What a Christmas Eve!
“Christmas Eve” from The Stranger’s Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present. Boston: Light and Horton, 1836.
Catalog Record | Enlarged Image with text | Adopt a Gift Book Home
This is a quintessential engraving of an antebellum Christmas. It features a very early image of a Christmas tree, and is all the more unusual in that it was published in Boston, long a stronghold of anti-Christmas Congregationalism (note the subtitle’s promotion of the book as both a Christmas and New Year’s present). The candle-lit tree sits atop a table, with the gifts and treats underneath it, while a mother presides over her excited children and pet dog.
