How George Washington and His Wife Hosted Their Christmas Parties

Inviting friends and relatives to join them for the 12 days of Christmas, George and Martha Washington entertained their guests with music, dinner, and parties.

A hand-colored lithograph of “Washington, Crossing the Delaware–On the Evening of Dec. 25th 1776, previous to the Battle of Trenton” published by Currier & Ives, 1876. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain

At 11 p.m. on Christmas Day, 1776, George Washington and some of his troops boarded boats and crossed the ice-choked Delaware River to launch an attack on roughly 1,400 Hessian soldiers quartered at Trenton, New Jersey. Rain, sleet, and snow lashed the Americans, and a nor’easter buffeted them with fierce winds. Three hours behind schedule, and lacking the full complement of his troops, Washington marched his men 10 miles to Trenton, attacked the sleeping Hessians, and won an overwhelming victory, one of minor strategic importance but which delivered a huge boost to American morale.

Few of us would choose to spend Christmas beset by such suffering and foul weather, yet Washington’s choice of the day itself provided a tactical advantage to the Americans. The Hessians were mostly Lutherans and Catholics, accustomed to celebrating Christmas with food and drink. The Americans were mostly Protestants who abjured those celebrations. To them, Christmas was just a day like any other, and they caught their enemy off-guard and sleeping.

Winter Holiday Trials

In “George Washington at Christmas,” the curators of Mount Vernon report some of Washington’s other holiday experiences. On Christmas Eve, 1740, for example, the Washington home near Virginia’s Fredericksburg burned, and 8-year-old George and his family spent an unpleasant Christmas Day in an unattached kitchen. Thirteen years later, serving with the Virginia militia on that state’s western frontier, he and other troops found themselves on Christmas Eve at a place called Murdering Town, where they skirmished with Indian allies of the French. In the winter of 1777 to 1778, Washington and his army wintered at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, which remains famous in our history for the sickness, frigid weather, and death that afflicted that company.