Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Soldiers are resourceful if nothing else, improvising in difficult circumstances; this was
especially true at holiday time when memories of home impelled them to mimic home-
cooked fare. Kentucky soldier Johnny Green told of the efforts of he and his comrades
near Murfeesboro, Tn., for Christmas of 1862.
A supply of liquor had been captured at Hartsville & from this source or some other those
who wanted whiskey had it & some of the boys were good naturedly full I regret to say. I
had gone to some farm houses … & bought some eggs & onions. I made a long hunt for a
turkey but I was too late; all the turkey in the country had been sold, but I bought a goose
& we proceeded to prepare mr goose. He was reported to be young but we were
suspicious of his age so David Caruth who undertook to cook him first par boiled him,
then stuffed him & roasted him. I made & cooked the biscuit & thought I was about to
establish a reputation as a pastry cook for I made a pound cake which looked to be a
complete success until I took it out of the oven & let it cool, then it sank in the centre &
had a very depressing sadness in it, but we enjoyed it very much …(p. 63)
Of course, soldiers’ Christmas meals were often only primitively cooked army rations,
as when Colonel Charles Haydon, 2nd Michigan Regiment, wrote, “We made Christmas
dinner on beef, hard tack & coffee. I had fortunately completed my meal when Moore
made a discovery which checked him midway in his, viz that the hard tacks were full of
bugs & worms. This was no uncommon thing of late but his wry face was the most
laughable thing of the day.”(p. 73) A Union artilleryman recounted, “25th. [December] …
I cooked a mess of baked beans. The second meal I ever cooked. Cooked them in a thin
iron pan with a sheet of iron on top covered with coals (hot of course) …”(p. 65) As for
the ever-desired egg-nog, Alabamian Samuel Pickens noted in 1862, “Ellison … was to
bring us the materials for an Egg Nog – but he sorely disappointed us in that – about the
first Christmas ever spent without nog …”(p. 70)
Other accounts tell of buying special treats from sutlers at exorbitant prices, receiving
Christmas packages from home, often with the food contents plundered or smashed,
holiday meals in prison camps, and the final Christmas celebration in the Confederate
“White House” as told by Varina Davis, the Confederacy’s First Lady.
A quote from Pennsylvania major Frederick Hitchcock allows us to finish with a bit of
soldiers’ humor:
… our bill of fare for Christmas dinner consisted of boiled rice and molasses, “Lobskous”
and stewed dried apples. The etymology of the euphonious word “Lobskous” I am unable
to give. The dish consisted of hardtack broken up and thoroughly soaked in water, then
fried in pork fat … One of the boys, to show his appreciation of this extra fare for
Christmas dinner, improvised the following blessing :
Kevin Rawlings, We Were Marching on Christmas Day: A History and Chronicle of Christmas
During the Civil War (Baltimore, Md.: Toomey Press, 1996). 170 pages, index, illustrations.
$24.95. Toomey Press, P.O. Box 122, Linthicum, Md., 21090; phone, (410) 850-0831.
For more on holiday food in the American army, see "’Happy New Year, you guys.’: A
Soldier's Holiday” (Food History News, vol. XI, no. 2 (42)).
See also, Lorraine Boissoneault, “A Civil War Cartoonist Created the Modern Image of Santa
Claus as Union Propaganda,” Smithsonian Magazine, 19 December 2018.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-cartoonist-created-modern-image-
santa-claus-union-propaganda-180971074/