Christmas in the American Civil War the Union blockade, and one little girl, Sallie Brock Putnam, plotted the course Santa Claus would have to take to avoid it. Sometimes fathers on both sides were allowed furlough, and children were said to react to their fathers as if seeing "near strangers". Excuses for a lack of Santa included Yankees having shot him. Thomas Nast, who used his editorial cartoons to issue Union propaganda, made several illustrations reflecting the war. The one for Christmas Eve 1862, which ran in the January 1863 issue of Harper's Weekly shows a wife on one side praying though a window in one
Father Christmas plentiful food and drink, started to appear regularly in illustrated magazines of the 1840s. He was dressed in a variety of costumes and usually had holly on his head, as in these illustrations from the "Illustrated London News": Charles Dickens's 1843 novel "A Christmas Carol" was highly influential, and has been credited both with reviving interest in Christmas in England and with shaping the themes attached to it. A famous image from the novel is John Leech's illustration of the 'Ghost of Christmas Present'. Although not explicitly named Father Christmas, the character wears a holly wreath, is shown sitting among