A Lowcountry Christmas

The Lowcountry, despite its (usual) lack of snow or frosty temperatures, has a solid claim to the most cherished Christmas traditions and symbols. For starters, the joy and color of the Christmas season wouldn't be the same without the brilliant red and green of the Poinsettia (Euphorbia pulcherimma); and it was a native Charlestonian who first introduced the plant to the United States.

Joel Roberts Poinsett was the first United States minister to Mexico in the 1820's. Sent south by President James Monroe to report on troubling political unrest in Mexico and to negotiate a new border treaty, Poinsett first encountered the plant Mexicans called flor de nochebuena, or Christmas Eve flower, in a farming area south of Mexico City, where it had been cultivated for generations. Poinsett was an avid botanist and sent samples of the striking plant back home, where it was named in his honor.

Its association with Christmas is said to have begun in 16th-century Mexico, when a poor little girl unable to afford decorations for her church's celebration of the Nativity was told by an angel to gather weeds by the roadside, which soon sprouted bright red, star-shaped flowers and green leaves. The flowers' shape became associated with the Star of Bethlehem and their color with the blood of the crucifixion, and they soon appeared in churches throughout Mexico during the Christmas season.

A plantation Christmas dance (courtesy Union Review)

Before the mid-nineteenth century, Christmas was primarily a welcome day of rest in the Lowcountry for both white landowners and their enslaved black workers. It was an especially welcome time for blacks, as it was one of the few times during the year (for some, the only time) when they were allowed by their masters to travel away from their home plantations to attend spiritual gatherings based on African harvest festivals, long celebrated at the same time of year in ancestral homelands. And many of them benefitted from the centuries-old British tradition of the "Christmas box" of food and clothing presented to workers on the day after Christmas, which we still call

Boxing Day.

Jenny Lind, the Swedish Nightingale

It was the arrival of German and Scandinavian immigrants to the Lowcountry that brought many of the traditions we most strongly associate with Christmas, including the German Tannenbaum - the traditional fir tree that had been erected and decorated in western European households for centuries. The practice became firmly attached to the Lowcountry's holiday when the "Swedish Nightingale" Jenny Lind arrived in Charleston for an 1850 concert and on Christmas Eve placed just such a tree in the window of her hotel room. The Charleston Courier called it a "forest tree...decorated with variegated lamps that attracted much attention." Dutch immigrants, meanwhile, brought with them their beloved Sinterklaas, their version of Saint Nicholas, the bestower of gifts (and the occasional lump of coal).

By the time of Lind's concert, much of what we attach to the Christmas holiday was in place, including special sales presented by merchants and the giving of gaily-wrapped gifts piled under a festively decorated tree. And Sinterklaas had evolved into Clement Clark Moore's portly and jolly old elf, wishing "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night."

Happy holidays from all of us at SINHG!

Water Ways

Charleston's history is the story of water, the element that surrounds it and that has determined its growth, prosperity and, sometimes, destruction. When the H.L. Hunley was raised from the depths of the harbor, Charlestonians were again reminded of their ties to the element that embraces the city.

The H.L. Hunley Confederate Submarine (courtesy Friends of the Hunley)

Hidden at the bottom of Charleston Harbor for 130 years, the Hunley was located and raised from the seabed off of Sullivans Island in 2000 and has been reposing in a chemical bath at the Warren Lasch Conservation Center ever since while restoration and analysis continues. It's appropriate that this landmark vessel - the first working combat submarine to sink another ship, the Union's USS Housatonic - resides in what became, fifty years after the Hunley's loss, a major supply and repair base for the United States Navy.

The land on the west bank of the Cooper River was originally intended to be Chicora Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmstead, co-creator of New York's Central Park; but in 1901, the city of Charleston agreed to appropriate the land to the federal government for use as a naval base, which remained in operation until until it was decommissioned in 1996.

The naval base, circa 1960

It began life as a dry dock for the repair of naval ships, but began actually building warships in the 1930's and during World War Two, when the keels were laid for two of the largest ships ever built at the yard - the destroyer tenders USS Tidewater and USS Bryce Canyon. A modern descendent of the Hunley, the USS Conger, put in at the base for repairs in 1948, along with German submarines captured during the war that the Navy altered and repaired. At its wartime busiest, the Navy yard employed nearly 26,000 workers.

The Power House (c) S.C. Picture Project

Quite a few of the old naval structures survive at the site, from the impressive 1908 Power House that drove the huge pumps that drained the dry docks, to the crumbling former Marine barracks, the base dispensary, and a restored non-denominational chapel, The Eternal Father Of The Sea.

The Dead House

And there's something even older than the Hunley at the site - the "Dead House", a brick structure dating from the Revolutionary War, when it used by the British as a powder magazine. It's thought the grim name is from a period when the building was used as a temporary morgue.

Today, the Navy Yard's future remains unclear. It's currently owned by a developer who plans a multi-use community with residential and commercial units, including repurposing some of the existing structures; and Clemson has built, alongside the Conservation Center, an energy research center and a graduate studies building. But history goes deep here, and will hopefully be preserved.

A Light In The Dark

With winter darkness arriving earlier in the afternoons and lasting longer in the mornings, Charleston Harbor can be especially dangerous for late-arriving ship traffic. It means one of the harbor's longest-serving beacons, the Morris Island Lighthouse at the mouth of the Harbor, is especially welcome. Even though it's officially decommissioned, this landmark off the tip of Folly Beach continues to flash a welcome to arriving traffic.

There's been a beacon at the site since Charleston's earliest days, when English settlers kept a fire burning, fed by oakum and pitch, to guide arriving harbor traffic. It was followed by a towered beacon which rose on the island in the early decades of the 18th century, replaced by a much taller one with a Fresnel lens beacon erected in the 1850's, only to be torn down by the Confederacy when South Carolina seceded to prevent it from falling into the hands of Union troops during the Civil War.

The lighthouse and keeper's cottage in 1935. (Courtesy U.S. Coast Guard)

The present lighthouse dates from 1876, and was fully automated in 1938 when beach erosion and rising water levels threatened the keeper's lodging, which was torn down. But by 1962 the Coast Guard had decommissioned the lighthouse as continuing erosion threatened the structure's stability. It passed through several private hands until being acquired in 1999 by Save The Light, which leases the lighthouse from the state's Department of Natural Resources and works works to maintain and preserve the lighthouse. You can learn more about the lighthouse's long history here.

The lighthouse has been a popular destination on our SINHG Trips calendar for several years, and is on the schedule for a visit late this spring.