Christopher Columbus still has his own holiday. Today, most people are at least dimly aware that Columbus wasn’t exactly a great guy, but somehow, he’s still managed to hold on to a little dignity and respect. It was a different time, some might say; or, perhaps, he was no worse than the rest.

SEE ALSO: 10 Rarely Told Tales Of Columbus, History’s Greatest Explorer

But Christopher Columbus wasn’t just your standard careless colonialist. The things he did were so twisted that even the people of his own time thought of him as a monster. Most of it is so brutal it gets cut out of history books in the name of good taste, but the real Columbus was far, far worse than you ever could have imagined.

We’re going to tell you the real story of Christopher Columbus. So get ready—because this is going to get pretty messed up.

10 He Cut The Hands Off Of Natives Who Didn’t Bring Him Enough Gold

Columbus, upon reaching the New World, had written back to the Spanish lord promising “as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask.” Now, though, he had to prove he could do it—even if it took a massacre.

He started rounding up natives and locking them in pens. Some were sent to Spain as slaves—though nearly half died during the voyage—and the rest were put to work gathering gold. Every member of the Arawak people who was 14 or older was sent into a part of Haiti were Columbus believed huge gold fields were hiding.

Any native who came back with enough gold to satisfy Columbus was given a copper token to hang around his neck, which meant he was allowed to live. Any native spotted without the token was to have his hands chopped off on the spot. This wasn’t just amputation; the wounds were left untreated, and the victims were allowed to bleed out until they died.^[1]

There was next to no gold in Haiti, which meant it was almost impossible to bring Columbus what he demanded. Most, realizing it was impossible, tried to flee, so the Spaniards hunted them down with dogs and killed every person they could find.

9 Columbus’s Men Tested Their Blades By Killing People

“My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write.”

This was the report that Bartolome de las Casas, a priest who had joined Columbus’s men in New World, sent back home to Europe. He’d witnessed how the Spaniards treated the natives, and what he described was worse than any horror story.

Columbus’s men, Bartolome said, would round up natives and slice off parts of their bodies to test the sharpness of their blades. Just to pass the time, he wrote, the Spaniards “made bets as to who would slit a man in two, or cut off his head in one blow.”

They didn’t stop their massacres at adult men, though. As sport, Columbus’s crew would tear babies out of their mothers’ arms and dash their heads against rocks—or worse. According to Bartolome: “They spitted the bodies of other babes, together with their mothers and all who were before them, on their swords.”^[2]

People were massacred, sometimes just as a way to pass the time. “A stream of blood was running,” Bartolome said, through the native villages after Columbus arrived, “as if a great number of cows had perished.”

8 Columbus Also Mutilated His Own Spaniards

Columbus didn’t stop at torturing the natives; he tortured his own men, too. As he stayed on in the New World and food became scarce, he started to starve his men out. He’d fill his ships with an abundance of food, but he wouldn’t share it with his settlers, even when they began dying of starvation.

Instead, Columbus set up a strict set of rules, promising to hang anyone who so much as stole bread. Often, though, his actual punishments were even more depraved. When a cabin boy stole a fish out of another man’s trap, Columbus had the boy’s hand nailed to the spot where he’d stolen the fish. And when another young boy was caught stealing corn, Columbus had his ears and nose cut off and then had him whipped, shackled, and finally sold into slavery.

He even tortured people for simply buying food with their own money. A group of a dozen Spanish men was tied together by their necks and feet and publicly whipped for buying pork and bread. Their crime, Columbus declared, was that they had “bartered and gave gold without the Admiral’s permission.”^[3]

By the time Columbus left, 50 of his men had died of starvation. He, though, stayed fairly plump—by strict command. In fact, when one of his men failed to get enough food for his pantry, Columbus had him stripped naked and whipped with 100 lashes.

7 Women Were Regularly Paraded Naked Through The Streets

When a Spanish woman upset Columbus, he took a bit of different route. He didn’t stop at whipping her or hanging her; he made sure she was humiliated. Specifically, he’d strip her naked, put her on a mule, and parade her through town.

Columbus’s group did this at least three times. The first was a sentence given out by Christopher Columbus himself, who accused a woman of “falsely claiming to be pregnant” and, as punishment, had her stripped naked and paraded through town.

His brother Bartolome followed his example a little later when a woman accused them of being the sons of a common journeyman.^[4] Again, he stripped her naked and had her shown off to the town on a mule—and then, for good measure, he had her tongue cut out. Christopher was thrilled and publicly congratulated Bartolome for defending the family’s good name.

Then another official did it to a woman named Teresa de Vaeca because her friend had an affair. Teresa herself hadn’t done anything—it was her friend who had the affair—but they still felt she deserved “the punishment for pimping,” which was to be stripped naked, given 100 lashes, and have her tongue cut out.

6 He Started A Child Sex Slave Ring

When Columbus realized that there was more money to be made in prostitution than there was in cultivating land, he started a ring of sex slaves. This, he believed, was just good business. “A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm,” he wrote in a letter home, so how, he felt, could he be faulted for dragging away women and selling them to be brutally raped?

The women weren’t willing participants—nor were they, for that matter, always women. Little girls, Columbus said, were the most profitable. He wrote that “those from nine to ten are now in demand.”^[5]

The stories that came out of it are horrifying. One man, named Michele de Cuneo, wrote that Columbus gifted him a young girl to use as a sex slave. “Since I wanted to have my way with her and she was not willing, she worked me over so badly with her nails that I wished I had never begun,” Cuneo wrote in a letter. “I got a rope and tied her up so tightly that she made unheard of cries which you wouldn’t have believed. At the end, we got along so well that, let me tell you, it seemed she had studied at a school for whores.”

5 He Lied About Being The First Person To Spot Land

It wasn’t all murders and massacres, though. Sometimes, Columbus was just petty. Even before he’d set foot in the New World, he was ruining people’s lives.

Before Columbus sailed west, the king and queen of Spain promised a lifetime pension to whoever first spotted land. Columbus’s men, hoping never to have to work another day in their lives, kept an eye out at every moment—until one night, two hours after midnight, Rodrigo de Triaga caught the first glimpse of land over the horizon.

When they reported back to Spain, though, Columbus interjected that he had noticed a light “which appeared like a candle” the day before, and though he hadn’t told his men he’d spotted land, he still felt it was only right that he get the money and Rodrigo de Triaga get nothing.^[6]

As the leader of the expedition, Columbus probably didn’t need the money. According to his contemporaries, he just wanted to be able to say he was the first to spot land. So, for the sake of his pride, he stole a lifetime pension and a place in the history books from one of his own men.

4 He Paraded Dismembered Bodies Through Town

After they’d been mutilated, run down with dogs, and sold into sexual slavery, some of the Arawak natives decided to fight back. They put up the best resistance they could, revolting against Columbus and his men and trying to chase them away—but they didn’t have much of a chance.

The Spaniards had armor, muskets, swords, and horses, so the rebellion was crushed pretty quickly. Columbus and his men hung some of their prisoners, enslaved others, and even burned some of them alive.

Then, to make a point, they dismembered the bodies of the dead and marched through the native towns, parading the mutilated corpses to send a message.^[7] Anyone who tried to fight Columbus, they were warning them, would meet the same fate.

3 He Pretended To Be God To Keep The Natives Working For Him

When they realized they couldn’t kill Columbus, the Arawaks tried another approach: starving him out. Columbus hadn’t really figured out how to survive on his own in the New World; he relied on the food the natives gave him. So, the people in Jamaica decided to just stop feeding him, hoping he’d give up and go away.

Columbus, though, managed to trick them into giving up their food by pretending to have magic powers. He used an astronomical table to figure out when the next lunar eclipse would hit. Then, moments before the eclipse began, he told them that his god was angry with them and that the Moon would now appear inflamed with wrath.

“They came running from every direction to the ships, laden with provisions,” Columbus’s son Ferdinand gleefully wrote, describing it, “praying the Admiral to intercede by all means with God on their behalf; that he might not visit his wrath upon them.”^[8]

It’s a fairly well-known story—but what’s usually left out is the context. Columbus’s triumph came after he’d massacred their people, and the natives were just doing what they could to spare their own lives.

2 The Arawaks Committed Mass Suicide Rather Than Live With Columbus

With no way to escape from Columbus, the Arawaks of Haiti just gave up. Death, they believed, was inevitable. The only hope they had was to spare themselves from the pain and torture they’d experience at Columbus’s hands.

They started committing suicide en masse. Whole communities would gather together to kill themselves, sometimes doing so in groups of 100 at a time. Mothers would feed their children cassava poison to let them die peaceful deaths, and the young women swore not to bring another child into the world.

One of the Spaniards there, Perdro de Corboda, wrote home: “Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery.”^[9] At the peak of mass suicides, 250,000 native Haitians died in just two short years.

1 He Brought Syphilis To Europe

Columbus killed millions of natives, but in what might well be divine retribution, he killed millions more back home. When he and his men came back from the New World, they didn’t just bring back slaves—they brought back syphilis.

The first syphilis outbreak in Europe happened in 1495, shortly after Columbus and his sailors returned. Before Columbus, there hadn’t been any known cases of syphilis in Europe. There are a few researchers who insist they’ve found one, but none have been conclusively proven, and all signs point to the idea the Columbus and his men brought it over with their ring of child sex slaves.^[10]

Some of Columbus’s crewmen ended up serving in a war against Italy, whoring their way across Europe on the way, and soon spread syphilis all across the continent. It was devastating. The first outbreak alone killed more than five million Europeans.

That death toll might even include Christopher Columbus, who died in 1506, after years of fighting through a long and painful illness he’d contracted on his last voyage to the New World. At the time, they called it gout, and today, most think it was Reiter’s syndrome, but some believe that he was taken out by his own disease: syphilis.

Holidays can be magical occasions, bringing families together and uniting communities in a common spirit of celebration. However, that much merriment can breed an equal amount of resentment from anyone on the outside. That much importance placed on any one day is bound to cause unfulfilled expectations. Beyond that, any time groups of people get together there is a potential for confrontation. Regardless of the reason why, some truly awful things happen on the holidays. Here are ten tragedies that happened on holidays, some so disturbing they’ll shock you.

10 The Covina Massacre

On Christmas Eve 2008, at a Christmas party in Covina, California, nine people were murdered by a man in a Santa costume. The man, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, was motivated by his recent divorce settlement and spousal support payments. The divorce proceedings, which lasted months and ended only a week earlier, had cost Pardo a lot of money, and he wasn’t having it. He was having serious mental issues, though.

He constructed a plan to attack a Christmas party that his in-laws would be hosting and his ex-wife would be attending. He showed up in a Santa outfit, with a flamethrower that he wheeled in on a trolley and a total of four automatic handguns. Pardo killed nine people, either by gun or flamethrower, including his own 8-year-old niece, and set the home ablaze as partygoers fled. He committed suicide life later that night. But that was small restitution for his ex-wife and her family, who died suffering.

9 The Dresden Bombing

If you’ve read Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five,” you’ve already heard of the horror that was the bombing of Dresden, Germany. On Valentine’s Day 1945, a fleet of over 1,00 planes from the British Royal Air Force and United States Army Air Forces attacked the German city, dropping almost 4,000 pounds of explosives. Casualty estimates vary due mainly to the indeterminable number of war refugees staying in the city. The conservative estimate is 25,000, and others rise steeply from there.

Critics of the bombing cite the city’s lack of military significance and its abundance of cultural significance to German society. Vonnegut, himself a German prisoner in Dresden during the bombing, tells of his experience gathering bodies for burial. Eventually, there were simply too many to bury and German troops began stacking them and incinerating them with flamethrowers.

8 The Shanghai Stampede

On New Year’s Eve in 2014, around 300,00 people gathered in Chen Yi Square in Shanghai, China. Along the banks of the Huangpu River, the crowd came to see a light show meant to celebrate the coming New Year. No one anticipated such a massive crowd, and there was little in the way of official crowd control to help organize everyone.

Just a few minutes before midnight, a stampede broke out among the crowd. Thousands surged into and trampled each other, leaving 36 people dead and 49 injured. Reports from the Chinese media were vague and conflicting as to what actually started the stampede, and as of now, no official cause is listed, just vague reports of crowd confusion and panic.

7 The Lawson Family Murders

On Christmas Day, 1929, farmer Charles Lawson killed his wife and six of his seven children. He started with two of his daughters, ambushing them by the family’s tobacco farm with a shotgun. He walked back to the porch and shot his wife Fannie. This alerted the rest of the children, who tried to hide in the house. He found them and killed them all. His last victim was their 4-month-old baby.

Lawson then neatly laid the bodies out, crossed their arms, and propped their heads up on rocks. He then vanished into the woods. Within hours, a crowd of neighbors had discovered or heard of the scene and gathered on the property. Witnesses heard a single gunshot come from the woods. They later found Lawson’s body, dead by suicide. No clear motive for Lawson’s gruesome spree has ever been determined, but there were rumors among family and friends that he had recently impregnated his daughter, one of the victims.

6 The Tool Box Killers

Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris were serial killers known as the Tool Box Killers. Considering their predilection for using an assortment of household tools to torture and kill their victims, it’s easy to see why they got that name. They claimed their fifth and final victim on Halloween night in 1979.

That night, they abducted young Shirley Lynette Ledford as she stood outside a gas station. They then proceeded to tie her up, rape her repeatedly, and torture her with their signature toolset before killing her. They dumped her body on a randomly chosen lawn, simply to see what the press would say about the location.

5 The Tangiwai disaster

A passenger train carrying 285 people was speeding across a bridge in New Zealand on Christmas Eve, 1953. Unbeknownst to the passengers and crew, a nearby dam had recently burst, causing a heavy surge of mud to pass under the bridge and damage its support structures. When the train passed over the bridge, its weight caused the whole structure to collapse. 151 of the 285 souls on board perished in the crash. Rescuers searched for days among the wreckage, hoping for survivors or at least identifiable bodies, but 20 passengers were never found, thought to have been carried downriver.

4 Ronald Sisman And Elizabeth Platzman

On Halloween night in 1981, New York City couple Ronald Sisman And Elizabeth Platzman were murdered in their home. The pair were savagely beaten and forced to their knees, then shot in the head execution-style. Because their house was ransacked and items of theirs had been stolen, police initially believed the whole event a robbery gone wrong.

Except that authorities were warned of the murders in advance. While in prison, infamous serial killer David Berkowitz, known better as “Son of Sam,” warned prison officials that the satanic cult he had belonged to was going to commit a ritual murder that Halloween night. He gave the correct murder location and described the home that the cult had been surveilling. It matched the description of the victims’ residence to a tee.

3 The Carnation Murders

The Carnation murders are named for the town in which they took place- Carnation, Washington, a tiny, rural town with no claim to fame except, sadly, this murder spree. Christmas Eve, 2007, saw Joseph McEnroe and Michele Anderson murder Anderson’s entire family. The two arrived at the home of Anderson’s parents, where the family was set the gather, and waited, guns in hand.

Anderson’s parents arrived first and were gunned down. Their bodies were hidden, the entranceway cleaned, and the murder trap reset. Then Anderson’s brother and sister-in-law arrived with their two children. They too were shot dead, children included. When asked why she did it, Anderson said that she had felt unfairly treated by her parents and that her brother owed her money, and McEnroe said… a string of incoherent nonsense.

2 Omaima Nelson

It was Thanksgiving Day, 1991, that Egyptian model Omaima Nelson murdered her husband. She claimed that it was in retaliation for him sexually assaulting her earlier that night. Perhaps that was true, but what happened after the murder was more ‘demonic cannibal’ than ‘avenger.’

After the alleged sexual assault, Nelson bound her husband and stabbed him in the chest with scissors. He survived that attack, so she bludgeoned him to death with a clothes iron, hitting him hard enough to break it. She then cut his body into small pieces, including castrating him and putting his severed head in her freezer. She put his severed hands in a pot to boil to remove fingerprints. She admitted to eating pieces of him, but later retracted these statements, saying that instead, she had merely put the missing pieces in the garbage disposal. All told, when investigators found her husband’s body, around 80 pounds of him were unaccounted for.

1 The Cocoanut Grove Fire

The Cocoanut Grove Fire is the single deadliest nightclub fire in history, killing 492 people. The Cocoanut Grove, which was unusually busy the night of the fire, was a popular club in Boston, Massachusetts. It was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and many were in the city visiting family. Also, it was the first Thanksgiving after America joined World War Two and distraction destinations like clubs were thriving. The Cocoanut Grove was packed.

Investigators never determined the cause of the nightclub fire. They did say, however, that the fire started on the frond of an artificial palm tree. The fire spread through the ceiling and rapidly made its way into every area of the club, taking only five minutes to engulf the entire establishment. Side doors and several other exits had been bolted shut to prevent patrons from skipping out on their tabs. That left only one exit open—the front door. The door was a revolving door that was rendered inoperable by the throng of people trying to rush through it to safety. 492 people died in the fire. The small silver lining is that the incident triggered a wave of fire safety laws and regulations in hopes of preventing another tragedy of this magnitude.

For many of us, the holiday season is a time of family gatherings and a celebration of the good things that life has to offer. We may reminisce about the past year and begin to dream of the year to come. As you decorate your house, purchase gifts, and roast your holiday ham, let’s explore ten holiday traditions that started because of poverty. 

Related: 10 Strange Christmas Traditions From The Victorian Era

10 The Original Nativity Scene

In the King James Bible, Luke chapters two through seven depict the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. One section reads, “…she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger; because there was no room in the inn.”

The fact that Jesus was born in a stable and had an animal’s manger as a crib comes down to the fact that Bethlehem was crowded with people coming to pay their taxes. It had nothing to do with the poverty of his family. They simply could not find accommodations in the town.

The birth of the Christ child is remembered each holiday season in nativity scenes. Nativity scenes typically include shepherds, sheep, an angel, a donkey, an ox, three wise men, the mother Mary, the father Joseph, baby Jesus, and the star of Bethlehem. Some nativities are simple, while others are elaborate. Many individuals even collect nativity scenes and adorn their homes with displays. 

Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first nativity scene display that used real people and animals in 1223 to encourage Christian worship. Families across the globe still uphold the tradition of dressing up and reenacting the birth of Christ each Christmas season. 

9 From Saint Nicholas to Santa Claus

While ole Saint Nick shimmies down chimneys to drop off presents to good boys and girls worldwide, the real Saint Nicholas was a fourth-century Christian bishop who lived in Myra; now modern-day Turkey.

After the death of his parents, Saint Nicholas inherited a fortune from them but was a kind and generous man who donated all he had to those in need. He was renowned for helping the poor and giving life-changing gifts to those in need. Saint Nicholas is well known for being the patron saint of children and sailors, with a yearly celebration to honor the man on December 6th. 

After the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, saints became somewhat unpopular, yet Saint Nicholas retained his allure and grandeur. Dutch families brought “Sinter Klaas” to America, and the rest is well—history. 

8 Hang Your Stockings by the Chimney with Care

If I were to take a guess, I would guess that you have stockings well-hung somewhere in your home. Are they hung up on or near your fireplace? Have you ever wondered why the fireplace? 

Well, the story goes that three poor sisters washed their stockings and hung them out to dry by the fireplace overnight. Knowing that the girls were living in poverty, Saint Nicholas (the same Saint Nicholas in number nine above) threw three bags of gold down the chimney, with each bag falling into each of the sister’s stockings. Now you know why you traditionally hang stockings on the fireplace and why Santa Claus delivers gifts via the chimney!

We still hang up Christmas stockings each year, but unfortunately, few get filled with bags of gold. Now, many stockings are filled with candy, small toys, or even the ever-famous socks and underwear combo. Thanks, Mom!

7 “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly”

Holly, also known as Ilex, is the traditional Christmas flowering plant with which individuals decorate their homes. Its glossy leaves and bright red berries bring a touch of color to drab winter days. Because holly was a common plant in the woodlands of Europe, it was a cheap way for the poor to brighten their homes, and it soon became synonymous with the Christmas season. 

The Romans used holly in their Saturnalia festival around our current Christmas season for the same reasons that we use it today—it’s pretty! On the day of Saturnalia, masters served their slaves.

Nowadays, in the United States, commercial nurseries cultivate European holly for Christmas use. Unfortunately, Ilex likes conditions in America and has become an invasive species that causes considerable damage to native woodlands.

In traditional medicine, holly berries were used as a diuretic, fever relief, and a laxative. We certainly wouldn’t recommend this, as the berries can be toxic to humans. The colorful berries are enticing to small children and pets, but their effects can be sickly. So if you choose to decorate with real holly, please hang it out of reach of your pets and small children.

6 You Say “Panto,” I Say “Mime”

Many families enjoy going to the movies on Christmas day, but did you know similar practices have been going on for centuries? Pantos or pantomimes are not as important in the United States as they are, for example, in Britain. Nevertheless, various theaters across the country put on pantos during the holiday season.

Pantos generally follow the same general theme, whatever the subject. They usually showcase a tussle between bad and good, with clear plot lines, songs, and audience participation. Although pantos often reflect contemporary themes, pantos have a long tradition.

Pantos tradition traces its roots to medieval morality plays. These plays presented Christian themes and Bible stories in a way that was easily understood by the poor, illiterate townspeople who watched them. Services in the church were in Latin, a language that the uneducated didn’t understand. Morality plays were well-received by the public and continue to influence modern-day entertainment practices. 

5 Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

Mistletoe is a parasitic plant. Its use as a holiday decoration shares, with holly, the virtues of being easy to find and decorative at a time of year when few other plants look their best. Like holly, it was a natural choice for the poor due to its easy access. 

The Greeks used mistletoe as a cure-all, but the Druids saw it as a symbol of vivacity in the first century. Mistletoe thrived when everything else seemed dead; this small step led people to see the plant as a fertility symbol—hence our tradition of kissing under the mistletoe.

This tradition of snatching a kiss seems to have gained popularity in eighteenth-century England, amongst the servants in the great houses, mainly through the literature of the day—Washington Irving’s “Christmas Eve” comes to mind.

4 Winner Winner, Turkey Dinner

There is a story that Turkish merchants brought a tasty African fowl to Europe. In Britain, this bird quickly became known as a “turkey.” Long before Britain established colonies in America, a trader named William Strickland got hold of some American fowl that he sold in Bristol in 1526. These new birds were also named, somewhat unscientifically, as “turkeys.”

Henry VIII decided that the English should eat turkey at Christmas. Although he often seemed to act on a whim, this was a question of the domestic economy. Mid-winter was a terrible season for farmers. Most farmers were poor with small plots of land that could support only a few animals. 

The farmers could kill a chicken or slaughter a cow to celebrate the Christmas feast, but these animals were productive. Farmers could sell the eggs and milk, so they could not afford to lose them. Hence, turkey became an ideal substitute.

3 Yule Logs: From Wood to Cake

Originally, a Yule log was, well, a large log. In poor households, the fireplace was a source of heat and light. It was the center of the home where the whole family gathered. The family would cook their meals and chat in the dark winter evenings. 

In the cold and dark days as the year turned toward spring, a huge Yule log would burn throughout the twelve days of Christmas, from December 25th to January 5th. “Yule” is from the Norse word, hweol, meaning wheel. The Norse believed that the Yule log would usher in the sun, leading to warmth and longer days. 

Today, many only know a Yule log as a tasty holiday dessert. A Yule log cake is a chocolate sponge cake rolled with a cream filling. The cake is then covered with chocolate ganache to resemble an actual wood log. A delicious treat—without the splinters and fiber!

2 Milk and Cookies for Santa

Leaving milk and cookies for Santa is a large part of the United States holiday tradition, so it might be difficult to believe that it is quite a recent addition to Christmas.

In America, leaving snacks out for Santa seems to have started during the Great Depression. With so many people out of work, poverty was a real fear. No one could be certain they would have a job the following week; everyone knew someone who had fallen on hard times. 

In the households that were lucky enough to celebrate Christmas, some parents tried to teach their children the importance of giving and showing solidarity with those less fortunate than themselves. The leaving out of cookies and milk was symbolic, true, but an important lesson.

However, the tradition had long been popular in other parts of the world. Like several other holiday customs, it originated in northern Europe. The holiday tradition stems from the god Odin riding around the skies on his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. During the Yule season, children would leave out food for Sleipnir, hoping that a grateful Odin would bring them a present in return. Rudolph and Santa’s reindeer are an echo of Odin and Sleipnir

1 Salvation Army Bell Ringers

Salvation Army bell ringers are perhaps the holiday tradition most obviously connected to poverty and need. The holiday season sees bell-ringers in virtually every shopping area in the country; I can hear the bells, even now.

The Salvation Army began when William and Catherine Booth organized a mission on military principles to help the needy in London, England. The Salvation Army is now an international institution that offers help to all who need it, regardless of faith or circumstance. However, the tradition of Salvation Army bell ringers is purely American and began in San Francisco, CA, in 1891.

The United States had recently come out of a short but damaging recession. Many people had moved west in search of new opportunities, but not all were successful. Salvation Army Captain Joseph McFee had the worthy but relatively modest aim to bring some cheer to the unfortunate.

That Christmas, Captain McFee decided that he would like to host a Christmas dinner for 1,000 of the city’s destitute and set out a red pot at the Oakland Ferry Landing with a sign that asked people to “Keep the Pot Boiling!” to draw attention to the event and raise the necessary funds. This was the origin of the red kettles that the Salvation Army still use, and bell-ringing advertises their presence.

In 2019, the Salvation Army raised $126 million through its bell-ringing campaign. Their presence on our streets during the holiday season is a reminder of the true spirit of Christmas.