Santa Muggers

Santa Claus got mugged in Cincinnati in 1905, and that wasn’t even the weirdest thing to happen on a Queen City Christmas.



“Santa” was Charles Jarvis. He had dressed up as old Kris Kringle to entertain the children at a church function and was on his way home when he was set upon by footpads. According to the Cincinnati Post [26 December 1905]:

“When the men leaped out of the darkness and began beating him, Jarvis offered to be a good Santa and give up all he had, but his plea was unheeded.”

Poor old Saint Nick was found bleeding and unconscious on the street the next morning, minus his pack, his watch, five dollars and his Christmas spirit.

Flammable Santas

Strong-arm robbery was just one of the hazards faced by Santa back in the day. Immolation was a constant threat when Santa costumes and make-up were manufactured from highly incendiary materials and Christmas trees were decorated with flaming candles. Eli Houp of Ludlow, Kentucky, learned this awful truth when he donned a Santa costume to attend a masked ball. Some neighborhood boys [Post 23 December 1912] set Eli’s beard afire as he walked on the street. Two local men used their overcoats to extinguish the flames, but Eli suffered facial burns.

Flammable Trees

Stodgy old Cincinnatians stuck to their combustible holiday traditions even as electric Christmas lights arrived. In 1921, with 57,000 homes in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky wired for electricity, Warner P. Sayers, sales manager for the F.D. Lawrence Electric Company estimated [Post 16 December 1921] that fewer than 10,000 households would give up candles for electric tree lights. E.W. Lynd of the Emery Candle Company predicted sales exceeding 25,000 dozen tree candles that year.

#MeToo Mistletoe

While Cincinnati was slow to give up its candles, mistletoe had fallen out of favor by the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Smooching had fallen out of favor after decades of Victorian morality. The Cincinnati Enquirer [23 December 1901] claimed that the “innate propriety of the American people” was the reason for abandoning this traditional holiday decoration:

“Indiscriminate kissing is repulsive to the gentle-born citizen of these United States. Nowhere on earth is there less kissing, and nowhere on earth does it mean so much. This has come down in the blood, and the gentleman of to-day would no more grab and kiss a lady acquaintance should she inadvertently step under a sprig of mistletoe than he would step up and slap her face. On the other hand, no true lady will seek out spots under mistletoes in hopes of being kissed.”

Family Smallpox

In those pre-penicillin days, the close contact of Christmas congregation enabled consequences far more serious than offended propriety. The Enquirer [8 January 1872] reported that a West End family had lost three children to smallpox after a Christmas visitor took ill and died from that disease, infecting the rest of the family.

The Meat Parade

With the demolition of the Fifth Street Market to make way for Fountain Square another Queen City tradition faded away. This was the annual Christmas meat parade. Throughout the 1850s, this parade featured more than 500 animals “on the hoof,” heading to slaughter, accompanied by marching bands and uniformed soldiers. In those days, of course, few households had any means of keeping meat edible for any period of time, so almost everyone bought meat from the butcher on the day it would be cooked. There was a lot of meat sold on Christmas day for the Yuletide evening dinner. Charles Cist, essential historian of Cincinnati, describes the procession in his “Sketches and Statistics of Cincinnati”:

“Sixty-six bullocks, of which probably three-fourths were raised and fed in Kentucky, and the residue in our own State; one hundred and twenty-five sheep, hung up whole at the edges of the stalls; three hundred and fifty pigs, displayed in rows on platforms; ten of the finest and fattest bears Missouri could produce, and a buffalo calf, weighing five hundred pounds, caught at Santa Fe, constituted the materials for this Christmas pageant.”

Checked Babies

A short-lived tradition was launched before World War I, as part of an effort to entice more female shoppers downtown, by the Cincinnati Women’s Advertising Club: a “Check Room For Babies.” This service operated much like a hat-check room. Women brought their toddlers to the check room in the Keith Theater, where they were tagged and entertained by licensed baby-sitters while Mom visited the downtown department stores.

A Real Christmas Ghost

Far out in the West End, down by the Millcreek bottoms, Cincinnati’s most bizarre Christmas tradition has faded into legend. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, residents of the remote reaches of Gest Street reported annual visits by a Christmas ghost. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer [22 December 1890], the ghost was supposedly guarding the loot from a long ago bank robbery. The desperados got away with more than $300,000 and a fine clock from the bank president’s office. The money was never found, but some kids found a fancy clock in the Millcreek muck and rumors spread that the cash must be located nearby. That’s when the ghost made its appearance, on a decidedly strange schedule:

“It is a matter of fact that many people living in that portion of the city have stoutly claimed to have seen the ghost, which they describe as of many shapes. The singular thing is that it never appears except on Christmas or a few days before.”

And what weird shapes! The Christmas ghost appeared variously as “a big white ball fully five feet high,” as a deformed cow, or as an apparition beckoning observers to follow it into the Millcreek.

“Many of the night watchmen in the neighborhood have given up their jobs. The reappearance of the ghost is most anxiously awaited.”