oday in the Hudson Valley, it is possible to enjoy the pre-Santa Claus traditions of the Dutch who settled here. At colonial Philipsburg Manor, Upper Mills, in Westchester's Sleepy Hollow, St. Nick in his dramatic bishop's hat and snowy beard puts in an appearance, telling the story of his miracles and rewarding children for their good deeds throughout the year. In the stone manor house, tables are set for holiday feasting and a two-foot high molded St. Nicholas cookie is being carefully decorated.

Up river in Croton-on-Hudson, candlelight streams from the windows of the manor house of the prominent Van Cortlandt family. Here, where the Revolutionary War has just ended, Dutch traditions are becoming Anglicized, with fruits, holiday cakes and greenery placed about in preparation for an elegant holiday gathering. The entry hall sports an English "kissing bell" and a musical group performing classical favorites. As guests walk by lantern light to the Ferry House tavern, they are met by the comical "Lord of Misrule," who presides over raucous Twelfth Night celebrations under way, with fiddle music, dancing and toasting of the season.

Visitors to candlelight tours at Mr. Irving's home, Sunnyside at Tarrytown in Westchester County, will learn of his contributions to the American Christmas celebration. Guests are escorted down a lantern-lit path to the cottage, which is bedecked with holly and evergreens. In each room, lit only by candlelight, some of what the author had to say about Christmas is read aloud, while caroling can be heard in the parlor and around the bonfire outside.

One thing visitors will not see at Sunnyside is a Christmas tree. Mr. Irving liked to uphold the "old ways" in his home and, although bringing a living tree into the house was gaining in popularity in the 1840s and 1850s, there is no record that Irving ever did so. Queen Victoria made this Germanic custom fashionable by decorating an evergreen tree in Buckingham Palace for her German-born husband, Prince Albert, and the idea spread rapidly in this country later in the century.

In 1851, an enterprising man from Hunter, up in the Greene County Catskills, saw the growing demand for cut Christmas trees. He loaded up two wagons with balsam fir, hitched oxen to the wagons and hauled the trees to the town of Catskill, where they were loaded on a steamboat and shipped down the Hudson River to New York City. As the story is told in, Carr "rented space on the corner of Vesey and Greenwich Streets, where he sold his trees with a speed and at a price that amazed him. The Christmas tree business in New York had begun."

The custom of giving holiday greeting cards also got its start locally. A skilled wood engraver and lithographer named Richard H. Pease of Albany, created America's first Christmas card in 1851. The card depicts a family Christmas celebration and was meant, not to be mailed, but to be handed to business associates and friends as a commercial remembrance of the season.

Both trees and cards abound at Lyndhurst, a gothic revival mansion in Tarrytown, where the Victorian Era is in high gear around the 1890s. Here visitors for festive candlelight tours can see how the Dutch, German and English traditions had melded into an ornate Victorian celebration of the holiday. Doorways and halls are festooned with pine and laurel. Elaborately decorated trees stand in the parlor and the art room upstairs. And Santa Claus is much in evidence on painted decorations, handmade cards and wrapped packages.

Another turn-of-the-century celebration can be seen at Mills Mansion at Staatsburg in Dutchess County, where "A Gilded Age Christmas" features lavish Edwardian-style decorations. Similarly, Wilderstein at Rhinebeck, also in Dutchess County, will be decorated with displays to delight a child's fantasy, in a style compatible with the Queen Anne Victorian architecture of the house.

Exploring Christmas celebrations in the 20th century is done at other sites in Dutchess County: Springwood, the Hyde Park home of FDR, which is decorated to recreate a Roosevelt family Christmas, and Montgomery Place in Annandale-on-Hudson, where Christmas on the home front during World War II is brought to life. Visitors go back fifty years in time to relive and remember the 1940's through music, stories, radio broadcasts and the spirit of Christmas that was kept alive in spite of shortages and the painful sacrifices of war.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a strong antidote to the over-commercialization of Christmas is to experience the joys of the holiday as celebrated in times gone by. Those who do so, by visiting the Hudson Valley with family and friends over the holidays, will discover how deeply the American Christmas is rooted in this scenic part of the country.

The way we celebrate Christmas is a completely American invention, growing from the fertile ethnic customs of the Dutch, English and Germans, all of whom found refuge along the banks of the mighty Hudson River. Until the 19th century, the celebration of Christmas began with St. Nicholas' Eve on December 5 and continued until Twelfth Night on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. Twelfth Night was the focus of the holiday as the most important religious event of the season.

Over time, these traditions and customs merged, in the Hudson Valley, to form what we call our Christmas Traditions of today. St. Nicholas in his bishop robes giving rewards to well mannered children merged into Santa Claus who then took to the air behind a horse drawn wagon dropping presents down chimneys. Sugar Plums started dancing in children's heads and the little horses and wagon transformed into a magnificent sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer.

As Victorian England started yearning for a more festive holiday, the lore of the Hudson Valley transformed their notions of the holiday into the warmth of the hearth, good food, good friends and gay festivities. The feasts and celebrations of our valley created the background for the most famous Christmas story of them all.

It's a fascinating tale of imagination, desire for family warmth and the love of a poet for his children.

As the Dutch came to America and established the colony of New Amsterdam, their children enjoyed the traditional visit of Saint Nicholas' on December 5. The date is a Catholic custom even after the Reformation. As England seized the colony and and it became New York, the kindly figure of Sinter Klaas (pronounced Santa Claus) soon aroused among the English children the desire of having such a heavenly visitor come to their homes, too.

The English settlers were happy to grant the wishes of their children. However, the figure of a Catholic saint and bishop was not acceptable in their eyes as many of them were Presbyterians or Puritans, to whom a bishop was repugnant. In addition, they did not celebrate the feasts of saints according to the ancient Catholic calendar.

This dilemma was solved by shifting the visit of the Dutch Santa Claus from December 5 to Christmas, and by completely replacing him with an entirely different character. Behind the name Santa Claus actually stands the figure of the pagan Germanic god Thor. Details of Thor from ancient German mythology show the origin of the modern Santa Claus tale.

Thor was the god of the peasants and the common people. He was represented as an elderly man, jovial and friendly, of heavy build, with a long white beard. His element was fire, his color red. The rumble and roar of thunder were said to be caused by the rolling of his chariot, for he alone among the gods never rode on horse­back but drove in a chariot drawn by two white goats (called Cracker and Gnasher). He was fighting the giants of ice and snow, and thus became the Yule-god and was said to live in the 'North­land' where he had his palace among the icebergs. He was considered as the cheerful and friendly god, never harming humans but rather helping and protecting them. The fireplace in every home was especially sacred to him, and he was said to come down through the chimney into his element, the fire.

Here, then, is the true origin of our "Santa Claus." It certainly was a stroke of genius that produced such a charming and attractive figure for pagan mythology. With the Christian saint whose name he still bears, however, this Santa Claus has really nothing to do.

It is here that our tale of the Hudson Valley and our traditions of Christmas converge. They connect in the person of Washington Irving.

Hudson Valley resident and best-selling author Washington Irving wrote "The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon Gent", in which, among other stories, he relates a series of stories about the celebration of Christmas in an English manor house, Bracebridge. The sketches feature a squire who invited the peasants into his home for the holiday. In Irving's mind, Christmas should be a peaceful, warm-hearted holiday bringing groups together across lines of wealth or social status. Irving's fictitious celebrants enjoyed "ancient customs," including the crowning of a Lord of Misrule. Irving's book, however, was not based on any holiday celebration he had attended—in fact, historians say that Irving's account actually "invented" tradition by implying that it described the true customs of the season.

With the publication in 1808, just 20 years after the writing of the American Constitution, Irving created a new version of Old St. Nick. This one rode over the treetops in a horse-drawn wagon "dropping gifts down the chimneys of his favorites." Irving described Santa as a jolly Dutchman who smoked a long-stemmed clay pipe and wore baggy breeches and a broad-brimmed hat. Diedrich Knickerbocker's (Irving's) History of New York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty also included the familiar phrase, "...laying a finger beside his nose...."

Irving expands our knowledge of St. Nicholas' holiday activities by saying, "At this early period was instituted that pious ceremony, still religiously observed in all our ancient families of the right breed, of hanging up a stocking in the chimney on St. Nicholas eve; which stocking is always found in the morning miraculously filled; for the good St. Nicholas has ever been a great giver of gifts, particularly to children."

Irving liked nothing better than attend a good party or tell a great story. Having done what he could to cement the Dutch tradition in the American consciousness, he then spent many years in England, where he was an honored guest at many of the great country houses. His tales of "Old Christmas", assembled from his previously written sketches published in other books, first published in 1820, are among the earliest popular accounts of 19th century English Christmas customs, many of which would soon be adopted in the United States.

Irving writes of mistletoe and evergreen wreaths, Christmas candles and the blazing Yule log, singing and dancing, carolers at the door and the preacher at the church, wine and wassail, and, of course, the festive Christmas dinner. His description of Old Christmas as he experienced it in "Merrie Olde England," helped to popularize these traditions in his native land.

To read the complete text of Washington Irving's "Old Christmas," just CLICK HERE.

Irving, acknowledged as the "Father of the American Christmas," had neatly laid the ground work for a now-famous poem written by Clement Clark Moore called "A Visit From St. Nicholas." Most American children today can recite the poem in which St. Nicholas arrives by reindeer-drawn sleigh, rather than horse-drawn wagon, over the treetops, bringing gifts and laying his finger aside his nose.

Legend has it that Moore composed "A Visit from St. Nicholas" for his family on Christmas Eve of 1822, during a sleigh-ride. It is said he drew inspiration for the elfin, pot-bellied St. Nick in his poem from the roly-poly Dutchman who drove his sleigh that day. But from what is known of Clement Moore, it's more likely he drew his Santa Claus from Washington Irving's "Knickerbocker History."

Moore's verse gave an Arctic flavor to Santa's image when he substituted 8 tiny reindeer and a sleigh for Irving's horse and wagon. And he described Santa as "He had a broad face, and a little round belly, that shook, when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly."

Moore was an academe and refused to have the poem published despite its enthusiastic reception by everyone who read it. His argument that it was beneath his dignity fell on deaf ears, because the following Christmas "A Visit from St. Nicholas" found its way after all into the mass media when a family member cunningly submitted it to a newspaper, the Troy Sentinal. Moore did not to acknowledge authorship of it until fifteen years later.

Moore's poem quickly became a phenomenon after it first appeared, anonymously, on Page 2 of the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel on Dec. 23, 1823. The newspaper reprinted it each Christmas for several years, and in about 1830 began printing it as an illustrated broadside, handed out by carriers delivering the Christmas edition.

Dickens' memorable descriptions of the Christmas scene in both Pickwick and A Christmas Carol owe a great deal to Washington Irving. At a New York dinner, hosted by Irving, Dickens amusingly revealed his devotion to the great American author: "I say, gentlemen, I do not go to bed two nights out of seven without taking Washington Irving under my arm upstairs to bed with me". In the semi-feudal community of Dingley Dell in Pickwick Papers, Dickens's portrait of Mr. Wardle is designed after that of Irving's genial Squire Bracebridge from "Old Christmas". Irving's descriptions of the Bracebridge Hall Christmas celebrations, with their dancing, singing, games, tales, mistletoe and holly clearly helped to shape those seen in Dingley Dell, Mr. Fezziwig's ball, and at the home of Scrooge's nephew, Fred.

Dickens' cherished little Christmas story, the best loved and most read of all of his books, began life as the result of the author's desperate need of money. In the fall of 1843 Dickens and his wife Kate were expecting their fifth child. Requests for money from his family, a large mortgage on his Devonshire Terrace home, and lagging sales from the monthly installments of Martin Chuzzlewit, had left Dickens seriously short of cash.

As the idea for the story took shape and the writing began in earnest, Dickens became engrossed in the book. He wrote that as the tale unfolded he 'wept and laughed, and wept again' and that he 'walked about the black streets of London fifteen or twenty miles many a night when all sober folks had gone to bed'.

At odds with his publishers, Dickens paid for the production cost of the book himself and insisted on a lavish design that included a gold-stamped cover and four hand-colored etchings. He also set the price at 5 shillings so that the book would be affordable to nearly everyone.

The book was published during the week before Christmas 1843 and was an instant sensation but due to the high production costs, Dickens' earning from the sales were lower than expected. In addition to the disappointing profit from the book Dickens was enraged that the work was instantly the victim of pirated editions. Copyright laws in England were often loosely enforced and a complete lack of international copyright laws had been Dickens' theme during his trip to America the year before. He ended up spending more money fighting pirated editions of the book than he was making from the book itself.

Despite these early financial difficulties, Dickens' Christmas tale of human redemption has endured beyond even Dickens' own vivid imagination. It was a favorite during Dickens' public readings of his works late in his lifetime and is known today primarily due to the dozens of film versions and dramatizations which continue to be produced every year.

Dickens' description of the holiday as "a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of other people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys" is the very essence of Christmas today, not at the greedy commercialized level, but in people's hearts and homes.

Dickens' name had become so synonymous with Christmas that on hearing of his death in 1870 a little costermonger's girl in London asked, "Mr. Dickens dead? Then will Father Christmas die too?"

To read Charles Dickens' lecture version of his classic tale "A Christmas Carol", CLICK HERE.