CHAPTER XHOLIDAYS

The most important holidays of the early years of the colony were, apparently, New Year’s Day and May Day, for we find them named through frequent legislation about rioting on these days, repairing of damages, etc. It has been said that New Yorkers owe to the Dutch an everlasting gratitude for our high-stoop houses and the delights of over two centuries of New Year’s calling. The latter custom lived long and happily in our midst, died a lingering and lamented death, is still much honored in our memory, and its extinction deeply deplored and unwillingly accepted.

The observance of New Year’s Day was, without doubt, followed by both Dutch and English from the earliest settlement. We know that Governor Stuyvesant received New Year’s calls, and we also know that heprohibited excessive “drunken drinking,” unnecessary firing of guns, and all disorderly behavior on that day. The reign of the English did not abolish New Year’s visits; and we find Charles Wolley, an English chaplain, writing in his journal in New York in 1701, of the addition of the English custom of exchange of gifts:—

“The English in New York observed one anniversary custom and that without superstition, I mean the strenarum commercium, as Suetonius calls them, a neighborly commerce of presents every New Year’s Day. Some would send me a sugar-loaf, some a pair of gloves, some a bottle or two of wine.”

A further celebration of the day by men in New York was by going in parties to Beekman’s Swamp to shoot at turkeys.

New Year’s calling was a new fashion to General Washington when he came to New York to live for a short time, but he adopted it with approval; and his New Year’s Receptions were imposing functions.

For a long time the New Year was ushered in, in country towns, with great noise as well as rejoicing. All through the day groups of men would go from house to house firingsalutes, and gathering gradually into large parties by recruits from each house until the end of the day was spent in firing at a mark. The Legislature in March, 1773, attempted to stop the gun-firing, asserting that “great damages are frequently done on the eve of the last day of December and on the first and second days of January by persons going from house to house with guns and other firearms.” In 1785 a similar enactment was passed by the State Legislature.

In the palmiest days of New Year’s calling, New York City appeared one great family reunion. Every wheeled vehicle in the town seemed to be loaded with visitors going from house to house. Great four and six horse stages packed with hilarious mobs of men went to the house of every acquaintance of every one in the stage. Target companies had processions; political bodies called on families whose head was well known in political life. The newspaper-carriers brought out addresses yards long with rhymes:—

“The day devoted is to mirth,And now around the social hearthFriendship unlocks her genial springs,And Harmony her lyre now strings.While plenty spreads her copious hoard,And piles and crowns the festive board,”

“The day devoted is to mirth,

And now around the social hearth

Friendship unlocks her genial springs,

And Harmony her lyre now strings.

While plenty spreads her copious hoard,

And piles and crowns the festive board,”

etc., etc., for hundreds of lines.

The “copious hoard” of substantial food, with decanters of wine, bowls of milk punch, and pitchers of egg-nog, no longer “crown the festive board” on New Year’s Day; but we still have New Year’s Cakes, though not delivered by singing bakers’ ’prentices as of yore.

May Day was observed in similar fashion,—by firing of guns, gay visiting, and also by the rearing of maypoles.

A very early mention of a maypole is in June, 1645, when one William Garritse had “sung a libellous song” against Rev. Francis Doughty, the preacher at Flushing, Long Island, and was sentenced in punishment therefor to be tied to the maypole, which in June was still standing. Stuyvesant again forbade “drunken drinking,” and firing of guns and planting of maypoles, as productive of bad practices. I don’t know whether the delight of my childhood, and of generations of children in Old and New England up to this present May Day on which I am now writing,—the hanging of May baskets,—ever made happy children in New York.

There was some observance in New York of Shrovetide as a holiday-time. As early as 1657 we find the sober Beverwyck burghers deliberating on “some improprieties committed at the house of Albert de Timmerman on Shrovetide last.” As was the inevitable custom followed by the extremely uninventive brain of the seventeenth and eighteenth century rioter, were he Dutch or English, these “improprieties” took the form of the men’s parading in women’s clothes; Pieter Semiensen was one of the masqueraders. Two years later the magistrates were again investigating the “unseemly and scandalous” celebration of Shrovetide; and as ever before, the youth of early Albany donned women’s clothes and “marched as mountebanks,” as the record says, just as they did in Philadelphia and Baltimore and even in sober Boston. We find also for sale in Beverwyck at this time, noisy Shrovetide toys—rommelerytiens, little “rumbling-pots,” which the youth and children doubtless keenly enjoyed.

At an early date Shrovetide observances, such as “pulling the goose,” were prohibited by Governor Stuyvesant in New York. A mild protest on the part of some of theburgomasters against this order of the Governor brought forth one of Stuyvesant’s characteristically choleric edicts in answer, in which he speaks of having “interdicted and forbidden certain farmers’ servants to ride the goose at the feast of Backus and Shrovetide ... because it is altogether unprofitable, unnecessary, and criminal for subjects and neighbors to celebrate such pagan and popish feasts and to practise such customs, notwithstanding the same may in some places of Fatherland be tolerated and looked at through the fingers.” Domine Blom, of Kingston or Wyltwyck, joined in the governor’s dislike of the game. But there were some of the magistrates who liked very well to “pull the goose” themselves, so it is said. It was a cruel amusement. The thoroughly greased goose was hung between two poles, and the effort of the sport was to catch, snatch away, and hold fast the poor creature while passing at great speed. In Albany in 1677 all “Shrovetide misdemeanors were prohibited, viz.: riding at a goose, cat, hare, and ale.” The fine was twenty-five guilders in sea-want. What the cat, hare, and ale part of the sport was, I do not know.

In New York by the middle of the eighteenth century Shrove Tuesday was firmly assigned to cocking-mains. The De Lanceys were patrons of this choice old English sport. Cock-gaffs of silver and steel were freely offered for sale in New York and Maryland newspapers, and on Shrove Tuesday in 1770 Jacob Hiltzeheimer attended a famous cock-fight on the Germantown road. We cannot blame honest New Yorkers if they did not rise above such rude sports, when cock-fighting and cock-throwing and cock-squoiling and cock-steling obtained everywhere in Old England at Shrovetide; when school-boys had cock-fights in their school-rooms; and in earlier days good and learned old Roger Ascham ruined himself by betting on cock-fights, and Sir Thomas More boasted proudly of his skill in “casting a cock-stele.”

Mr. Gabriel Furman, writing in 1846, told of an extraordinary observance of Saint Valentine’s Day by the Dutch—one I think unknown in folk-lore—which obtained on Long Island among the early settlers. It was calledVrouwen dagh, or Women’s day, and was thus celebrated: Every young girl sallied forth in the morning armed with a heavy cord withknotted end. She gave to every young man whom she met several smart lashes with the knotted cord. Perhaps these were “love-taps,” and were given with no intent of stinging. Judge Egbert Benson wrote, in 1816, that in New York this custom dwindled to a similar Valentine observance by New York children, when the girls chased the boys with many blows. In one school the boys asked for aMannen daghin which to repay the girls’ stinging lashes. I hazard a “wide solution,” as Sir Thomas Browne says, that this custom is a commemorative survival of an event in the life of Saint Valentine, one of the two traditions which are all we know of his life, that about the year 270 he was “first beaten with heavy clubs and then beheaded.”

The English brought a political holiday to New York. In the code of laws given to the province in 1665, and known as “The Duke’s Laws,” each minister throughout the province was ordered to preach a sermon on November 5, to commemorate the English deliverance from Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot in 1605.

From an early entry in the “New York Gazette” of November 7, 1737, we learn howit was celebrated that year, and find that illuminations, as in England, formed part of the day’s remembrance. Bonfires, fantastic processions, and “burning a Guy” formed, in fact, the chief English modes of celebration.

“Saturday last, being the fifth of November, it was observed here in Memory of that horrid and Treasonable Popish Gun-Powder Plot to blow up and destroy King, Lords and Commons, and the Gentlemen of his Majesty’s Council; the Assembly and Corporation and other the principal Gentlemen and Merchants of this City waited upon his Honor the Lieutenant-Governor at Fort George, where the Royal Healths were drunk, as usual, under the discharge of the Cannon, and at the Night the city was illuminated.”

All through the English provinces bonfires were burned, effigies were carried in procession, mummers and masqueraders thronged the streets and invaded the houses singing Pope Day rhymes, and volleys of guns were fired. In some New England towns the boys still have bonfires on November 5th.

In the year 1765 the growing feeling with regard to the Stamp Act chancing to come to a climax in the late autumn, producedin New York a very riotous observance of Pope’s Day. The demonstrations really began on November 1st, which was termed “The Last Day of Liberty.” In the evening a mob gathered, “designing to execute some foolish ceremony of burying Liberty,” but it dispersed with noise and a few broken windows. The next night a formidable mob gathered, “carrying candles and torches in their hands, and now and then firing a pistol at the Effigy which was carried in a Chair.” Then the effigy was set in the Governor’s chariot, which was taken out of the Fort. They made a gallows and hung on it an effigy of the Governor and one of the Devil, and carried it to the Fort, over which insult soldiers and officers were wonderfully patient. Finally, gallows, chariot and effigies were all burnt in the Bowling Green. The mob then ransacked Major James’s house, eating, drinking, destroying, till £1500 of damage was done. The next day it was announced that the delivery and destruction of the stamps would be demanded. In the evening the mob started out again, with candles and a barber’s block dressed in rags. The rioters finally dispersed at the entreaties ofmany good citizens,—among them Robert R. Livingstone, who wrote the letter from which this account is taken. In 1774, November 5th was still a legal holiday.

There still exists in New York a feeble and divided survival of the processions and bonfires of Guy Fawkes Day. The police-prohibited bonfires of barrels on election night, and the bedraggled parade of begging boys on Thanksgiving Day are our reminders to-day of this old English holiday.

There was one old-time holiday beloved of New Yorkers whose name is now almost forgotten,—Pinkster Day. This name was derived from the Dutch word for Pentecost, and must have been used at a very early date; for in a Dutch book of sermons, written by Adrian Fischer, and printed in 1667, the title of one sermon reads:Het Eersts Tractact; Van de Uystortnge des Yeyligen Geests over de Apostelen op ben Pinckster Dagh,—a sermon upon the story of the Descent of the Holy Ghost on the Apostles on Pinkster Day.

The Jewish feast of Pentecost was observed on the fiftieth day after the celebration of the Passover, and is the same as the Christianholy-day Whitsunday, which is connected with its Jewish predecessor historically (as is so beautifully told in the second chapter of Acts), and intrinsically through its religious signification. The week following Whitsunday has been observed with great honor and rejoicing in many lands, but in none more curiously, more riotously, than in old New York, and to some extent in Pennsylvania and Maryland; and, more strangely still, that observance was chiefly by an alien, a heathen race,—the negroes. It was one of our few distinctively American folk-customs, and its story has been told by many writers of that day, and should not now be forgotten. Nowhere was it a more glorious festival than at Albany, among the sheltered, the cherished slave population in that town and its vicinity. The celebration was held on Capitol Hill, then universally known as Pinkster Hill. Munsell gives this account of the day:—

“Pinkster was a great day, a gala day, or rather week, for they used to keep it up a week among the darkies. The dances were the original Congo dances as danced in their native Africa. They had a chief,—Old King Charley. The old settlerssaid Charley was a prince in his own country, and was supposed to have been one hundred and twenty-five years old at the time of his death. On these festivals old Charley was dressed in a strange and fantastical costume; he was nearly barelegged, wore a red military coat trimmed profusely with variegated ribbons, and a small black hat with a pompon stuck on one side. The dances and antics of the darkies must have afforded great amusement for the ancient burghers. As a general thing, the music consisted of a sort of drum, or instrument constructed out of a box with sheepskin heads, upon which old Charley did most of the beating, accompanied by singing some queer African air. Charley generally led off the dance, when the Sambos and Phillises, juvenile and antiquated, would put in the double-shuffle heel-and-toe break-down. These festivals seldom failed to attract large crowds from the city, as well as from the rural districts.”

Dr. Eights, of Albany, wrote still further reminiscences of the day. He said that, strangely enough, though all the booths and sports opened on Monday, white curiosity-seekers were, on that first day, the chief visitors to Pinkster Hill. On Tuesday the blacks all appeared, and the consumption of gingerbread, cider, and applejack began.Adam Blake, a truly elegant creature, the body-servant of the old patroon Van Rensselaer, was master of the ceremonies. Charley, the King, was a “Guinea man” from Angola,—and I have noted the fact that nearly all African-born negroes who became leaders in this country, or men of marked note in any way, have been Guinea men. He wore portions of the costume of a British general, and had the power of an autocrat,—his will was law. Dr. Eights says the Pinkster musical instruments were eel-pots covered with dressed sheepskin, on which the negroes pounded with their bare hands, as do all savage nations on their tom-toms. Their song had an African refrain, “Hi-a-bomba-bomba-bomba.” Other authorities state that the dance was called the “Toto Dance,” and partook so largely of savage license that at last the white visitors shunned being present during its performance.

These Pinkster holidays became such bacchanalian revels in other ways that in 1811 the Common Council of Albany prohibited the erection of booths and all dancing, gaming, and drinking at that time; and when the negroes could not dance nor drink, it wasbut a sorry holiday, and quickly fell into desuetude.

Executions were held on Pinkster Hill, and other public punishments took place there.

In the realm of fiction we find evidence of the glories of Pinkster Day in New York. Cooper, in his “Satanstoe,” tells of its observance in New York City. He calls it the saturnalia of the blacks, and says that they met on what we now know as City Hall Park, and that the negroes came for thirty or forty miles around to join in the festivities.

On Long Island Pinkster Day was widely observed. The blacks went, on the week previous to the celebration, to Brooklyn and New York to sell sassafras and swingling-tow, to earn their scanty spending-money for Pinkster. They were everywhere freely given their time for rioting, and domestic labor was performed by the masters and mistresses; but they had to provide their own spending-money for gingerbread and rum. They gathered around the old market in Brooklyn near the ferry, dancing for eels, blowing fish-horns, eating and drinking.The following morning the judge’s office was full of sorry blacks, hauled up for “disorderly conduct.”

On Long Island the Dutch residents also made the day a festival, “going to pinkster fields for pinkster frolics,” exchanging visits, and drinking schnapps, and eating “soft-wafels” together. About twelve years ago, while driving through Flatlands and New Lots one beautiful day in May, I met a group of young men driving from door to door of the farm-houses, in wagons gayly dressed with branches of dogwood blossoms, and entering each house for a short visit. I asked whether a wedding or a festival were being held in the town, and was answered that it was an old Dutch custom to make visits that week. I tried to learn whence this observance came, but no one knew its reason for being, or what holiday was observed. Poor Pinkster! still vaguely honored as a shadow, a ghost of the past, but with your very name forgotten, even among the children of those who gave to you in this land a name and happy celebration!

Various wild flowers were known as Pinkster flowers. The beautiful azalea that oncebloomed—indeed does still bloom—so plentifully throughout New York in May, was universally known as “pinkster flower” or “pinkster bloom,” and along the banks of the Hudson till our own day was called “pinkster blummachee.” The traveller Kalm noted it in 1740, and called it by that name. Mrs. Vanderbilt calls it “pinkster bloomitze.” I was somewhat surprised to hear a Rhode Island farmer, in the summer of 1893, ask me whether he should not pick me “some pinkster blossoms,” pointing at the same time to the beautiful swamp pink that flushed with rosy glow the tangles of vines and bushes on the edge of the Narragansett woods. It is interesting to know that by many authorities the name “pink,” of our common garden flower, is held to be derived from the DutchPinkster, GermanPfingsten, and owes its name, not to its pink color, but to the season of its blooming. In other localities in New York and New Jersey the blue flag or iris was known as “pinkster bloom.”

Throughout New England the black residents, free and in bondage, held high holiday one day in May, or in some localitiesduring the first week in June; but the day of revelry was everywhere called “Nigger ’Lection.” In Puritandom the observance of Whitsunday was believed to have “superstition writ on its forehead;” but Election Day was a popular and properly Puritanical May holiday; therefore the negro holiday took a similar name, and the “Black Governor” was elected on the week following the election of the white Governor, usually on Saturday.

There was some celebration of days of thanksgiving in New Netherland as in Holland; they were known by a peculiar double name, fast-prayer and thank-day. These days did not develop among the Dutch in the new world into the position of importance they held among English colonists. In 1644 the first public Thanksgiving Day whose record has come down to us was proclaimed in gratitude for the safe return of the Dutch warriors after a battle with the Connecticut Indians on Strickland’s Plains near Stamford. A second Thanksgiving service was announced for the 6th of September, 1645, whereon God was to be “specially thanked, praised, and blessed for suffering” the long-wished-forpeace with the Indians. This service was held on Wednesday, which was usually the chosen day of the week. In 1654, at a Thanksgiving ordered on account of the peace established between England and the Netherlands, services were to be held in the morning; the citizens were to be permitted “to indulge in all moderate festivities and rejoicings as the event recommends and their Situation Shall permit.” That these festivities were not always decorous is shown by the fining and punishment of some young lads for drunkenness on one Thanksgiving Day.

Various were the causes of the commemorative services: peace between Spain and the Fatherland; the prosperity of the province, its peace, increased people, and trade; a harvest of self-sown grain (the fields having been deserted for fear of Indians). In 1664 Domine Brown, of Wyltwyck, asked for an established annual Thanksgiving; but there are no records to show that this desire was carried out, though from 1690 to 1710 they were held almost every year.

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