By Nicole Bryner

The first Christmas of the Civil War was a sobering one for the American people. Both sides in the conflict had anticipated a short war, but the humiliating defeat of Union forces at Manassas (also known as Bull Run) brought the realization that it was going to be a long, bloody conflict. As winter set in, the country experienced a far different Christmas than it had known just a year earlier.

President Lincoln spent much of his first Christmas in the White House in a heated
Cabinet meeting dealing with the Trent Affair: Union forces had boarded a British ship
in international waters and arrested two Confederate diplomats. Britain demanded
the release of the Confederates, along with an apology. It was a delicate situation that could have resulted in Britain entering the war on the side of the Confederates. The Cabinet adjourned with no clear decision. That evening, the Lincolns hosted a large
Christmas dinner gathering.

For the soldiers in the field that first year, there were festivities and an abundance of food and drink that would become more scarce in Christmases to come. Charles N. Scott, a soldier in the fifth New Hampshire regiment, described the events planned in a letter to his wife:

We are goin to keep Christmas and we are goin to have a little funn tomorrow. We are goin to have some rassslin and running and jumping and then we are goin to have a greesed pig. There is 4 dollars for the best rassler and two dollars for the second best and fore dollars for the best jumper and two for the secon best.

Despite their efforts to keep some sense of celebration for the day, most soldiers’ thoughts turned toward home and to those who celebrated Christmas without them. For these soldiers, many of whom had never been away from home, the day filled their hearts with longing:

You have no idea how lonesome I feel this day… I presume you are in New Orleans and in a few hours the house will be astir—the children crazy over their stockings. Were I there, I’d fill them up to the brim with bon-bons—I’d make them think for one day that plenty abounded, that no war existed, and that each was a King or Queen.
-James Holloway, 18th Mississippi Regiment, Christmas Day

The primary source for this article was We Were Marching on Christmas Day by Kevin Rawlings, Toomey Press (Baltimore, Maryland), 1996.

Photo credit: Santa Claus in Camp” by Thomas Nast. Cover of "Harper’s Weekly" Jan. 3, 1863.