Why are there Christmas trees on New Jersey beaches?

Most people assume it’s a recent tradition, but the story goes back much further. In this episode, we explore the surprising history of beach Christmas trees in New Jersey, tracing their roots from early Moravian Christmas practices and German traditions, through Victorian culture influenced by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, to New Jersey’s role in growing Christmas trees commercially.

We follow how Christmas trees moved from private homes into public spaces, onto boardwalks after World War II, and eventually into the sand itself during Operation Christmas Tree in 1963, when discarded trees were used to rebuild dunes and protect the shoreline. After Superstorm Sandy in 2012, forgotten ornaments resurfaced, helping inspire the beach Christmas tree tradition many people recognize today.

This episode blends documented history with careful storytelling to show how ordinary people, quiet traditions, and repeated acts of care turned a simple holiday decoration into a lasting part of New Jersey’s winter shoreline.

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https://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/beach-christmas-trees-tradition-2026-jersey-shore/4319174/

#NewJerseyHistory #HolidayTraditions #JerseyShore #ChristmasHistory #PublicHistory

Bibliography

Forbes, Bruce David. Christmas: A Candid History. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

Nissenbaum, Stephen. The Battle for Christmas. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Moravian Archives. “Moravian Christmas Traditions in Early America.” Bethlehem, PA.

Illustrated London News. December 1848. Engraving of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert decorating a Christmas tree.

Long Beach Island Historical Museum. “Operation Christmas Tree, 1963.”

Press of Atlantic City. “Atlantic City Boardwalk Gets First Christmas Tree in 152-Year History.” 2022.

 Traditions don’t survive because they’re explained.

They survive because they’re recognized.

And I don’t know of any group that has more honorary members than Italian-Americans.

Every Christmas Eve, Italian-American families gather for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. The tradition feels ancient, immovable. But where did it actually come from, and how did it take root in New Jersey?

In this episode, we explore the real history behind La Vigilia, Italian immigration, regional foodways, and how a once-practical ingredient like baccalà became the emotional centerpiece of Christmas Eve. Along the way, we move through grocery stores, fishmongers, and kitchens, tracing how memory, restraint, and recognition survive long after language and habit begin to fade.

This is not a how-to episode. It’s a why-we-still-do-this episode.
Because sometimes tradition doesn’t need explaining.
It just needs to be noticed.

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#SevenFishes #ItalianAmericanHistory #NewJerseyHistory #ChristmasEveTraditions #FoodAndMemory

Bibliography

• Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Harvard University Press, 1998.

• Cinotto, Simone. The Italian American Table: Food, Family, and Community in New York City. University of Illinois Press, 2013.

• Montanari, Massimo. Italian Cuisine: A Cultural History. Columbia University Press, 2006.

• United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “Questions and Answers About Abstinence and Fast.”

Join me for a mixture of fact and fiction. Before America ran on Dunkin’, early Dutch settlers in New Jersey ran on oliekoek and hot chocolate. Fried dough and thick cocoa. Not treats. Fuel.

This episode traces the long, practical history of doughnuts in New Jersey, from Dutch winter kitchens in 17th-century Pavonia to bakeries, taverns, and early coffee culture, and finally to the rise of Dunkin’ Donuts as statewide infrastructure. Along the way, we examine what made fried dough last, why it spread, and how New Jersey turned a seasonal survival food into something ordinary enough to depend on.

The episode closes with a fictional coda, grounded in historical context, exploring how food traditions move through families, places, and habits long after their origins are forgotten.

#NewJerseyHistory #FoodHistory #DoughnutHistory #DutchAmerica #NewJerseyCulture

Sources

• Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, The True History of Chocolate
  — Background on early hot chocolate as a thick, functional food.

• Michael Janofsky, “Foodways in Early New Netherland”
  — Dutch cooking traditions carried into early New Jersey.

• Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink
  — Reference for doughnuts, frying traditions, and early American foodways.

• New Jersey State Archives, Colonial Probate and Tavern Records
  — Evidence of cookware, frying, cocoa, and everyday food in colonial New Jersey.

• Asbury Park Press advertising archives (1964–1974)
  — Documentation of early Dunkin’ Donuts locations in New Jersey.

Winter changed how people lived in early New Jersey.

In Dutch-settled communities along the Hudson River and the Palisades, Christmas week was understood as a time when routine loosened, burial was delayed, and vigilance mattered. This episode explores how people organized their lives around uncertainty, not because they believed in ghosts, but because they believed attention was a form of responsibility.

Through a restrained narrative set in 1680 and documented Dutch Reformed church records from places like Bergen, Hackensack, Communipaw, and Paulus Hook, we examine why winter and Christmas were treated as moments when the world grew thin.

#GhostsOfHistory #NewJerseyHistory #NJHistory #ColonialNewJersey #DutchNewJersey #ChristmasHistory #HudsonRiverHistory

Consider this like a preview, without giving away too many details. Before winter had schedules and streetlights, it had silence.

Long nights stretched farther than certainty. Fires burned low. Food ran thin. People slept lightly. Not because they were afraid, but because attention mattered.

In those months, stories were not told to entertain. They were told to keep people awake.

This is why winter has always carried strange stories. Not as spectacle. Not as fantasy. But as a way of rehearsing watchfulness. Faith, fear, memory, warning. All braided together, because winter made no distinction between them.

Long before hot chocolate became a sweet holiday treat, it was a thick, sustaining drink that helped people endure cold, labor, and uncertainty. In this episode, we trace the history of chocolate as a beverage through New Jersey, from its Indigenous Mesoamerican origins to Dutch New Netherland kitchens, colonial taverns, Revolutionary War camps, and finally into modern industry.

New Jersey’s rivers, ports, roads, and crossroads made it a natural home for chocolate, not as a luxury, but as an everyday staple. We explore why early drinking chocolate was closer to pudding than cocoa, how Dutch foodways shaped colonial habits in places listeners still recognize today, and why chocolate’s ordinariness is exactly what allowed it to follow people into taverns, trade routes, and war.

From Bergen and the Raritan Valley to Burlington, Trenton, and Freehold, this is the story of a drink that didn’t pass through New Jersey. It stayed.

#NewJerseyHistory #FoodHistory #ColonialAmerica #RevolutionaryEra #CulturalHistory

Email me: [email protected]

Socials: https://linktr.ee/njhistorypodcast

Bibliography

Coe, Sophie D., and Michael D. Coe. The True History of Chocolate. 3rd ed. London: Thames & Hudson, 2013.
Foundational scholarly work on Indigenous cacao use, European adoption, and the transformation of chocolate into a beverage.

Grivetti, Louis Evan, and Howard-Yana Shapiro, eds. Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2009.
Authoritative essays on cacao processing, European drinking chocolate, and Atlantic-world trade networks.

Rees, John U. “Soldiers’ Food in the American War for Independence.” In collected essays on Continental Army provisioning and daily life.
Primary research on foodways in Revolutionary-era camps, including references to chocolate as a familiar drink when available.

New Jersey State Archives. Colonial Probate Inventories and Tavern Licenses, 17th–18th Centuries. Trenton, NJ.
Archival records documenting household goods, tavern operations, and material culture in colonial New Jersey, including chocolate pots, mills, and imported foodstuffs.

For decades, nearly every American household had one: a ceramic Christmas tree glowing softly from a sideboard or corner table. But for many Italian-American families, these trees weren’t just decorations. They were made by hand, kept for life, and carried meaning long after trends faded.

In this episode, I tell a true family story set in mid-century New Jersey, using one ceramic Christmas tree as a lens to explore postwar DIY culture, Atlantic Mold, parish craft classes, social clubs, immigrant folk belief, and the quiet ways traditions become guardians of a home.

After the story, we break down the real history behind ceramic Christmas trees, how and where they were made, why they became so widespread, and why some families never let them go.

This is a story about memory, migration, making things by hand, and the objects that stay when everything else changes.

Hashtags:
#CeramicChristmasTree #ItalianAmericanHistory #ChristmasTraditions #NewJerseyHistory #HolidayHistory

Email me: [email protected]

Socials: https://linktr.ee/njhistorypodcast

Bibliography

Clark, Mary. “The History of Vintage Ceramic Christmas Trees.” Clark’s Christmas Trees. November 3, 2019.
https://clarkschristmastrees.com/2019/11/03/the-history-of-the-vintage-ceramic-christmas-tree/

Dogwood Ceramics. “Vintage Ceramic Christmas Trees and Atlantic Mold.” Accessed 2024.
https://www.dogwoodceramics.com/misc/antique-ceramic-christmas-trees.htm

Levy, Janet. American Ceramics in the Postwar Era. New York: Craft Heritage Press, 1998.

United States Library of Congress. Home Interiors and Family Life, 1950s–1960s. Photograph collections.
https://www.loc.gov

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Home Interiors and Holiday Life Collections.
https://dp.la

Oral family history of the Whitfield and related families, Brick and Cliffside Park, New Jersey.

George Washington didn’t cross the Delaware alone.
According to one strange New Jersey legend, there was another army on that icy river—an army baked in secret ovens, blessed by a Patriot rabbi, and marched into Trenton under cover of fog.

In this special episode, we explore the real history behind the tale: Rabbi Gershom Mendes Seixas, Christopher Ludwig the baker-general, Moravian women from Hope Township, Hessian Christmas traditions, and the true humanitarian aftermath of the Battle of Trenton.

A blend of fact, folklore, spice, and winter warfare—this is the story of the night the gingerbread marched.

#AmericanRevolution #NewJerseyHistory #WashingtonsCrossing #HessianHistory #FolkloreReimagined #HolidayHistory

Email me: [email protected]

Socials: https://linktr.ee/njhistorypodcast

Atwood, Craig D. Community of the Cross: Moravian Piety in Colonial Bethlehem. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004.

Ewald, Johann. Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal. Translated and edited by Joseph P. Tustin. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979.

Fischer, David Hackett. Washington’s Crossing. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Gabaccia, Donna R. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Gruber, Ira D. The Hessian Soldiers of the American Revolution. Bronx, NY: Fordham University Press, 2021.

Idel, Moshe. Golem: Jewish Magical and Mystical Traditions on the Artificial Anthropoid. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.

Lesser, Charles H., ed. The Sinews of Independence: Monthly Strength Reports of the Continental Army. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976.

Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. “Christopher Ludwig, Baker General of the Continental Army.” Vol. 62 (1938).

Rumpf, Wolfgang. Lebkuchen: A Culinary History of Germany’s Christmas Gingerbread. Munich: Bavarian Historical Press, 1998.

Sarna, Jonathan D. American Judaism: A History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.

Wessel, Carol A. The Moravians in Hope, New Jersey: 1769–1808. Belvidere, NJ: Warren County Historical Society, 1984.

New Jersey Gazette. January 1777 issues (contemporary reporting on Hessian prisoners housed in churches and meeting houses).

On Christmas Eve, 1776, a young Hessian soldier named Johann Müller completes his final duty before dawn. What follows is a quiet, imagined encounter shaped by real 18th-century German Christmas traditions, and a traveling Moravian minister moving through enemy lines. As homesickness and faith briefly soften one soldier’s heart, Washington’s army moves across the Delaware under the cover of storm and darkness. By morning, Colonel Rall will be dead, and Johann will march away as a prisoner of war. Blending documented Revolutionary War history with intimate historical fiction, this episode reveals the human story hidden inside one of America’s most famous victories.

#BattleOfTrenton #AmericanRevolution #HessianHistory #NewJerseyHistory #HistoricalFiction

Email me: [email protected]

Socials: https://linktr.ee/njhistorypodcast

Sources – The Night They Still Remembered Home

1. Johann Conrad Döhla, A Hessian Diary of the American Revolution

2. Johann Ewald, Diary of the American War: A Hessian Journal

3. George Washington, Letter to the Continental Congress, Dec. 27, 1776

4. David Hackett Fischer, Washington’s Crossing

5. Edward J. Lowell (ed.), The Hessians and Other German Auxiliaries of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War

6. Moravian Church Archives, Bethlehem, PA

7. William Woys Weaver, As American As Shoofly Pie

8. National Park Service, Battle of Trenton Resource Study

n the winter of 1862, as the Civil War raged and the Emancipation Proclamation approached, three men fled across New Jersey carrying something far more powerful than gold or military intelligence: Thomas Nast’s first true image of Santa Claus.
Hunted by the Knights of the Golden Circle, guided by the hidden networks that once moved freedom through the state, and driven by Lincoln’s quiet urgency, Nast, Pinkerton, and Stanton raced from Morristown to Newark to New York to deliver a symbol the nation desperately needed.
This is the conclusion of Night Visitors—a New Jersey Christmas legend woven from history, folklore, faith, and myth.
Where Santa walked.
Where hope survived.
And where a small state helped reshape a nation’s imagination.

Email me: [email protected]

Socials: https://linktr.ee/njhistorypodcast

Keywords: New Jersey History, Santa Claus Origins, Thomas Nast, Civil War Christmas, Emancipation Proclamation, Harriet Tubman, Pine Barrens Folklore, Underground Railroad NJ, American Christmas History, Night Visitors, Morristown History, Gilded Age New York, Your Hometown Revolution

Hashtags: #NewJerseyHistory #ThomasNast #SantaClausStory #CivilWarHistory #AmericanFolklore #NightVisitors