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
Annie Christmas Annie Christmas Annie Christmas or Keelboat Annie is a character in the folklore and tall tales of Louisiana, described as a 7 foot tall, supernaturally strong African-American woman keelboat captain. She has been described as a female counterpart of the John Henry character, another supernaturally strong African American folklore character. Like John Henry, the character may have been based on a real person. Stories of Annie Christmas have been included in several collections of folktales from the American South. The stories describe how she defies traditional gender hierarchies and the rules and expectations for female behaviour. She drinks exorbitant amounts