain white characters, representatives primarily of the slaveholding class. The portrayal of Tom Scott, a patroller, suggests the surveillance and control exerted to police the movement of slaves to prevent their running away, the licentiousness of white men who showed no respect for the virtue of black women, and the problems black men encountered when they attempted to defend themselves or their women.
Hodges’s white characters run the gamut from patroller and slave trader to preacher and the president of the United States. The first two are the embodiment of evil, and the last two are redeemed by their humanitarian acts. For a small price, the preacher willingly married slaves, and President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which presaged the freeing of the slaves.
Hodges also demonstrates the bravery of slaves who joined the Union army and fought in the Civil War. Utilizing Uncle Joe as narrator and having him reflect upon his and Sal’s life as slaves and free persons allows Hodges to demonstrate the strong bond of love that some black men and women were able to develop. In describing the Christmas celebration as a reunion, he emphasizes the importance of f
amily and tradition. And, finally, as Uncle Joe describes how his children worked hard to buy the land and build a house for their parents and how they succeeded in making a living, Hodges demonstrates that African Americans embraced the Protestant work ethic and worked together to ensure the success of their families.
The Christmas Reunion
Down at Martinsville
Twas a bright Christmas morning in M “Old Kentucky,”
Aunt Sallie was busy disrobing a duck;
A featherless turkey close by her side lay,
Prepared for the dinner that bright Christmas day.
’Twas a family reunion, and Uncle Joe Moore
And his good wife, Aunt Sallie, both ten and three score,
Had gathered around them, their “girls” and their “boys,”
With their children’s children—the grandparents toys.
The “girls” (all past thirty) were helping to make
The “sweet tater puddin’s,” the pies and the cake.
The “boys” and the grand boys, the fires were making,
The oldest granddaughter the biscuits were baking;
The little grandchildren, a dozen or more,
Were having a good time just outside the door;
While Uncle Joe Moore, the venerable sire,
Sat smoking his pipe, with his feet by the fire.
When the clock tolled the mid-day, the feast was complete,
And after each member had taken his seat,
The venerable sire stood up by his chair,
And with arms up-lifted he offered this prayer:
“We thank Thee, our Father in heaven,” he said,
“For the abundance of good things before us now spread;
We thank Thee dear Lord, that me and my wife
Have been spared, by thy goodness, to reach an old life;
We thank Thee, of all things, the most and the best,
To meet all our children, from North, South and West.
Continue Thy blessings, Thy goodness and love,
And prepare us to meet Thee, in heaven above.”
The grace being over, the feast was begun,
The duck and the turkey were carved one by one;
The big chicken pot-pie received the same fate,
A super-abundance was piled on each plate.
After the meats came the puddings and pies,
Then how the grandchildren all opened their eyes
When one of their uncles from up Illinois,
Brought out from the closet a basket of toys.
As dinner was over, the venerable sire,
Got up from his seat and stood by the fire.
He called to his side each lamb of his fold,
And blessed and caressed them, as Jacob of old.
“What changes we’ve seen Sal,” remarked Uncle Joe,
“These years we’ve been married, some forty or so;
’Twas, let me see, forty? Yes, forty-one years
Since the Christmas we first met at Uncle Bill Stears.
I remember, ole ’oman, you looked mighty gran’,
And I was then, children, a good lookin’ man.
I walked with your mother from Clayton that night,
And ’fore we got home, why, I got in a fight;
Tom Scott, a patroller, insulted your mother,
And I knocked him down, and Ed., his big brother.
I then asked your mother if she’d be my wife.
Her answer was, “Yes Joe, since you risked your life
For me up the road, and licked ole Tom Scott—
Why, I’ll be your wife, why Joseph why not?”
But the next day, my children, my master sold me
To an ole “nigger trader” from East Tennessee.
There I worked on a farm without seeing your mother
For eighty long days, ’till me and another
Plantation hand run away, and met with good luck,
For we soon found our self on the shores of Kentuck
Before my ole white folks knowed I run er way.
We two was married that same Christmas day.
We was married at Scottsville by ole Pete Brown,
He was a white preacher, who lived in the town,
And would marry we slave folks, no matter or not,
If our masters was willing, and if he only got
A two dollar bill, or a big barrel of corn:
And the very next Christmas our Lucy was born.
The next of the past that I now can remember,
Was when we moved here, Sal, the following September;
And then came the war, Sal, and old master died,
While Missus and you, Sal, stood by his side.
Then I left you and the children, and went out to fight
For the Union and freedom, one warm summer’s night.
Then good Abraham Lincoln he set us all free,
And we had in Martinsville, a big jubilee;
Then you boys and you girls all worked hand to hand,
To buy me and your mother this house and this land.
Then some of you married, and some went out West,
While me and your mother, along with the rest,
Stayed on the old homestead and worked night and day,
A farming and trucking, and made the work pay.
We are glad for to meet you all back here once more,
And see all your dear babies together, before
Me and your mother, for we’re both old and gray,
Receive old death’s summons to call us away.
“God bless you and keep you through life, is my prayer,”
And the venerable sire sat down in his chair.
The rest of the evening was spent in a measure,
Receiving old friends, or by chatting in pleasure
Till long after midnight, with hearts light and gay—
’Twas a happy reunion, a bright Christmas day.
THE CHILDREN’S CHRISTMAS
Alice Moore Dunbar
Educator, author, and social and political activist, Alice Moore Dunbar received her first recognition as the wife of celebrated poet and novelist Paul Laurence Dunbar and was later acclaimed as a Harlem Renaissance poet. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, on July 19, 1875, Alice Ruth Moore was one of two daughters of Joseph Moore, a Creole seaman, and Patricia Wright Moore. She attended elementary and high school in New Orleans and graduated from the two-year teacher training program at Straight College (now Dillard University). She later studied at Cornell and Columbia Universities and the University of Pennsylvania, where she specialized in psychology and English educational testing. Beginning her teaching career in New Orleans in 1892, except for brief interruptions, she taught school for almost four decades.
In 1895, Alice Moore completed her first book, Violets and Other Tales, and began a romance with Paul Laurence Dunbar, who gained great fame for his Negro dialect verse. In 1897, she moved from Boston to New York City, where she accepted a public school teaching position in Brooklyn, and assisted Victoria Earle Matthews in establishing in Harlem the White Rose Mission, a home for girls. It was in December 1897 that she wrote “The Children’s Christmas,” a story that reflected the lives of the children she taught.
“The Children’s Christmas” is the story of five children, from different racial and ethnic backgrounds, who live in a large city. These children represent all children who, through circumstances not of their making, do not experience the joy, the spirit, and the meaning of Christmas. This social commentary by Moore is presented as a panorama to show how many children at the turn of the century did not celebrate the “luxury” of a real Christmas.
Julia is an unkempt seven-year-old who attends school mostly in the afternoon to reduce the necessity for breakfast. She lives with her mother, who drinks excessively and physically abuses her. When asked, “What will Santa bring you?” she replies, “Nothin’ but another beatin’.” Although Moore does not identify the
child as being African American, the use of dialect suggests that she is.
Matilda is a Jewish girl who attends the same school as Julia. She lives in an orphanage. Being Jewish, she does not celebrate the holiday, but she accepts Santa Claus and the traditional role he plays. Santa brings toys, and Matilda wants a doll for Christmas.
Florence is too young for school, so she gets to play outdoors during the day. She views Christmas as a cold, uncomfortable time of the year. Poorly dressed in hand-me-down clothes, toys would not be number one on her list for Santa.
Frank, the nursemaid to his baby brother, wanders with his charge through the streets taking in all the beautiful decorations and hoopla of the holiday season. He gazes in the store windows knowing that his wish for even one toy would be in vain. Santa Claus would not stop by his house.
Hattie, almost blind since the age of six, cannot see the beautifully decorated store windows and other adornments of Christmas. But she can hear the joyful talk and sounds of the season. Is her wish for Christmas the gift of seeing?
Moore reminds the readers that Christmas is the children’s time and that, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or circumstance, all children should be given the opportunity to participate in this joyous occasion. She reminds the more fortunate in society that they should live up to the true spirit of Christmas and share their good fortune with those who are less fortunate.
It is most likely that the setting for this story is Brooklyn, New York, in 1897, the year that Alice Ruth Moore taught in a public school there. Moore, who was only twenty-two at the time the story was written, was struck with the plight of these children. Her concluding statement—“these little folks are not imaginary small personages created for Sunday-school literature and sentimental dissertations on so-called sociology. They are actual, evident, their counterparts around us, no matter where we may live”—suggests that she wrote the story to illustrate the plight of many urban children who lived in poverty and despair. As a budding young crusader, she embodied the spirit of the Progressive Era (1890–1920) and believed that one should use all resources to bring public attention to the conditions that existed in society.