Christmas in the American Civil War "the best recruiting sergeant the North ever had". Nast was not the only one to use Christmas as a propaganda tool. On the Union side, "The New York Herald" also engaged in propaganda. One illustration published in the paper included Santa Claus fuming that he could not reach southern children, due to the northern blockade. On the Confederate side, "The Richmond Examiner" described Santa to its young readers as "a Dutch toy monger" who was a New York/New England "scrub" and Hottentot that had nothing to do with traditional Virginian celebrations of Christmas. Even through the war was over, Nast
The Christmas Album (Lynn Anderson album) Nashville country music songwriters of the day was enormously popular and became a Christmas classic itself among country music and American popular music fans. The album's opening song "Ding-A-Ling the Christmas Bell" was released as a single and at one point considered as a possible Christmas cartoon special but the project never got off the ground. The album was in print for a decade and, in the 1990s, Sony released limited quantities on CD with new cover art (the image shown above). In 2015 it was reissued on CD by the Real Gone Music label, with alternate charity single mixes