The Odd Origins Behind Popular Christmas Traditions

Leaving out milk and cookies for Santa is a way to give hardworking St. Nick a small gift during his major global journey. But what is now a cute family tradition actually originated during the Great Depression.

During the Depression, leaving out the combo was a way for parents to teach their children about gratitude. Parents wanted their kids to understand that giving presents can feel as good as receiving them. The message is to be grateful for what you were given.

Modern yule logs are a delicious Christmas dessert decorated to look like a real-life fallen tree. This sweet treat is based off a Medieval tradition. People burned logs that were decorated with pinecones, holly, and ivy.

Burning the yule log was thought to bring good luck. After the log burned to ash, people would gather the ashes from the hearth. These were prized for their protection against aging and also from lightning attacks.

Being treated to song from a group of festive singers is the modern version of a much more aggressive tradition. Carolers, or “wassailers,” weren’t welcome guests in the 1600s.

Instead of sharing a cute song, they demanded that the homeowners gave them fancy food and liquor. If they weren’t satisfied with their gifts, they would threaten the residents with property destruction and other violent acts.

This leafy romantic symbol wasn’t always a celebrated part of Christmas. The Druids used mistletoe to show their friendship with someone else, and English religious leaders banned the plant in response.

Eventually, the clergy lightened their stance against the plant, allowing others to celebrate the season with mistletoe. York Minster Church even held a yearly mistletoe service to pardon criminals.

Using cartoons to advertise to children (and the adults watching alongside them) was a tactic employed by numerous marketing agencies. One of the most obvious partnerships was surprisingly between Charlie Brown and Coke.

In the original version of the 1965 movie, “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” the Peanuts gang made sure to tell everyone how much they enjoying a cold glass of Coca-Cola. CBS eventually edited out the references, and the result is a timeless holiday classic.

This is a newer tradition, in which people hide a pickle ornament and the person who finds it first gets a special gift. People claim that this is a German holiday pastime, but many Germans aren’t familiar with the practice.

No one is sure where the pickle actually came from, but there are few theories. One is that two young students were trapped in a pickle jar by an evil innkeeper and are rescued by St. Nicholas.

The common understanding is that Christmas is celebrated in December because it coincides with Jesus’ birthday. Biblical scholars claim that either March 29, January 6, or sometime in June was when he was actually born. So, where did December 25 come from?

There’s a different major event that shares December 25: Saturnalia, an ancient Roman festival that celebrated the winter solstice. To mark the occasion, people heavily drank, and the upper-class gave presents to their slaves.

Santa isn’t the only supernatural entity that can enter your home through the chimney. St. Nick is a kind deity who brings presents, but many of the others are what you’d want creeping through your house at night.

The Greek kallikantzaroi goblin is one cryptid that crawls down a chimney to terrorize the family who lived in the home. Medieval-era devious witches also found their way inside like this.

Modern Christmas stockings are meant to capture fun extra presents, but they were inspired by a depressing story. In the 4th century, a European bishop heard an old man worrying about his three daughters’ dowries.

Without a dowry, the women couldn’t marry and potentially had to turn to sex work to support themselves. In response, the bishop snuck into the man’s house and put gold in the daughters’ stockings, so they could get husbands and be respectable.

One popular Christmas story that’s often performed as a ballet is The Nutcracker. This was based on the novel The Nutcracker and the Mouse King by German author E. T. A. Hoffmann. The story itself is pretty dark.

When a little girl’s nutcracker comes to life, she accidentally cuts herself. While she’s recovering, her godfather tells her about a man who looks like a nutcracker. The girl decides she would be into this, and suddenly she’s taken to her toy nutcracker’s doll kingdom. The two marry — even though the girl is only eight.

The White House Christmas tree lighting ceremony is one of the most highly anticipated holiday events of the year. The First Family joins with a large crowd of celebrities and celebrators each December to light up Washington, D.C. But that wasn’t always the case.

Some historians argue the first American Christmas occurred in 1776 when George Washington bravely crossed the Delaware to take a British fort. He had no time to actually celebrate, of course — not by our standards. Christmas trees weren’t even popular yet!

While commanders-in-chief started throwing Christmas parties in 1800, the first tree didn’t show up for another eighty years later. It was President Benjamin Harrison who installed the first White House tree, though not all of his successors followed suit.

However, festivities took a big upswing in 1923. Calvin Coolidge hosted the first public Christmas celebration, complete with a tree lighting on the front lawn. From then on, Presidents couldn’t help but give in to the Yuletide cheer.

Even in the midst of the Great Depression and later World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took Christmas seriously. He invited his large family — four entire generations — to spend the holiday with him in style.

Harry S. Truman had an unusual Christmas in 1948. When the Poultry and Egg National Board gifted the White House two turkeys for dinner, he brought the birds in for a visit. Understandably, they were not too happy to see him.

In 1961, Jackie Kennedy started a new tradition by assigning a different theme to each White House Christmas. She and John started off by decorating their home to resemble Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker.

This Johnson family Christmas card from 1968 featured Lyndon, Lady Bird, plus their daughters and grandchildren. However, they wisely put their dog Yuki front and center. And as you’ll see later, Yuki wasn’t the only White House pet to steal the show.

Although many Americans saw Richard Nixon as frigid, at least he wasn’t afraid to stand out in the snow! Here, he and Pat pose next to the official White House snowman, with the Oval Office right behind them.

One of Jimmy Carter’s Christmases included an ice skating extravaganza. Later celebrations, however, were more somber. In 1979, he lit only the star on the tree as a tribute to American hostages in Iran.

For a party in 1983, Ronald Reagan drew upon his acting chops to portray Old Saint Nick himself! First Lady Nancy Reagan gladly joined Santa in his armchair, though that wasn’t the only lap she sat on that night…

She also sat with Mr. T! Nancy was one of the first White House residents to incorporate more pop culture elements into their holiday celebrations. Just look at her other guest a couple years later…

She welcomed ALF — plus the unlucky puppeteer who had to hide underneath a podium — to the children’s Christmas party. If this photo isn’t enough to overwhelm you with 1980s nostalgia, then nothing will.

Reagan’s former veep, George H.W. Bush, carried on the flashy Christmas traditions during his administration. He made it a decidedly family affair. Bush always had his grandkids on hand to admire the decorations, and the entire clan celebrated at nearby Camp David.

President Bill Clinton popularized reading Christmas books to children during the holiday season. Meanwhile, Hillary oversaw the official decorations, putting together a display that she described as both “elegant” and “funky.”

The Clintons also showed off one of the world’s most impressive collections of gingerbread houses. It included a perfect recreation of Bill’s childhood home, plus a delectable model of Mount Vernon, George Washington’s historic home.

In the aftermath of 9/11, George W. Bush tried to make the holidays an uplifting affair. He and Laura declared it a “Red, White, and Blue Christmas” to show that the United States would not shy away from its proudest traditions.

Flanked by Santa Claus and a cappella group Fifth Harmony, Barack Obama got to show off his dance moves in 2014. Nevertheless, two of his family members managed to upstage him a couple Christmases later.

In 2016, giant pom-pom statues of Bo and Sunny, the Obamas’ Portuguese Water Dogs, made for the most striking decor in recent memory. Of course, the next administration felt the urge to go in a completely different direction with their celebration.

First Lady Melania Trump put a more modern, artsy spin on the White House decorations. In 2018, she decked out an East Wing hallway with red trees that made headlines all over the world.