it's very hard to respond and not distract from the o.p. but i do agree,i was always told me born in the 30's,,that the generations before that did not view or celebrate Xmas in the manner we do today at all. my great grand parents(one of whom i knew) were born around 1840,my grand parents,1860's-70's(i new all of them) and all said that none of what we see today(they were referring to 1920's-50's) took place in the old days.
now they were referring to "trees",,,in that most 99 percent of people did not put up trees in there house until the 1920's. before that we saw pictures of trees in books from the rich people,politicians ect. after the depression the big stores started advertizing toys gifts ect. for Christmas that you could mail off for,but that wasn't common people could do(couldn't afford it). lol,,I'm really surprised i found this,i was going to try to describe it and wondered if i could find a picture of it and did
Folk Toys ,,,,the toy they are calling a spool we called "a tractor",,,thats the first toy i remember playing with,in place of the wax we put a broken color once the wax from the color was all over the wood (wax on wax) the rubber band would unwind real slow. the dirt(sand)would mess it up so on the porch or inside was where i played with it.
most all of the toys on that page i saw one or another kid with and played with some of them also when we visited neighbors kids. in figure 19 what their calling a whisk with a button we made also but different. we took a Bobbie pin and bent it open in a v shape,cut a rubber band and threaded it through the button and tied it back together and tied it to the wide part of the v of the Bobbie pin,,,we would make a envelope and put the different neighbors name on it and wind up the button and put it in their mailbox,,,lol,,,you know how the button would spin when they opened it,,,lol,,,
my daddy was a southern baptist and my momma a church of Christ,the church of Christ was a 30 minute walk down the road so thats where we went,most of the time just the kids but momma went sometimes. my daddy didn't go at first as he got older he did though. he would rather have gone to the baptist church but it was too far. i remember them all talking about the old baptist churches and Christmas. the southern baptist church did not celebrate it in the old days but now most of them do,some still don't though. i was reluctant to say that seeing it's something i remember hearing but i searched it on the web and found several articles on it. "southern baptist did they celebrate Christmas"and they'll come up.
the same for many churches before 1900 if you search each one the same. as time went on and people made better money then stores began to push the holidays more and more and everyone just became used to it. after the old folks began to die the younger generations just assumed it was always that way. the first time i saw a nativity seine in the front of a church everyone in town said that they had left away from the catholic churches for many reasons one of them was that they made statues of all the apostles and Mary,and they viewed that church as if they were returning to making carved statues the same as them. but as years went on it too seemed to take off like the tree did.
by ww2 everyone made good money and the stores were popping up everywhere adds were everywhere at the holidays and it's like the smith and Jones effect took over,it was shameful if you didn't do as everyone else was doing i guess.,,,,