Expert: Southern Christmas displays turn blind eye to slavery

Robert May Download image

WHAT: Every holiday season, former plantations and other historic sites across the South host events and guided tours to celebrate and recreate Christmas traditions during the Civil War era. Slavery, however, is often downplayed or even ignored.

EXPERT: Robert May, a professor emeritus of history at Purdue University, is author of a new book, “Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory,” on how the slave experience during Christmas has been idealized to suggest slaves were universally happy with their special gifts and privileges. Abuse, slave sales and purchases, however, all occurred during the holidays, and slaves often chose this time to run away from bondage. Many southern masters spent Christmas worrying their supposedly happy slaves would revolt, May said.

QUOTE: “Slaves’ Christmases were romanticized after the Civil War with scores of novels, short stories, newspaper stories and so on, and they continue to be romanticized to this day. During Christmas events at Southern historic sites, many of these tours don’t bring up slavery at all; they basically shove it aside. If slavery is mentioned at all, it’s rarely discussed in a deep way. People are made to feel good about the South and to feel good about Southern plantation life.”

MORE INFORMATION: May specializes in mid-19th Century history, the Civil War and the South. He also is author of the books, “Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics,” and “The Union, The Confederacy, and the Atlantic Rim.” 

Writer: Joseph Paul, 765-494-9541, paul102@purdue.edu 

Source: Robert May, 765-490-5189, mayr@purdue.edu