PYROTECHNICS AND PRAYING COWS: CHRISTMAS IN THE UPLAND SOUTH

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Forget the family dinners, the letters to Santa, the scent of pine sap wafting through rooms. Early residents of Arkansas and Missouri celebrated Christmas by talking to farm animals and blowing things up, says a regional studies expert at the University of Arkansas.

"There are some remarkable Christmas customs in the old South," said Bob Cochran, director of the University of Arkansas Center for Arkansas and Regional studies. "This is particularly true in the Upland South areas of Arkansas and Missouri where they celebrated Christmas twice each year."

According to Cochran, differing theological doctrines caused confusion about the date of Christ’s birth. For several decades spanning the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, settlers in the Ozark Mountains heralded Jan. 6 as the true Christmas Day.

Eventually, influences from the larger U.S. population led these Southerners to adopt Dec. 25 as an additional day of celebration which they termed "New Christmas" to distinguish it from the traditional "Old Christmas" in January. Cochran points to sources that indicate the two days were jointly celebrated well into the 1930s.

While New Christmas marked a day of family and feasting — much like modern holiday customs — Cochran asserts that Old Christmas inspired very different forms of festivities. "Old Christmas was characterized by traditions that we would associate more with the Fourth of July: bonfires, gunplay, fireworks explosions," he said.

As with today, the eve of Old Christmas was likely to lure children out of their beds. But the tots were not lurking to catch a look at St. Nick. Rather, their attention was turned toward the cow pasture, where — it was believed — the livestock would kneel and pray with human voices.

"This idea of talking animals is a devotional gesture," said Cochran. "It was believed that the advent of the Christ-child was marked even in nature: stars shone more brightly, and even the animals had an impulse to worship."

According to Cochran, many of the Old Christmas customs — including Old Christmas itself — can be traced back to England where the traditions are long-standing and well-documented. Thomas Hardy, the acclaimed British writer, recorded the belief of praying livestock in his 1915 poem "The Oxen."

Jeannie Whayne, a Southern scholar and chair of the University of Arkansas history department, claims that the link between traditions in England and the American South is a direct result of immigration. "The South was settled by Englishmen of Celtic origin," she said. "They came from the northern regions of Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Cornwall — arriving at mid-Atlantic ports and then moving inland across America to the Ouachita and Ozark Mountains."

Cochran clarified this, stating that specific regions of the United States tended to be settled by people from specific regions of England. For example, those who colonized New England in the 18th Century came from more eastern regions of England.

Whayne explained that the settlers of the Upland South abandoned Northern England to escape poverty and persecution at the hands of the British government. The mountains of Arkansas and Missouri lured them to the Upland South because it resembled their homeland. But according to Whayne, these same mountains isolated them from the rest of America. Thus, their traditions persisted well into the 20th Century.

As technology and industry infiltrated the South, old customs disappeared and Old Christmas was abandoned. But Cochran, a resident of Fayetteville, Ark., claims the traditions still live on. "People in the South love explosions. It’s a part of their celebratory customs," he said. "You’ll hear fireworks on Christmas here even now — a few pops going off. It’s nothing big, but it happens."

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The Oxen

by Thomas Hardy

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

"Now they are all on their knees,"

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

"Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,"

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

-1915-