Christmas in the American Civil War had a drawing in the Christmas 1865 issue of Harper's Weekly depicting the heads of several Confederate generals at Ulysses S. Grant's feet in an image that centered on Santa. After the war Nast purposely made the North Pole the home of Saint Nick so that no one else could use him for nationalistic propaganda like Nast himself did. Christmas in the American Civil War Christmas in the American Civil War (1861–1865) was celebrated in both the United States and the Confederate States of America although the day did not become an official holiday until five years after the war
Thomas Nast Landau, and for a time received Catholic education in New York City. When Nast converted to Protestantism remains unclear, but his conversion was likely formalized upon his marriage in 1861. (The family were practicing Episcopalians at St. Peter's in Morristown.) Nast considered the Catholic Church to be a threat to American values. According to his biographer, Fiona Deans Halloran, Nast was "intensely opposed to the encroachment of Catholic ideas into public education". When Tammany Hall proposed a new tax to support parochial Catholic schools, he was outraged. His savage 1871 cartoon "The American River Ganges", depicts Catholic bishops, guided by