ENGLISH

Debunking the Yule Log Myth

By Robert E. May

Book information

Publisher
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Year
2024
ISBN
9798881801793, 9798881801786
Language
english
Format
EPUB
Filesize
4 MB (3710975 bytes)
Pages
\0
Time added
2024-12-10 18:56:58

Description

According to an oft repeated legend, during Christmas before the Civil War, all enslaved people in the American South enjoyed lengthy vacations of a week or more depending on how long an oversized "Yule log" burned in their master's fireplace. As long as the log held out, slaves escaped heavy labor and their masters' whips and enjoyed a rare freedom of movement to go and do what they wished as well as gorge themselves on food and drink they never got the rest of the year. No wonder they soaked those logs in swamps to make them burn even longer.But is it true? In this book historian Robert May takes readers on a detective caper as he investigates a story that reaches back to colonial America and continues today. May finds no evidence of the Yule log tradition in the historical record, instead showing that it originated with pro-Confederate Lost Cause propagandists attempting to present the South's prewar system of human bondage in as soft tones as possible. Tales...

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