I was researching the enforcement of the famous (or infamous) 1659 Massachusetts statutory “ban” on Christmas in the records of the Essex County quarterly courts the other day and soon realized that no one got fined for “keeping Christmas” but rather for excessive “tippling” on Christmas. I think if you kept Christmas quietly at home you were fine, but if you or your guests became “distempered with drink” you were not. Of course this was not the time of the excessive decorating that we indulge in now, so who knew if you thinking or praying: just don’t celebrate! In 1662, William Hoar was presented to the Court for “suffering tippling in his house by those who came to keep Christmas there” and he didn’t even indulge himself. The famous “Salem Wassail” of 1679 involved an elderly couple being held hostage by four young men who wanted to “drink perry and be merry”: when no perry (pear cider) was offered up, the men attacked the house for a considerable length of time. Another rowdy Christmas occurred in 1671, with some serious drinking occurred at the tavern of John Hathorne, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s great great great uncle and the little brother of his far more respectable (and intolerant) great great great grandfather William. John’s ordinary already had a reputation for disorderly drinking, but on that Christmas night, witnesses swore that Joseph Collins drank seventeen quarts of rum and his wife Sarah had to be carried to her bed.
That’s a LOT of rum–whether the Collinses drank it or not (they later sued Hathorne for slander). I associate rum more with the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries so this Christmas indulgence surprised me, and immediately turned my attention to what people drank at Christmas in the seventeenth century—and later. Perry and various ciders, definitely. Beer was an everyday drink but maybe more celebratory when you turn it into something else—like lambswool, the favorite Wassail drink of Tudor and Stuart England, in which old strong ale was heated and spiced up and topped with a frothy puree of roasted apples. Did lambswool make it over here? According to Gregg Smith, author of the (I think definitive) Beer in America: the Early Years, it did, and it was called jingle. What could be more Christmassy than that?
John Worlidge, Vinetum Britannicum, or a Treatise of Cider and Other Wines and Drinks, 1676.
Nothing is more celebratory than punch and the eighteenth century seems like the Century of Punch and Revolution to me. Punches were made and drank in the seventeenth century in England, and really caught on commercially with the emergence of special “punch houses” like that of James Ashley, but they took off in the Colonies too. So many American punches: the famous Fish House Punch of Philadelphia, Ben Franklin’s Milk Punch, Martha Washington’s Punch, the lethal Chatham Artillery Punch served to President Washington when he visited Savannah according to lore and legend. I just know that there was an “Old Salem Punch,” I’ve seen it referenced several times, but have never found the recipe. Nevertheless, Salem merchants in all trades reference punch consistently: fruit traders, dealers in silver and glass wares who offered up punch bowls, ladles, and cups, and of course spice purveyors. Citrus fruits were definitely advertised more as “souring” for punch than health benefits in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries! Though punch could be served cold or hot, the always hot flip, standard tavern fare by all accounts, seems to have been a predecessor of both eggnog and hot buttered rum. I can’t imagine a more suitable drink for the Christmas season, and am surprised it hasn’t been revived.
James Ashley’s Trade Card (c. 1740) © The Trustees of the British Museum
The nineteenth century always brings more, and more variety, of everything. I’m sure this was the case with holiday beverages as well, though most purveyors seem to advertise generic “wines, spirits and cordials” for Christmas from the 1830s so I’m not sure exactly what is being consumed. Salem did have six rum distilleries selling that spirit regionally in the first half of the nineteenth century, so I’m sure it was plentiful at Christmas and throughout the year. The first bartender’s guide, Jerry “The Professor” Thomas’s The Bar-tenders’ Guide: A Complete Cyclopaedia of Plain and Fancy Drinks (1862), is very specific about holiday libations, however. There are toddys and slings, and six recipes for the very American egg nog, including one that is served hot, as well as a British nog variation called “Tom and Jerry” which would become very popular stateside after this publication. And at the very end of the century, “Old Salem Punch” appears, in bottled form—from no less than S.S. Pierce.
The twentieth century seems like the century of adulteration for punch, which remained a favorite Christmas tipple. Not only was it bottled for sale, many more ingredients were added, so much so that it became more of a catch-all than a specific beverage. There were terrible “prohibition punches” during the 1920s, made with no alcohol at all or the literally lethal “wood alcohol”. After prohibition, Christmas punches had to be either red or sparkling, sometimes both: the red was the result of the addition of cranberry juice at best (and red food dye at worst) and the sparkling came from champagne and/or ginger ale. Fruit was added, not for “souring” but just because. Tom and Jerry was really popular in the first half of the century, then disappeared. Eggnog remained popular and was increasingly packaged as well: when you run into the real stuff, made at home, it’s quite something. One of my favorite Salem Christmas memories is of a lovely Christmas Eve party held every year by a wonderful older couple who lived in a Federal house on Essex Street. In the dining room was a huge silver punch (eggnog?) bowl filled to the brim with very frothy homeade eggnog, and everyone was always clustered around it ooohing and aaahing….and drinking! Not me: I really really wanted to, but I am a complete egg-phobic person, so it really says something that I was in such close proximity and even thinking about drinking this nectar. But one year I brought my father, and all I remember is him just standing by that bowl downing cup after cup. He wasn’t even social, which is unusual for him. I may be embellishing this a bit, but that’s my memory, and I’m happy to have it. Cheers!
The punch (eggnog) bowl of my memory, although it could be wrong. A Christmas memory prompted by a punch bowl from Oliver Wendell Holmes: “This ancient silver bowl of mine—it tells of good old times, of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas chimes.”
