New Yorkers adopted, expanded, and even invented some of America’s favorite holiday traditions.

New York City is known worldwide as the premier holiday destination for its famous parading, feasting, firework-launching, menorah-lighting, champagne-popping, ball-dropping, latke-frying, green beer-guzzling revelries. Visitors flock to the city during all the holiday seasons, because nowhere else do citizens pull out all the stops to have the biggest, brightest, loudest, foodiest festivities. If you’re not in Gotham to take part in the colorful pageantry, you’re probably watching it on TV.

Let us then celebrate each of the holiday traditions that New Yorkers have embraced as their own, and then shared with the world. There will be lots of festive food and drink, plenty of fascinating stories and pictures, and many surprises along the way. And since there are so many celebrations throughout the year, we’ll split them into two parts.

Part 1: Holiday Beginnings 

Since the dawn of recorded time, cultures around the world have gathered for harvest feasts, or Winter Solstice festivals, at the end of the year. The produce had been harvested, the meat slaughtered, and the wine and beer made...let’s pah-tay! The Ancient Druids gathered mistletoe, the Scandinavians celebrated Jul (“Yule”), while the Romans produced Saturnalia, a week-long drunken blowout decorated with evergreens. Many of our modern traditions are timeless. In this first part, we’ll begin with our popular end-of-year feast days.

Thanksgiving

If you remember Grandma’s little Pilgrim figurines which she un-hid every November, the First Thanksgiving took place in Plymouth Colony in 1621. It starred Miles Standish, Squanto, and a mostly apocryphal gathering of Puritans, along with ninety Native Americans (who showed up by surprise, but thoughtfully brought five deer with them.) According to legend, they feasted for three days on duck, goose, venison, clams, eels, cornbread, salad, and wine made from local grapes. There may have been wild turkeys as well. Although apples and pumpkins were plentiful, there were no ovens, butter or wheat for pie-making. As far as we know, football was not played.

In 1789 President George Washington declared a national day of Thanksgiving. At the time, New Yorkers annually celebrated Evacuation Day (when the British left the city) and adopted Thanksgiving as a replacement. New York Governor DeWitt Clinton formally announced the Day of Thanks as a state holiday, making New York the birthplace of the modern Thanksgiving festivities. New Yorkers were among the few Americans to celebrate Thanksgiving every year, until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the fourth Sunday of November an American national holiday.

Gothamites augmented their Thanksgiving tables with local treats, most especially oysters (half of the world’s supply dwelled in the city’s waterways.) Turkey stuffed with oysters was a favorite. And no NYC celebration would be complete without that quintessential New York/Dutch food, doughnuts. Other local specialties included turtle soup (a celebrated delicacy), chestnuts, pumpkins, cranberries, and NYC inventions such as cheesecake and Jell-O.  (Select to enlarge)

In the 20th century, another Thanksgiving myth developed, best illustrated by Norman Rockwell: the gathering of the perfect, smiling, all-American, all-white, all-loving family, without my nasty Uncle Rocco stirring things up.

It wouldn’t be a Big Apple holiday without a parade, which has been part of the city’s Thanksgiving festivities for centuries. From the 1840s to the 1930s, men-only clubs called Fantasticals awakened the town on Thanksgiving with blasts from a mammoth fish horn, then masqueraded through the streets, picnicked in the parks, and attended gala balls. In the early 1900s, Thanksgiving Ragamuffin Parades featured New Yorkers dressed as Uncle Sams, Harlequins and Fausts wandering the streets (a precursor of the city’s famed Halloween Parade.)

Of course, the king of all spectacles is Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which began in 1924 and marched all the way from 145th Street down to Herald Square (twice as far as today.) Master of commercialization Rowland Hussey Macy originally dubbed it the “Christmas Parade,” to indicate the launch of his most lucrative season. In 1928 helium balloons in the shapes of generic zoo animals were introduced; Mickey Mouse joined the floating gang in 1934. After the parade all the balloons were released into the air, carrying instructions for returning them to Macy’s (for a small reward). Today you can watch 20 (unreleased) balloons, marching bands, the Rockettes, and B-level lip-syncing celebrities, while the turkey gets basted. And then there’s football!

Hanukkah

This joyful holiday was unknown in New York until the 20th century. Before then there were only 250,000 Jews in the entire country. In the early 1900s the mass immigration from Eastern Europe brought millions of Jewish people into the city, and other New Yorkers began to slowly learn about their customs. Passengers recall riding the elevated train through the Jewish Lower East Side, enchanted by hundreds of tiny candles illuminating the windows of tenement apartments.

Since the Hebrew calendar is based on the lunar cycle, this eight-night Festival of Lights occurs some time between mid-December and early January. In New York, Hanukkah and other Jewish holidays offered an opportunity for these immigrants to openly celebrate their religion, which was impossible in many of their countries of origin. Central to the holiday is the family feast, supported by hundreds of neighborhood kosher delis, butchers, bakers, groceries and pushcarts, packed into the vibrant enclave.

Initially it was a struggle for Jews to counter-balance the sparkly Christmas holiday, which was completely new to them. While some families asserted their Jewish identity, others wanted to assimilate to their new home and celebrated both holidays, spinning the dreidel (top) under their Christmas tree. Soon, both holidays became “Americanized” and commercialized, with gifts, candy and greeting cards exchanged. Irving Berlin, a Russian Jew, composed the song “White Christmas.” Today, while folks gather to see the famous Rockefeller Center tree, the Chabad-Lubavitch organization sponsors the lighting of a 32 foot tall menorah (multibranched candelabra) on Fifth Avenue.

The inspiration for the “Festival of Lights” is the rededication of the Holy Temple in 164 BCE, when one day’s worth of oil burned for eight days. To celebrate this miracle, foods fried in oil are featured. So if you’re partial to fried foods, Hanukkah is the holiday for you! Latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts) are joined by traditional matzoh ball soup, brisket, kugel (noodle casserole) and rugelach (small rolled pastries.) If you’re not Jewish, you can sample these delicacies in a nearby deli, or (better yet) have a Jewish friend invite you to their home for a Hanukkah celebration, then have them over for some Christmas goodies. It’s such a “New York thing” to do!

Christmas

The exact day of Christ’s birth is not mentioned in the Bible; it was decided centuries after his death. In 325 AD, Roman Emperor Constantine was fed up with the week-long debauchery of Saturnalia, so he scheduled the holy birthday smack dab in the middle of it, hoping to curb pagan excesses. Instead, the two celebrations were melded together, resulting in today’s mix of church-going and merry-making.

The Puritans up in New England nixed the merriment, suppressing Christmas for centuries. Anyone caught gathering evergreens or wishing “Merry Christmas” to others would be fined or imprisoned. Boston public schools remained open on Christmas Day until 1870 (imagine having to trudge to class instead of opening gifts in your p.j.s!)

Leave it to New Yorkers to invent our modern celebration of Christmas. According to The Encyclopedia of New York, “Your idea, your image, your very concept of an American Christmas was utterly shaped by New York City’s celebrations and creations.” 

Take Santa Claus, for example. The city’s Dutch founders loved yuletide gifting, transforming Saint Nicholas, a bishop from Turkey, into a jolly character named Sinter Klaas. The city’s first bestselling author, Washington Irving, mentions Saint Nick 25 times in 1809’s Knickerbocker’s History Of New York, inventing his flying wagon and unique chimney ingress. The New-York Historical Society proclaimed him the patron saint of the city (which he remains) and published a broadside depicting good and bad children with their fireplace stockings.

More New York City writers and artists expanded the legend. The surprisingly dour Chelsea professor Clement Clark Moore penned A Visit From Saint Nicholas (“‘Twas the night before Christmas”) for his children in 1823, establishing the saint as jolly and plump, riding a sleigh pulled by eight named reindeer. Published without his knowledge, it became the most well-known poem in the English language. Political cartoonist Thomas Nast created the first image of a re-named Santa Claus for Harper’s Weekly. Now we knew what Santa looked like! Another treasured New York tale occurs in 1897, when 8-year-old Upper East Sider Virginia O’Hanlon wrote the New York Sun, asking if there really is a Santa Claus. Editorial writer Francis Church’s reply of “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus...” is enshrined as a Christmas classic.

Then there’s the ubiquitous Christmas tree. How does a New Yorker locate one in the concrete city? Catskill farmer Mark Carr came up with the solution in 1851: he drove a wagonfull of his trees to Manhattan’s Washington Market, and sold out fast. To this day, New Yorkers still buy their Christmas trees from a local market or bodega. In 1882 Edward Johnson, Vice President of the Edison Company, hooked up electric lights to his Fifth Avenue parlor tree, and newspapers spread the image far and wide (making Edison millions.) All this led to the first public Christmas tree in America, erected in Madison Square Park in 1912. When whole blocks of midtown were being cleared to build Rockefeller Center, the demolition crew set up a gangly tree and decorated it with wires, ropes, bottlecaps, tools, and any other debris they could find on the worksite. The practice grew into an annual tradition, becoming the most famous Christmas tree in the world. (Select to enlarge)

When a struggling Frank W. Woolworth took a chance by offering Christmas ornaments in his New York store, he sold $25 million of them, and eventually expanded to 1,000 locations. No wonder he could afford to pay cash for his namesake skyscraper (and inaugurate the practice of Christmas bonuses for all his workers.) But it was commercializing genius R. H. Macy who once again ballyhooed a holiday into mega-profits. Besides his gigantic Christmas Parade, he was the first to feature large decorated windows around his emporium. Today, visitors cram New York’s sidewalks every December to view his innovation, copy-catted by every major department store.

As with Thanksgiving, many Dutch culinary traditions have been incorporated into New York’s Christmas repasts. For example, in the 1600s an annual Christmas Turkey Shoot was held on the downtown Commons. Young men paid a few “stuyvers” for a shot at the wild birds set up as targets; whoever hit one took it home for dinner. This tradition continued for almost 300 years, and turkey remains yuletide’s most popular entree (but you no longer have to bag your own bird.)

An ItaIian-American tradition, The Feast of the Seven Fishes, is unknown in Italy. The whole family gathers to prepare this Christmas Eve meal together. If you really want to know what this is like, watch the cringe-worthy “Fishes” episode of The Bear.

No matter what you have for dinner, Christmas isn’t complete without the Dutch creations of koekjes (cookies) and olykoeks (doughnuts) made and enjoyed in New York for 400 years. German immigrants brought their recipes for gingerbread, French bakers their bûche de Noël, Italians their struffoli and panettone, Brits their various puddings, and Southerners their fruitcake (thanks a lot.) Since New York was “the candy-making capital of the world,” its confectioners supplied most of the country with limitless candy canes, chocolate Santas, and other holiday sweets. (Select to enlarge)

After the tree and the windows, visitors to Christmas-crazy New York City can also check out the Rockefeller Center Christmas Spectacular, view the amazing New York Botanical Garden Train Show (with iconic NYC buildings all made from plant materials), see the Metropolitan Museum’s Origami Christmas Tree, or just take the R train to Dyker Heights and be stupified by Home Decoration Mania – Brooklyn style:

Kwanzaa

This celebration of African-American culture takes place from December 26 to January 1. First celebrated in 1966, it was created by Maulana Karenga in the aftermath of the Watts riots. He said his goal was to “give black people an opportunity to celebrate themselves and their history, rather than simply imitate the practice of the dominant society.” Based on First Fruits Festivals in Southern Africa, symbolic produce is utilized in the Nguzo Saba (Seven Principals), as well as a seven-candle kinara, a unity cup, and crops such as corn. Families celebrating Kwanzaa hold a Karamu Ya Imani (Feast of Faith) on the sixth day, and may decorate their homes with African art, colorful kente cloth, and pictures of African American leaders. Readings, drumming and music are often included. Children are always welcomed to the festivities. Hallmark has offered Kwanzaa cards, and the U.S. Post Office has issued Kwanzaa stamps. Today, the celebration of Kwanzaa joins Juneteenth (featured in Holidays Part 2) as the major African American holidays of remembrance.

New Year’s Day

Although the main New York celebration today is held on New Year’s Eve, for centuries New Year’s Day was considered the biggest holiday of the entire year. Why? That’s the day that New Yorkers traipsed from house to house, all day long, to renew friendships and make new ones. In fact, city dwellers spent more time prepping for New Year’s than Christmas, cleaning their house to spotless perfection in order to welcome their many visitors. For over 300 years, the streets on New Year’s Day were packed with rushing visitors, mostly men, calling on as many families as possible, often more than a hundred in a day! Meetings were necessarily brief: visitors were offered a non-alcoholic drink (such as cherry bounce) and gave their calling cards to their hosts. These cards were masterpieces of decorative art; if a family was not home, they would hang a basket on their doorknob to collect cards. Families gauged their popularity by how many cards they received.

This New Year’s tradition often led to new romances, as male visitors would bring friends along to meet unacquainted single women and their parents. Anxious women seeking beaus would even send invitations to prospective suitors before the big day. The following day, January 2, was dubbed “Ladies’ Day”, when women called on each other to exchange stories of the previous day. 

On New Year’s Day in 1837, Mayor Cornelius Lawrence made the mistake of opening his home to the public, and soon faced scores of rabble-rousers, demanding refreshments, devouring meat, spitting on the carpets and wiping their greasy fingers on the curtains. The police were called to restore order, and this new “tradition” ended the day it began.

Back to the Eve: The first midnight “ball drop” happened in 1904, signaling the official opening of the Times Building in the newly-renamed Times Square. The initial ball, which descended from a flagpole, was made of iron and weighed 700 pounds; today’s aluminum sphere is much lighter. (I used to work the signage at One Times Square on New Year’s Eve, and would sneak up to the roof and watch Dick Clark get snookered on his personal fifth of Seagram’s.) Another New York midnight tradition was to shoot guns into the air. People did this everywhere, and some still do. I experienced a gunfire New Year’s on a visit to New Orleans, and joined everyone leaping for cover to avoid falling bullets. It was loud, but it wasn’t fun.

The official New Year’s food? Champagne, of course! Let’s drink a toast for all the holidays to come!

In the next chapter, Holidays Part 2, we’ll celebrate spring, summer and autumn festivities, such as Saint Patrick’s Day, Easter, Passover, Juneteenth, Pride Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Halloween. Stay tuned!