It’s almost the 12th Day of Christmas! (aka Epiphany, aka January 6) May the vibes of this newsletter fuel the last bit of your Christmas this season.
I hope this newsletter finds you with a delicious warm beverage beside a crackling fire. If not, I hope that by the end of this newsletter, you’ll feel that level of coziness wherever you are.
The first Christmas chapter in my Lottie Moon novel takes place in 1850 when Lottie was 10 years old. Imagine a world where...
Charles Dickens’ The Christmas Carol was recently published and is still wildly popular.
Queen Victoria is reigning over the British Empire.
Everyone is enjoying newly translated and composed Christmas carols like “Joy to the World” and “Oh Holy Night.”
It’s about 10 years before the American Civil War breaks out, but tensions between the North and South are rising and beginning to boil.
Basically, you can just imagine scenes from Little Women. Except that Lottie Moon’s family were wealthy slave owners in Virginia, while the March family were poor abolitionists in Massachusetts. But Meg March’s hoop skirt and spiral curls at her wealthy friend’s ball were likely similar to Lottie’s world.
Lottie Moon’s connection with Christmas
The Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (LMCO) made Christmas significant to Lottie’s legacy. As a missionary, she strongly advocating for more missionaries and more money to support them. Lottie urged the Foreign Mission Board (now the International Mission Board) to dedicate the week before Christmas to raising money for missions. That offering started in 1888, and after Lottie died on Christmas Eve 1912, the Women’s Missionary Union (WMU) officially named it after her.
Here’s the current executive director of WMU, talking about Lottie Moon’s legacy via the LMCO.
In my novel, Christmas is a recurring setting, especially when Lottie and her siblings reached the age when they went away to boarding schools. The holiday was an opportunity for the family to gather and reconnect.
Also, several important events in Lottie’s life occurred in December. She was born in December 1840 and was saved and baptized in December 1858. There were even a few weddings in December at Viewmont, her family home.
This all leads me to believe that Christmastime, even before the holiday became the commercial behemoth that it is today, was tender and precious in Lottie’s heart. Each year as she returned home from school in Roanoke or Charlottesville, Virginia, I imagine that the holiday evoked fuzzy feelings of a family safely inside together celebrating the same things they did last Christmas while the world outside was raging and quickly changing.
But the more I researched for my novel, the more I realized that the way most Americans celebrated Christmas was definitely starting to change. Some things we call classic traditions, Lottie might have called new fads.
Traditions that arose in Lottie’s day
Christmas Trees! 🎄
When Lottie was a girl, Christmas trees were just starting to gain widespread popularity in the United States. They had already been popular in the homes of German immigrants. But when American magazines printed images of Queen Victoria and her German husband, Prince Albert, decorating an evergreen tree with their children, fashionable Americans took up their axes and went tree hunting for a magical Christmas moment just like the royals.
Lottie’s mother, Anna Maria Moon, was a dedicated Baptist, so she was sure to teach her children “The Reason for the Season.”☝️ She was also wealthy and fashionable, so I imagine that Mrs. Moon was sure to have seen that picture of Queen Victoria’s Christmas tree, and instructed her slaves to go out and find one just like it.
Christmas Decorations!
What’s a Christmas tree without decorations? But pre-made ornaments weren’t available to buy in the U.S. until Christmas really took off in the 1880’s, the era known as the Gilded Age. In my novel, Lottie and her siblings decorated their tree with homemade paper ornaments, candles, and strings of cranberries. Natural decorations like evergreen and dried orange slices filled their home. And of course fresh white snow decorated the world outside their windows.
Christmas Turkey! 🍗
Traditional Christmas meals in Europe were centered around a roasted goose. But because turkeys were native to North America and easier to come by, a roasted turkey began to show up on American tables around Lottie’s time.
Uncomfortable Conversations. 😬
Let us not forget the unsung Christmas tradition of uncomfortable conversations. Whether it’s chatting with family that you haven’t seen since last year, or with guests you just met, Christmas is the perfect time to stick your foot in your mouth.
In my novel, Lottie’s big sister Orianna (Orie) came home for Christmas after her first time away at school in New York. Lottie’s big brother Tom came home as well and brought a schoolmate with him from the University of Virginia. I loved writing scenes where Tom and his conservative friend uncomfortably collided with Orie as she tested out some of the liberal ideas she had learned while surrounded by women’s rights advocates and abolitionists up North. Orie must have been bursting with all the new things she was learning — new things that she probably didn't know would fit into her old life.
I remember coming home from college for the first time at Christmas, feeling so happy to be home but also struggling to be myself when I had changed so much in that short time away. After learning new things and adapting to a new rhythm at school, I was like new wine in an old wineskin about to burst (Mark 2:22)! Now that I’m over 10 years removed from these memories, I can think about young Emily with a graciousness similar to what my sweet parents gave me in that season. My still-somewhat-cringey memories of this time helped me shape Orie’s character in my novel.
A slave’s Christmas at Lottie’s home
Behind the scenes of all of this Christmas glamor were enslaved people. Lottie Moon grew up on a plantation with about 50 people who worked without pay and lived without the dignity of personal freedom.
At Christmastime in that era, I learned that it was traditional for slaveowners to give gifts of clothing, food, and money to the enslaved people who worked for them. I found research that they sometimes gave sweets to the children, and if a woman had a baby that year, she might have received an extra gift for adding another person to the workforce. As I looked at this historical tradition in hindsight, it was clear that the slaveowner’s view of generosity was distorted. Giving material gifts to people they enslaved was a warped way that Christian slaveholders celebrated God’s gift of Jesus, born to set people free.
In my research, I found that Baptists like Lottie’s family usually treated their slaves with a paternalistic sort of kindness and taught their children to not be cruel to slaves. I chose to go with that as I characterized the Moons. But in the words of two fictional, enslaved women in my novel, Fannie and Abby:
“The Moons have been good to us,” Fannie said.
“Not good enough to set us free,” Abby said, sadly shaking her head.
Thoughts: Non-religious Christmas traditions
Many traditions that sprang up in the mid-late 1800s weren’t all about the gift of Jesus. That presented a risk that people might get distracted from the heart of the holiday, which is certainly still a risk today. Some groups like the Puritans didn’t celebrate Christmas at all because it wasn’t a holiday in the Bible.
But because many of these traditions weren’t exclusively linked to Jesus or the Bible, Christmas could be enjoyed by nonreligious people too. It was like these traditions created different levels of Christmas. Many people stayed on one level with the wrapped gifts and sparkly decorations. But if God were to draw their heart to something more, there were deeper levels of Christmas that they could explore.
For example: Today, some of these classic Christmas traditions are celebrated in places around the world where churches and missionaries aren’t welcome. If someone there decorates a tree during Christmas and strings up some lights onto her patio just for fun, a local Christian may notice the opportunity and start a gospel conversation with her about what the holiday means.
And really, even a Christmas tradition rooted in a pagan religion, like the Christmas tree, can be redeemed. I see my cool-Christian friends on social media teaching their kids that the evergreen tree represents God as the eternal one and the eternal life he offers through Jesus. This creative way that people have redeemed pagan traditions makes me wonder…As the church grows in the Southern and Eastern hemispheres, what Christmas traditions will spring up from there?
In countries where lamb is a more common meal than turkey, maybe Christians will tell their children over a Christmas meal of lamb stew that it represents the Lamb of God, sent to save the world.
Maybe in places where it’s summer during Christmas, Christians will go camping every year and remember how Jesus was born outside the inn.
Everything that God created exists to glorify Him and draw us to Him (Psalm 19:1). And since God is not far from us (Acts 17:27), I pray that this Christmas, you will look around and notice evidence of His grace and goodness — whether it’s from a classic tradition or something new.
What did Lottie say about Christmas?
One of Lottie Moon’s letters gives us some insight into how she viewed Christmas. She called it, “The festive season when families and friends exchange gifts in memory of The Gift.” Her letter was published in the Religious Herald in December 1887. Lottie wrote about how Methodist women had raised an enormous amount of money in one year to support foreign missions. In today’s money, they raised $1.9 million! As a Baptist woman, Lottie said she was “heartily ashamed.” She urged Baptists to leverage the Christmas season of generosity to support going on missions in honor of Jesus, who came on mission to us. This missions offering is now known as the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.
“Resolved, That this Board recommend to the Woman’s Missionary Society to observe the week preceding Christmas as a week of prayer and self-denial. In preparation for this,
“Resolved, That we agree to pray every evening for six months, dating from June 25, 1887, for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Woman’s Missionary Society and its work at home and in the foreign fields.
“Need it be said, why the week before Christmas is chosen? Is not the festive season when families and friends exchange gifts in memory of The Gift laid on the altar of the world for the redemption of the human race, the most appropriate time to consecrate a portion from abounding riches and scant poverty to send forth the good tidings of great joy into all the earth?”
Lottie knew “the reason for the season,” and she let that knowledge affect her actions, living what she believed and inspiring others to do so as well, all for God’s glory.
A Christmas excerpt from my novel
Lottie rubbed fog off the parlor window and squinted through the falling snowflakes, checking again for any signs of a carriage. Snow continued to fall silently as she watched and waited for Father to return from the train station with Orie.
“They could arrive any minute now!” Mother said from across the room. But that’s what she said half an hour ago.
If Lottie hadn’t been so excited, the fire’s warmth and crackle in the fireplace might have lulled her off to sleep right there in her chair. Then finally, in the distance, she spotted a carriage! She got up and hurried over to the bottom of the staircase in the hallway so that she would be the first to greet Orie and Father. Perched on the bottom step, she inhaled the scent of evergreen strung along the banister. Boughs of it were everywhere — draped over the mantle and tied over doorways. It was looped into wreaths that were hung around the house, each decorated with different arrangements of pine cones, colorful feathers, cranberries, and dried orange slices.
Ike dashed past Lottie on the stairs and into the parlor to join everyone else. He had been doing that all month — dashing in and out of rooms. Anything to avoid getting caught by his mother or sisters under the mistletoe that hung in doorways.
Lottie giggled at her brother then perked up at the sound of horses just outside. Her face beamed when her older sister walked through the front door after their longest time apart.
Coming up next month
A few weeks ago, I sat down with Evelyn Edson, a historian and the President of the Scottsville Museum Board. In next month’s newsletter (Monday, January 24), I’m so excited to share what she told me about Lottie. We also talked about remembering history well – how it’s tricky but important. Because she wore a Christmas shirt when we talked, I’ll introduce you now 👇
Also, since we talked a lot about traditions, I’m curious about the Christmas traditions you observe that help you remember and celebrate the miracle of what God did.
Until next time, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Emily
Christmas w/Lottie Moon
You write so wonderfully, I so enjoy your writings.