Faith Works 12-15-23

Faith Works 12-15-23
Jeff Gill

Christmas here has roots elsewhere, going deep
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A few days before Christmas, 1864, a local lad made good, Lancaster's own William Tecumseh Sherman, sent a telegram to his commander-in-chief Abraham Lincoln saying to him: "I beg to present you, as a Christmas gift, the city of Savannah, with 150 heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, and also about 25,000 bales of cotton."

The 76th Ohio Volunteer Infantry, "The Licking Volunteers," had seen hard service from Chattanooga to Atlanta and then on the March to the Sea across Georgia, culminating in Sherman's gift to his president. Perhaps their worst day as a fighting force had been a year before, just as the Army of the Tennessee had set foot in Georgia, at Ringgold Gap where their colors had been taken by the Confederate opposition, and many brave soldiers had fallen.

You can continue to learn about the proud history of the 76th O.V.I. in Doug Stout's excellent columns about the soldiers, often telling their stories in their own words. But suffice it to say that of 900 some soldiers who marched out of the Great Circle Fairgrounds where they trained as 1862 began, there were no more than 300 of those original troops left by the end of 1864, between those killed or wounded.

What has me reaching over into this Civil War story is the reality of that Christmas in Savannah, as 1864 was ending, but the conflict far from over. They would still wear their uniforms halfway into 1865 before the Grand Review in Washington the next spring, and it would be summer before the soldiers and officers of the 76th would return to civilian life.

Christmas, 1864 that was all still uncertain. Many of the "old soldiers" had taken leave back home, but always so brief, then back to the front. Home was far away, and the encampments around Savannah in the respite before the new year's fighting were a home of sorts for the XV Corps and its First Division.

Around them in that year end encampment were other soldiers from Illinois and Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota. Troops from Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts weren't far off, digging in for a short season of stability, building their temporary homes around the perimeter of this southern city which did not love them.

So, the soldiers looked out for each other. They shared foodstuffs, coffee, tobacco, likely some rum or other spirits at times (but unofficially that last). Like soldiers throughout the ages, they told their war stories to audiences that best understood them, and who knew what was left unsaid. They sang songs and occasionally were satisfied with silences around their flickering campfires in the long nights through Christmas Eve.

It is said, by others who have delved more deeply than I into the records and accounts of American history around Christmas, that the roots of Christmas trees as a truly national custom go back into those encampments. Before 1864, there were groups, especially German ethnic communities, who marked Dec. 24th by cutting down a live tree and bringing it inside for decoration and the day of Christmas. But greenery, evergreen boughs and holly and mistletoe, were more widely used. Trees in the parlor? They were fairly uncommon . . . until after the Civil War.

It appears that on those cold nights, watching their Germanic fellows from eastern states or some of the Nordic troops around the upper Great Lakes all making a point of cutting down a pine and dragging it into their encampment, covering it with ribbons and streamers, and attaching what candles they could find: something struck a chord.

Come Christmas 1865, families all across the United States, and some Licking County veterans I am sure, chose to repeat the custom they'd first seen by firelight within their camps, now by lamplight in their homes. A Christmas tree, with connections now not just to the holiday, but to the fellowship of service in the Civil War.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's got a little tree up even amongst many distractions from the season. Tell him your decorating customs at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads.