What Christmas Eve Was Really Like Inside a New England Farmhouse, 1880s | History for Sleep

Hey guys! We're now on Spotify 🎧 Join us here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0z2GXOz... Fall asleep to one Christmas Eve in 1885, inside a connected farmhouse on a hill farm above Glover, Vermont, where a family of six keeps 8 cows and opens its shut front parlor for a single night. In 1659 the Massachusetts Bay colony fined anyone caught keeping Christmas 5 shillings, and Massachusetts only made it a legal holiday in 1856, so the grandmother by the stove grew up without it. At Barton, butter sold for about 20 cents a pound, a fine sled cost 75 cents, an orange cost 4 to 6 cents, and a Vermont farm hand earned $16.20 a month with board. So how did a 6-year-old hope Santa Claus could come down a stovepipe, and why was the best room kept shut all winter long? Subscribe to the channel: @quiethistoricnights In this video, we talk about one Christmas Eve on a Vermont hill farm in the 1880s, including the connected farm of big house, little house, back house and barn, the woodbox at nightfall, milking 8 cows by lantern, the kitchen range and the soapstones heating at its back, supper and the kerosene lamp, the old Puritan law against Christmas, how a poem, a magazine picture and Thomas Nast's Santa Claus carried the holiday into the hills, butter money and the price of a sled, the shut parlor opened and its stove lit, a little spruce in a crock, popcorn and cranberry strings, stockings hung back of the stove, a sleigh ride to the church Christmas tree, the moon rising on the road home, the parlor's last hour, the cold chambers and the feather beds, the stockings filled, and the parlor door closed again. 🔔 Subscribe so the next long winter night of the American past is waiting for you when you need it. 💬 Tell us where you're listening from, and which you'd have chosen on Christmas Eve: the sleigh ride to the church tree or an hour alone by the parlor stove. 📢 Share this with someone who loves an old New England Christmas, on Facebook, Reddit or the family group chat. You're the reason this channel exists. Chapters: 00:00 Opening 15:39 The woodbox at nightfall 36:30 The range in the little house 57:26 Grandmother's winters without Christmas 1:18:24 The best room opened 1:38:23 Popcorn and cranberry strings 1:58:23 The tree at the meeting house 2:18:59 The parlor's last hour 2:38:48 The stockings filled 2:58:32 The house asleep end to end Sources: The Farmer's Boy, Clifton Johnson (1907) https://archive.org/details/farmersbo... Orleans County Monitor, Barton, Vermont, 28 December 1885, Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn840228... How Christmas came to Vermont, Mark Bushnell, VTDigger https://vtdigger.org/2017/12/17/chris... Christmas Celebration Outlawed, Mass Moments, Mass Humanities https://www.massmoments.org/moment-de... A New England Girlhood, Lucy Larcom (1889), Project Gutenberg https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2293 Soapstone bed warmer, Vermont Historical Society https://hub.catalogit.app/vermont-his... The 1890 Farm Manager's House, Billings Farm & Museum https://billingsfarm.org/1890-farm-ma... DISCLAIMER: This video is based on real historical events and figures, drawn from the sources listed above alongside primary archives, biographies, court records, period press, and leading historical scholarship. While every video is heavily researched, occasional minor inaccuracies in dates, quotes, or specific details may occur — historical sources sometimes disagree, and interpretation is sometimes required where the historical record is silent. Any errors are unintentional. #QuietHistoricNights #HistoryForSleep #SleepStory #BedtimeStory #History #AmericanHistory #Vermont #VermontHistory #NewEngland #NewEnglandHistory #ChristmasEve #ChristmasHistory #OldFashionedChristmas #1880s #Farmhouse #ConnectedFarm #FarmLife #Glover #OrleansCounty #WinterNight #FallAsleep #SleepAid