June 13; Day 14: Crossing of the Delaware on Christmas

     I did learn something new in class that day.  It was from the Battle of Trenton, the famous Washington crossing the Delaware picture.  George Washington only had his army for a period of 2 years.  His 2 year time was almost up and all that he had been doing was avoiding battles with the British.  The British used another country's army, kind of like rent-an-army, from Hessian, which is now present day Germany to help fight their battles.   Washington knew he was getting to the point of no return for the birth of the new country.  He had to act very soon or America would be under the British rule forever. 

     Like many things about history is that different stories are passed down.  History is, afterall, His Story.  It is someone's interruption of what happened in that moment of time.  There is an old example of if someone seen a car accident and 4 people witnessed it then there would be 4 different accounts on what happened depending on the angle they viewd it.  The same goes for history.  It depends on how a situtation is viewed as to what happened.  We can take the different points of view and come up with our own conclusion.

     I heard a different reason as to why Washington crossed the Delaware on Christmas eve.  Christmas was commonly known back then as a pagan holiday.  December 25 is knows as a festival to celebrate the birth of the greek sun-god, Mithra.  At the time early Christian's were pressured into celebrating with them, including the exhange of gifts to symbolize good luck.  Eventually, Christian's transformed the rebirth of the son, Mithra, into the birth of God's son, Jesus. 

     Puritian's disagreed with this new celebration of Jesus' birth.  They did not celebrate Christmas.  It was even outlawed in Boston in the late 1600's.  It wasn't until 1870 that Christmas was actually declared a legal holiday in the United States.  Slowly, traditions from immigrants (whether being pagan or christian belief) between the 1700's and 1800's helped Christmas slowly merge into what it is today. 

     The German region did celebrate the pagan celebration of Christmas.  Washington knew the army from Hessian (Germany) would be celebrating that night and the next day.  He knew their guard would be down.  Many in Washington's army probably didn't celebrate it or if they did celebrate Christmas it wasn't as popular as it is today so missing it wasn't too big of a deal.  From the professor's added input Washington sent the Hessian army extra alcohol to celebrate with. 

     The Hessian army was blissfully three sheets to the wind that morning when Washington arrived and we ended up winning the Battle of Trenton.  And in the words of Paul Harvey, "That is the rest of the story."