Christmas in America wasn't always the huge festive cultural movement we know today. The Puritans made the celebration of Christmas illegal. They thought such demonstrations were sacrilegious.
In the early days of the Republic, the holiday was associated more with Catholics and was not as important in New England. That sentiment began to change in the 1800s, and by the start of the Civil War, there were glimmerings of what Christmas would become.

“There was an interest in Santa Claus. There was some shopping, but there was not an emphasis that we certainly see today,” said Bill Kemp, librarian at the McLean County Museum of History. "Maxwell and Reidel Huber — that was a book and stationery store on the west side of the courthouse square — had an advertisement in the local press that read, look out for Santa Claus, as it advertised its wares, from photo albums to Bibles. So, the fact that Santa Claus is being used in 1861 tells us that traditions are being established in this country.”
The first Civil War Christmas — in 1861 — was a white Christmas until very late on Christmas Day, when the snow began to melt. The war started in April, with the capitulation of Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Three months later, Confederate forces defeated Union troops at the first battle of Bull Run, dispelling the pipedream that the conflict would be a short and relatively bloodless victory for the north.
“It's not surprising that it was a rather somber December 25, 1861, as the North buckled down for what people were realizing would be a much longer conflict than they had anticipated,” Kemp said.
On that day, Isaiah Wilmeth, captain of Company C of the 39th Illinois Volunteer Infantry Regiment, wrote a letter home [excerpted below]. It took a week or so get back to Bloomington and The Pantagraph newspaper picked it up.
“It was not uncommon during the Civil War for soldiers to write back to their hometown newspaper to let the home front know of news from the front lines and also family members would sometimes send Letters written from their soldier boys to the local paper and get that published as well,” Kemp said.
Headquarters, Camp Alpine, Hancock station, Virginia, December 25, 1861.
We're on the sacred soil of Virginia, opposite Hancock, Maryland, comfortably quartered in a very fine home of a secess house, the man our prisoner. He has many fine things of which we make free use. We're the advance guard of general Kelly's division on the Potomac. Night before last, Lieutenant Lord of Company C from Pontiac, Lieutenant Haldeman, about 40 privates, and myself took a scout into secess, where Union men have of late not dared to tread. Our main business was to take a prisoner and his property. We got four cows and various things in the way of bed, comforts, poultry and miniatures of the persons of whom we were in search for there were others beside the one first mentioned in whom we had an interest. I also have a small piece of poetry composed by Mr. E.C. Ryder. As you will see, we found the valuable composition in a secess house, which had been vacated as if to receive us especially. We walked about 30 miles. The ground was covered with sleet, and we were all played out in the morning, about six o'clock on our return.

We'll have another trip soon, perhaps a good fight. We're quite ready for it. Let it come. We're armed with many muskets, new ones, good for 1,000 yards, Captain Gray of Pontiac, and Lieutenant Sellers of my company, have gone out tonight with 50 men, about five miles to take care of two companies of secess Calvary, who are said to be in the neighborhood of a watering place of the B&O RR. We double-quicked to two different places to meet 4,000 of the FFV, but they fail to come to time for reasons to me unknown.
This being Christmas night, we're having a small feast of good things, such as we could find on this rock-bound shore where we have to take two looks to see the tops of the mountains. One thing more, I can't help noticing that as we advance, many secessionists suddenly become the best of union men, and they say they always were for the Union. We can place confidence in none of them, till we try them.
Will write to you again soon. We expect to move soon and take a camp of secess if we can. And of course, we think we can. But rather than weary you with much talk, I will close for the present, remaining as ever, your sincere friend, Isaiah Wilmeth.
The 39th spent most of the early months of 1862 in Martinsburg, in present day West Virginia. The regiment suffered from sickness and exposure.
“One of the regimental histories reports the 39th really struggling. ‘These days and weeks will ever be remembered as being more terrible than were those in which the enemy was confronted on the battlefield.’ By the end of the war, the 39th had suffered, 141 killed in action, or who had died of battlefield wounds, but another 132 from camp-borne diseases such as typhoid and dysentery. In all, the regiment suffered 273 casualties during the war,” Kemp said.
Wilmeth was a confectioner in Bloomington. He received an honorable discharge at Fredericksburg during the war because of an illness.
Later, he regained his health and formed a company and a new regiment, the 146th, and spent the remainder of the war on Garrison duty in Illinois.
“After the war, he returned to Bloomington and his candy-making business, and will die in 1920 at the age of 90. We have in the collections of the McLean County Museum of History some neat items donated by the Wilmeth family, including his discharge certificate from July 8, 1865,” Kemp said.
Christmas in Bloomington was different than on the contested battlefield of Virginia. The volunteer Prairie Bird Engine Company No. 1 staged their annual ball on Christmas Eve.
“That would be the forerunner to what we know today as the Bloomington Fire Department. It was an all-volunteer engine company,” said Kemp. “The local press noted the evening of the Prairie Bird ball was marked by quote, ‘decorum and propriety,’ which tells you that past balls had been quite rowdy affairs.”
Then, as now, Christmas was not easy for those in privation. The newspaper in 1861 noted, in particular, the plight of a mother and her six children whose father had gone for a soldier, Kemp said.
"The Mother is sick and the family [is] in want of most everything. A little aid would be an act of mercy," wrote The Pantagraph.
McHistory is a co-production of WGLT and the McLean County Museum of History.