The caption reads “It is one of the legendary courthouse towns in the Piedmont or the Valley section of the Old Dominion, where there is plenty of snow in winter; where men and things generally have a [illegible] aspect; and where a reminiscence of secession days survives in the custom of letting off firecrackers at Christmastime instead of the Fourth of July. The characteristic elements of that community are represented to the life of Mr. Clinedinst’s drawing. Here is the old ‘squire the local representative of the F.F.V.’s [illegible]. A couple of townsmen, with their guns, are going to the turkey-shooting. The fried oyster man, in his white apron, looms up in the background. The colored population are out and about, on business and pleasure best, while in the distance can be seen the inevitable group of [illegible] about the [illegible] steps.”
These articles explore facts and myths about how enslaved people experienced Christmas celebrations.
All links were accessed December 26, 2021
“How the American Civil War cemented modern Christmas traditions,” The Conversation, December 22, 2016
“On the Civil War home front, wives, mothers and sisters greeted Christmas during the war with ominous foreboding, worrying about absent husbands, fathers and sons.”
Farrell Evans. “What was Christmas like for America’s Enslaved people?” History.com, December 21, 2020
“While early accounts from white Southerners after the Civil War often painted an idealized picture of owners’ generosity met by grateful workers happily feasting, singing and dancing, the reality was far more complex.”
Robert E. May. “Slave life’s harsh realities are erased in Christmas tours of Southern plantations,”
The Conversation, December 12, 2019
“But the omission of black Southerners from these holiday tales also stems from pervasive myths about slave life at Southern plantations before the Civil War.”
____________. Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas and Southern Memory . Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019
“A major reinterpretation of human bondage, Yuletide in Dixie challenges disturbing myths embedded deeply in our culture.”
Olivia B. Waxman. “The grim history of Christmas for enslaved people in the Deep South,” Time, December 21, 2021
“Around the time Christmas was starting to become a national holiday in the late-19th century, propagandists of the Lost Cause—the myth that the Civil War was fought for states rights and not for slavery—were trying to reframe what happened in the South during the antebellum era.”
1st U.S. Colored Cavalry 
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