"Robert May's deeply researched portrayal of the realities and images of Christmas celebrations in the antebellum South offers new insights on the nature of slavery and its cultural impact. He shows that while not entirely mythical, proslavery depictions of holiday merrymaking and gift exchanges among slaves and their owners became a staple of the proslavery argument before the Civil War and a dominant theme in the Lost Cause romanticization of the South and slavery. But the realities of slavery were quite different, as he makes clear in this important work."
May (emer., Purdue Univ.) provides a complex analysis of antebellum Christmas ritual and its sterilization in memory and postbellum writing, suggesting something far darker.... Summing Up: Highly recommended.
Yuletide in Dixie provides a master class in how to make powerful contributions to multiple subfields at once—Civil War memory, antebellum slavery, the Civil War itself—out of whatmight appear to be a minor subject. As May proves, the stakes of plantation Christmas myths are high. Fairytales of slaveholder generosity during Yuletide persist in large parts of the country, and if we want to "further racial progress" (259), May rightly argues that we must do the scholarly work to set the record straight.
Journal of the Civil War Era
May’s work is an important contribution to the scholarship on the system of slavery, the antebellum South, and the history of holidays. Readers... would do well to emulate May’s careful use of literary sources as he examines this multi-layered, complex, and emotionally charged holiday as a historical category of analysis.
Journal of the Early Republic
In this deeply and imaginatively researched, carefully argued, and engagingly written book, Robert May focuses on Christmas rituals to provide a major reinterpretation of how slavery functioned in the Old South and to expose myths about African American slave and plantation existence that persist to this day.
Recent historiography and ever intensifying public debates have shown us the depths of memory around antebellum slavery. Robert E. May’s Yuletide in Dixie convinces the careful reader not just of the ubiquity of the Lost Cause Christmas, but of its centrality to this larger body of public memory and academic scholarship. His book is by turns exhaustive and compelling, showing both a depth and rigor of scholarly research and keen facility for historical narrative. Far from merely an inconsequential entry in the growing literature of southern memory studies, it is a major and important work that offers crucial insights into slavery and the body of public memory work which has sought to justify, explain, or ignore it since emancipation.
It wasn’t until I read historian Robert May’s recent book Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory that I understood how the story of "plantation Christmas" has long been providing this kind of cover to Lost Cause ideology. From the antebellum years of 1830–60, through the Civil War, and especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the myth of the Lost Cause solidified, apologists for slavery loved to talk about Christmas whenever they were defending the "Southern way of life."
May's fine work provides scholars and nonscholars alike with new perspectives on a time of yearthat illuminated, more than any other, the flawed logic of slaveholders and the complexexperience ot slaves.
North Carolina Historical Review
Yuletide in Dixie is an important work that will be of interest to scholars, graduate students, and non-academic audiences. Readers will find May’s critical treatment a worthy addition for understanding the ways that myths, lies, and Civil Warmemory influenced even understandings of antebellumChristmas traditions.
In this provocative, revisionist and sometimes chilling account, Robert E. May chides the conventional wisdom for simplifying black perspectives, uncritically accepting Southern white literary tropes about the holiday, and overlooking evidence not only that countless Southern whites passed Christmases fearful that their slaves would revolt but also that slavery’s most punitive features persisted at holiday time.
Yuletide in Dixie is an important study that illuminates one of the Old South's most unusual traditions.
American Historical Review
[T]his book shows how much power the nostalgic portrayal of slave Christmases... has had over the popular imagination.
Journal of Southern History
Yuletide in Dixie is a masterful study of not only the intersection of Christmas traditions and slavery but also the collective ideology that supported the institution for centuries and continues to haunt historical memory today. May uses his study of Christmas in the Old South and command of the literature to build on a number of important historiographical traditions concerning the institution of slavery in the United States, the American slave experience, and historical memory in postwar America.
Through an impressive collection of primary sources emanating from slaveholders themselves, letters, plantation journals, diaries, newspaper reports, travelers’ accounts, and fugitive slave advertisements, May reveals a very different story from the paternalist one that has been commonly told. The book claims to differ from previous studies on the subject as it depicts Christmas as a time of tension rather than compassion between the enslaved and the enslavers.
Journal of Festive Studies
"Historical scholarship at its best—a gifted scholar taking on a myth-encrusted topic and systematically demolishing the distortions that have persisted for generations. It is both timely and important, particularly at this time in our history when race has taken such a central place in our national life."
May’s study is well written, well researched and well referenced. He has examined an impressive amount of primary source material, including slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers as well as essays, memoirs and novels. Yuletide in Dixie is an interesting and thought-provoking read, addressing big issues in the historiography of slavery – power, paternalism, resistance and memory – in an original and interesting way.
May’s study is well written, well researched and well referenced. He has examined an impressive amount of primary source material, including slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers as well as essays, memoirs and novels. Yuletide in Dixie is an interesting and thought-provoking read, addressing big issues in the historiography of slavery – power, paternalism, resistance and memory – in an original and interesting way.
" Yuletide in Dixie provides a master class in how to make powerful contributions to multiple subfields at once—Civil War memory, antebellum slavery, the Civil War itself—out of whatmight appear to be a minor subject. As May proves, the stakes of plantation Christmas myths are high. Fairytales of slaveholder generosity during Yuletide persist in large parts of the country, and if we want to "further racial progress" (259), May rightly argues that we must do the scholarly work to set the record straight. "—author of Journal of the Civil War Era
"It wasn’t until I read historian Robert May’s recent book Yuletide in Dixie: Slavery, Christmas, and Southern Memory that I understood how the story of "plantation Christmas" has long been providing this kind of cover to Lost Cause ideology. From the antebellum years of 1830–60, through the Civil War, and especially in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when the myth of the Lost Cause solidified, apologists for slavery loved to talk about Christmas whenever they were defending the "Southern way of life." "—author of Slate.com
" Yuletide in Dixie is a masterful study of not only the intersection of Christmas traditions and slavery but also the collective ideology that supported the institution for centuries and continues to haunt historical memory today. May uses his study of Christmas in the Old South and command of the literature to build on a number of important historiographical traditions concerning the institution of slavery in the United States, the American slave experience, and historical memory in postwar America. "—author of H-Slavery
"May (emer., Purdue Univ.) provides a complex analysis of antebellum Christmas ritual and its sterilization in memory and postbellum writing, suggesting something far darker.... Summing Up: Highly recommended. "—author of CHOICE
"May's fine work provides scholars and nonscholars alike with new perspectives on a time of yearthat illuminated, more than any other, the flawed logic of slaveholders and the complexexperience ot slaves. "—author of North Carolina Historical Review
"Recent historiography and ever intensifying public debates have shown us the depths of memory around antebellum slavery. Robert E. May’s Yuletide in Dixie convinces the careful reader not just of the ubiquity of the Lost Cause Christmas, but of its centrality to this larger body of public memory and academic scholarship. His book is by turns exhaustive and compelling, showing both a depth and rigor of scholarly research and keen facility for historical narrative. Far from merely an inconsequential entry in the growing literature of southern memory studies, it is a major and important work that offers crucial insights into slavery and the body of public memory work which has sought to justify, explain, or ignore it since emancipation. "—author of Alabama Review
"May’s study is well written, well researched and well referenced. He has examined an impressive amount of primary source material, including slave narratives, plantation records, newspapers as well as essays, memoirs and novels. Yuletide in Dixie is an interesting and thought-provoking read, addressing big issues in the historiography of slavery – power, paternalism, resistance and memory – in an original and interesting way. "—author of Slavery & Abolition
" Yuletide in Dixie is an important study that illuminates one of the Old South's most unusual traditions. "—author of American Historical Review
"Ultimately, May discredits master-class nostalgia and refutes scholarly depictions of paternalism. This book is driven by simmering anger at injustice. "—author of Journal of American History
"In this provocative, revisionist and sometimes chilling account, Robert E. May chides the conventional wisdom for simplifying black perspectives, uncritically accepting Southern white literary tropes about the holiday, and overlooking evidence not only that countless Southern whites passed Christmases fearful that their slaves would revolt but also that slavery’s most punitive features persisted at holiday time. "—author of O'Henry Magazine
"[T]his book shows how much power the nostalgic portrayal of slave Christmases... has had over the popular imagination. "—author of Journal of Southern History
" Yuletide in Dixie is an important work that will be of interest to scholars, graduate students, and non-academic audiences. Readers will find May’s critical treatment a worthy addition for understanding the ways that myths, lies, and Civil Warmemory influenced even understandings of antebellumChristmas traditions. "—author of Louisiana History
