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Chargement... Christmas Holidays; or, A Visit at Home (1827)par American Sunday-School Union
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Although I wouldn't exactly say that I enjoyed reading Christmas Holidays; or, A Visit at Home for its own sake, it was quite fascinating, in that it opened up a window into the children's books being produced in the United States in the early nineteenth century. Most, if not all of these books were religious in nature, and the American Sunday-School Union was an influential publisher in the field. The didactic intention here is fairly obvious - unlike the current day, when our (inevitable) didacticism is kept hidden, the creators of children's books at that time saw nothing at all problematic in the idea that children's literature was meant to inculcate good (read: Christian) values - and requires little commentary. Clearly the child reader was meant to learn a lesson, not just from the story of the Barrington children's own doings - girls should be industrious little seamstresses, boys should show piety, and devotion to their mothers - but also from the extended passages in which the characters relate the Christmas story to one another. Some of the little details here - the devotion shown to General George Washington, for instance, described in the text as "the beloved father of our country" - reflect the cultural preoccupations of the day. Reverence for the Founding Fathers was a strong current in the public life of America during the 19th century, and would have been particularly strong in texts aimed at young people. After all, Parson Weems' famous biography of Washington, first published in 1800, and containing the apocryphal tale of the famous cherry tree, was partially aimed at children, and was intended (amongst other things) to instruct them in important moral values. The importance of Christian values in everyday life also comes through quite clearly, particularly as Mrs. Barrington draws lessons from the Christmas story, and illustrates them for her children in (then) contemporary ways. I'm not sure to whom I would recommend this one. Certainly not contemporary children, but perhaps to those who, like myself, have an interest in historical children's literature, and the lessons it can teach us, the modern readers, about the nature of society in the time in which it was created. ( )