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FOR ENSLAVED PEOPLE, HOLIDAY SEASON WAS A TIME FOR REVELRY – AND
POSSIBLY FLIGHT  
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Ana Lucia Araujo
December 18, 2024
The Conversation
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_ Slave owners tried to keep enslaved people under control with
better meals and more downtime during the holiday season. Many
enslaved people were onto their owners and used this brief period of
respite to plan escapes and start revolts, _

Adolphe Duperly’s painting depicting the destruction of the
Roehampton Estate in Jamaica during the Baptist War in January 1832,
Wikimedia Commons

 

During the era of slavery in the Americas, enslaved men, women and
children also enjoyed the holidays. Slave owners usually gave them
bigger portions of food, gifted them alcohol and provided extra days
of rest.

Those gestures, however, were not made out of generosity.

As abolitionist, orator and diplomat Frederick Douglass
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owners were trying to keep enslaved people under control by plying
them with better meals and more downtime, in the hopes of preventing
escapes and rebellions.

Most of the time, it worked.

But as I discuss in my recent book, “Humans in Shackles: An Atlantic
History of Slavery
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many enslaved people were onto their owners and used this brief period
of respite to plan escapes and start revolts.

Feasting, frolicking and fiddling

Most enslaved people in the Americas adhered to the Christian calendar
– and celebrated Christmas – since either Catholicism or
Protestantism predominated, from Birmingham, Alabama, to Brazil.

Consider the example of Solomon Northup, whose tragic story became
widely known in the film “12 Years A Slave
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the state of New York but was kidnapped and sold into slavery in
Louisiana in 1841
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In his narrative, Northup explained that his owner and their neighbors
gave their slaves between three and six days off during the holidays.
He described this period
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season with the children of bondage,” a time for “feasting,
frolicking, and fiddling.”

According to Northup, each year a slave owner in central Louisiana’s
Bayou Boeuf offered a Christmas dinner attended by as many as 500
enslaved people from neighboring plantations. After spending the
entire year consuming meager meals, this marked a rare opportunity to
indulge in several kinds of meats, vegetables, fruits, pies and tarts.

[Lithograph showing three men playing instruments with a small child
in front.]
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Isaac Mendes Belisario’s ‘Band of the Jaw-Bone John-Canoe’
(1837). Slavery Images
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There’s evidence of holiday celebrations since the early days of
slavery in the Americas. In the British colony of Jamaica, a Christmas
masquerade called Jonkonnu
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the 17th century. One 19th-century artist depicted the celebration
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painting four enslaved men playing musical instruments, including a
container covered with animal skin, along with an instrument made from
an animal’s jawbone.

In the 1861 narrative of her life in slavery
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Harriet Jacobs described a similar masquerade in North Carolina.

“Every child rises early on Christmas morning to see the
Johnkannaus,” she wrote. “Without them, Christmas would be shorn
of its greatest attraction.”

On Christmas Day, she continued, nearly 100 enslaved men paraded
through the plantation wearing colorful costumes with cows’ tails
fastened to their backs and horns decorating their heads. They went
door to door, asking for donations to buy food, drinks and gifts. They
sang, danced and played musical instruments they had fashioned
themselves – drums made of sheepskin, metal triangles and an
instrument fashioned from the jawbone of a horse, mule or donkey.

It’s the most wonderful time to escape

Yet beneath the revelry, there was an undercurrent of angst during the
holidays for enslaved men, women and children.

In the American South, enslavers often sold or hired out their slaves
in the first days of the year to pay their debts
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between Christmas and New Year’s Day, many enslaved men, women and
children were consumed with worry over the possibility of being
separated from their loved ones.

At the same time, slave owners and their overseers were often
distracted – if not drunk – during the holidays. It was a prime
opportunity to plan an escape.

John Andrew Jackson
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was owned by a Quaker family of planters in South Carolina. After
being separated from his wife and child, he planned to escape during
the Christmas holiday of 1846. He managed to flee to Charleston. From
there, he went north and eventually reached New Brunswick in Canada.
Sadly, he was never able to reunite with his enslaved relatives.

Even Harriet Tubman took advantage of the holiday respite. Five years
after she successfully escaped from the Maryland plantation where she
was enslaved, she returned on Christmas Day in 1854
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brothers from a life of bondage.

‘Tis the season for rebellion

Across the Americas, the holiday break also offered a good opportunity
to plot rebellions.

In 1811, enslaved and free people of color planned a series of revolts
in Cuba, in what became known as the Aponte Rebellion
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The scheming and preparations took place between Christmas Day and the
Day of Kings
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a Jan. 6 Catholic holiday commemorating the three magi who visited the
infant Jesus. Inspired by the Haitian Revolution
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free people of color and enslaved people joined forces to try to end
slavery on the island.

In April, the Cuban government eventually smashed the rebellion.

In Jamaica, enslaved people followed suit. Samuel Sharpe, an enslaved
Baptist lay deacon [[link removed]],
called a general strike on Christmas Day 1831 to demand wages and
better working conditions for the enslaved population.

Two nights later, a group of enslaved people set fire to a trash house
at an estate in Montego Bay. The fire spread, and what was supposed to
be a strike instead snowballed into a violent insurrection. The
Christmas Rebellion – or Baptist War, as it became known – was the
largest slave revolt in Jamaica’s history
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months, thousands of slaves battled British forces until they were
eventually subdued. Sharpe was hanged in Montego Bay on May 23, 1832
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After news of the Christmas Rebellion and its violent repression
reached Britain, antislavery activists ramped up their calls to ban
slavery. The following year, Parliament passed the Slavery Abolition
Act
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which prohibited slavery in the British Empire.

Yes, the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day offered a
chance to feast or plot rebellions.

But more importantly, it served as a rare window of opportunity for
enslaved men, women and children to reclaim their humanity.[The
Conversation]

_Ana Lucia Araujo
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Professor of History, Howard University
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_This article is republished from The Conversation
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the original article
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* slavery
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* Slave revolts
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* History
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