Holidays not only celebrate our culture and religion but bring generations of family and friends to the table. For these occasions, we take out our special china, prepare traditional meals, and decorate our home with meaningful objects, many passed down through the generations or more recently purchased to create new family traditions.

While many of the traditions we honor at Christmas time today may go back several generations within our family, the truth is that the modern, commercialized Christmas we celebrate today did not emerge as the unifying national holiday it is today until the first half of the 19th century when Americans began to reinvent the holiday by combining ancient Christmas traditions from different cultures with modern American influences.

Learn more about your favorite holiday traditions in the December issue:

Prefer to read offline? Download the December Journal of Antiques using the link below

Download the December issue here to print out: December Issue