Book Details:
Delaware at Christmas / The First State in a Merry State
by Dave Tabler
Category: Adult Non-Fiction, 134 pages
Genre: Christmas
Publisher: Dave Tabler
Publication Date: July 1, 2025
Content Rating: G. Family friendly throughout. No sex, violence or foul language.
Book Description:
Explore the rich tapestry of holiday traditions that have shaped the First State’s festive season across the centuries. From colonial customs to modern-day celebrations, “Delaware at Christmas” unwraps the fascinating stories behind the state’s most cherished Yuletide practices.
Discover how Delaware’s diverse communities have contributed to its unique holiday landscape:
Uncover the origins of iconic traditions like the Wilmington mummer’s parade and beach town “Christmas in July” festivities
Learn about the evolution of holiday decorations, from simple colonial adornments to elaborate Victorian displays
Explore the influence of immigrant communities, including Polish, Italian, and Hispanic holiday customs
Delve into forgotten practices like the holly wreath industry that once thrived in southern Delaware
Examine how wartime and economic shifts shaped Christmas observances throughout the state’s history
Filled with captivating anecdotes, historical photographs, and little-known facts, this book offers a comprehensive look at how Delawareans have celebrated the holiday season from the 17th century to the present day. Whether you’re a history buff, a holiday enthusiast, or simply curious about Delaware’s cultural heritage, this meticulously researched volume provides a joyous journey through time.
“Delaware at Christmas” is an essential addition to any First State bookshelf, offering:
In-depth exploration of religious and secular holiday traditions
Profiles of notable Delawareans who influenced Christmas customs
Insights into how national trends and local innovations shaped Delaware’s experiences
A treasure trove of holiday memories from generations of Delaware families
Unwrap the magic of Delaware’s Christmas past and present with this definitive guide to the state’s holiday history. Whether you’re a lifelong resident or a curious visitor, “Delaware at Christmas” promises to enrich your understanding and appreciation of the First State’s joyous spirit. Buy “Delaware at Christmas” today and embark on a joyful exploration of holiday traditions in the heart of the Mid-Atlantic!
One of the things that struck me in Delaware at Christmas is how many traditions took shape in settings beyond the family hearth—whether in factories, canneries, churches, or whole towns coming together for house tours and parades. What do you think those public and workplace traditions reveal about the way Delawareans have tried to balance private celebration with community identity?
This gets at something really important about Delaware’s character. Delawareans have consistently found ways to make Christmas both deeply personal and genuinely communal.
Take the holly wreath industry – families worked in their own homes making wreaths, but it was part of a larger economic network that connected rural Sussex County to cities like New York and Philadelphia. The Christmas Seal campaign started with Emily Bissell’s personal connection to tuberculosis through her cousin, but she deliberately took it to the post offices, making it a public health effort that anyone could join for just a penny.
The immigrant communities show this balance particularly well. Polish families preserved their intimate Wigilia suppers at home, but they also created public spaces like the oplatek and kolędy events at St. Hedwig’s Church where the broader Wilmington community could experience these traditions. The Italian Feast of Seven Fishes remained a private family affair, but Italian restaurant owners shared elements of it publicly.
Even the mumming tradition, before it was banned, was about taking private revelry into public spaces – going door to door, performing in streets. When authorities shut that down, Delawareans eventually channeled that energy into Halloween parades and later the satirical Hummers Parade in Middletown.
What strikes me is that Delawareans didn’t see private and public celebration as competing forces. They seemed to understand that traditions needed both intimate family moments and broader community expression to really thrive. The Christmas house tours are perfect examples – private homes opened to strengthen community bonds while raising money for local causes.
Rather than reflecting a single community approach, these patterns suggest that across Delaware’s diverse populations, many groups – though certainly not all – found ways to extend their holiday traditions beyond the family circle when circumstances and inclinations aligned.
So often these traditions carried a sense of ingenuity—whether it was soaking a Yule log to make a holiday last longer, or turning IBM punch cards into wreaths. Why do you think creativity and adaptation play such a recurring role in Delaware’s Christmas story?
The examples in the book do show repeated instances of creative adaptation, though they stem from different motivations. The soaked Yule log that former slave Jeremiah “Old Jerry” Deputy described came from necessity – enslaved people got a holiday only “as long as the log lasted,” so they found ways to make it burn longer. That’s survival ingenuity under constrained circumstances.
The IBM punch card wreaths represent a different kind of creativity – mid-century Americans domesticating new computer technology by turning office waste into familiar holiday decorations. Companies like DuPont were generating millions of these cards, creating abundant raw material for crafters.
Harold Follett’s “ThunderStreak” toy shows another kind of innovation – a Wilmington teacher who turned his college experiments with amphibious air boats into a patented design that Ideal Toy Corporation marketed nationally. He adapted cutting-edge hydrofoil technology into something children could enjoy.
Some creativity emerged from practical necessity. When German immigrants couldn’t afford whole Christmas trees, families would use single decorated branches instead. The mistletoe harvesters developed increasingly sophisticated climbing techniques, moving from dangerous hickory switches to telephone lineman-style “creepers” with spikes.
Religious communities adapted traditions to new circumstances. The Moravian lovefeast found new life in Delaware’s Methodist and Presbyterian churches, with some congregations adding brass quartets to honor the original trombone traditions. Orthodox Christians maintained their Julian calendar celebrations while gradually incorporating bilingual services for American-born generations.
Rather than reflecting some inherent Delaware trait, these innovations seem to emerge from the intersection of available resources, economic pressures, and the universal human tendency to make traditions work within whatever constraints people face.
Some customs in the book seem to resist change—like Amish families deliberately keeping Christmas unadorned, or Irish Catholic households insisting on lighting the Christmas candle year after year. How do you see that tension between preserving older ways and adapting new ones shaping Delaware’s holiday history?
That tension plays out differently across Delaware’s various communities, and the book shows it’s not simply a matter of “old” versus “new.” Some groups maintained strict boundaries around change for theological reasons, while others selectively preserved certain elements while adapting others.
The Amish example you mention reflects a deliberate religious stance – they viewed elaborate Christmas decorations as worldly distractions from the holiday’s spiritual meaning. But even they weren’t completely static. The book notes they observed “Old Christmas” on January 6th rather than December 25th, and some families who owned shops catering to non-Amish customers did adopt modest decorations.
The Irish Catholic candle tradition represents a different kind of preservation – families like the Mulherns maintained the practice of lighting candles in windows, though they adapted it for safety by moving the candle from the doorway to the dining room table. They kept the symbolic meaning while adjusting the practical details.
What’s striking is how some communities used preservation as a form of resistance or identity maintenance. The Quakers completely rejected Christmas celebrations as potentially heretical, viewing them as Catholic excesses, and this stance persisted even as other Protestant denominations gradually embraced the holiday. French Huguenots maintained their preference for giving lasting rather than consumable gifts, a practice that distinguished them from their English and Dutch neighbors who typically gave food and drink.
The book also shows how external pressures could force tradition to either bend or break. Christmas Savings Clubs thrived for decades but virtually disappeared by 2006 when credit cards, inflation, and digital banking made them obsolete. The eggnog tradition shifted from being viewed as medicine “for the sick” to becoming a festive indulgence, showing how the same practice could survive by completely changing its cultural meaning.
The question wasn’t whether to change, but what was essential to preserve and what could be modified without losing core meaning.
In Delaware at Christmas you draw heavily on newspapers, oral histories, and even folklore bulletins. How did working with those kinds of sources shape the way you told the story? Did you find yourself writing more as a cultural historian, or sometimes almost as a folklorist trying to capture how people remembered their Christmases?
Those sources really shaped both the content and the tone of the book in ways that sometimes pulled in different directions. Newspaper accounts gave me the official version – when papers covered outdoor Christmas lighting competitions or reported on handbell choir performances, I was getting the public face of these traditions, often filtered through editors who wanted to present positive community stories.
But the oral histories revealed something quite different. When Hetty Francke talked about maintaining authentic Dutch Sinterklaas celebrations in Arden, I was hearing personal memory and lived experience. These voices often contradicted or complicated the newspaper narratives.
The folklore bulletins, like Ruthanna Hindes’ 1952 piece on Old Christmas beliefs, sat somewhere in between – they were scholarly attempts to document what people actually believed and practiced, not what institutions wanted them to believe. Hindes writing about cattle kneeling at midnight was capturing genuine folk belief, even if she approached it academically.
Working with these different source types meant constantly weighing official accounts against personal recollections. When newspapers covered Christmas card etiquette rules, I had to ask whether that reflected how people actually behaved or just how etiquette columnists thought they should behave.
The most revealing moments came when sources contradicted each other. A 1901 newspaper article about Old Christmas painted this romanticized picture of rural Sussex County, complete with problematic “Lost Cause” imagery. But Hindes’ later academic treatment of the same customs was much more objective, focused on documenting beliefs without the nostalgic embellishment.
I found myself shifting between roles depending on the material – being a cultural historian when analyzing the decline of sleigh bell usage, but becoming more of a folklorist when trying to understand why people believed mistletoe had magical properties or maintained wassail toasting rituals.
Let’s end with the present moment. After immersing yourself in centuries of Delaware’s Christmas traditions—sacred and secular, preserved and adapted—what do you hope readers will carry forward into their own holidays? In other words, when someone finishes Delaware at Christmas and then looks around their own table or community gathering, what perspective do you hope lingers with them?
I hope readers come away with an appreciation for how traditions work – not as museum pieces to be preserved unchanged, but as living practices that communities actively shape to meet their needs. “Delaware at Christmas” shows that the most enduring traditions weren’t those that remained rigid, but those that found ways to adapt while keeping their essential meaning intact.
What strikes me most is how many of these customs emerged from people solving immediate problems – families needing seasonal income, communities wanting to include newcomers, individuals trying to maintain identity while fitting into new circumstances. The traditions that lasted weren’t necessarily the most elaborate or well-funded, but those that served real human needs for connection, meaning, and belonging.
When readers look around their own holiday gatherings, I hope they see both the weight of inherited customs and their own agency in shaping what comes next. Every family dinner, every decoration choice, every way of including or adapting traditions for changing circumstances – these are all part of the same ongoing process the book documents.
I’d want them to feel less pressure about doing things “correctly” and more curiosity about why certain practices matter to them. What needs do your holiday traditions serve? How might they evolve to better include new family members, changing circumstances, or community growth? The people in “Delaware at Christmas” weren’t necessarily trying to preserve Delaware Christmas traditions – they were just trying to create meaningful celebrations for their families and communities.
The traditions we have now are the result of countless small decisions made by ordinary people. Readers today are making those same kinds of decisions, whether they realize it or not. That’s both the responsibility and the opportunity of being part of this continuing story.
Meet Author Dave Tabler:
Ten year old Dave Tabler decided he was going to read the ‘R’ volume from the family’s World Book Encyclopedia set over summer vacation. He never made it from beginning to end. He did, however, become interested in Norman Rockwell, rare-earth elements, and Run for the Roses.
Tabler’s father encouraged him to try his hand at taking pictures with the family camera. With visions of Rockwell dancing in his head, Tabler press-ganged his younger brother into wearing a straw hat and sitting next to a stream barefoot with a homemade fishing pole in his hand. The resulting image was terrible.
Dave Tabler went on to earn degrees in art history and photojournalism despite being told he needed a ‘Plan B.’
Fresh out of college, Tabler contributed the photography for “The Illustrated History of American Civil War Relics,” which taught him how to work with museum curators, collectors, and white cotton gloves. He met a man in the Shenandoah Valley who played the musical saw, a Knoxville fellow who specialized in collecting barbed wire, and Tom Dickey, brother of the man who wrote ‘Deliverance.’
In 2006 Tabler circled back to these earlier encounters with Appalachian culture as an idea for a blog. AppalachianHistory.net today reaches 375,000 readers a year.
Dave Tabler moved to Delaware in 2010 and became smitten with its rich past. He no longer copies Norman Rockwell, but his experience working with curators and collectors came in handy when he got the urge to photograph a love letter to Delaware’s early heritage. This may be the start of something.
connect with the author: website ~ X ~ facebook ~ pinterest ~ instagram ~ goodreads
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