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- The First Christmas Gift OriginLike other indigenous folktales, Appalachian Christmas stories, for the most part, can be traced back to the British Isles. The early mountain settlers, who were largely Scotch-Irish immigrants, probably brought these tales over the ocean with them. As they formed their own distinctive, tight-knit culture in the rugged hills, these original Christmas tales were transformed into stories that reflected their new lives in America. Two centuries later, as modern influences crept into Appalachia, these distinctive Appalachian tales spread rapidly throughout the world - so much so that cultural origins are sometimes blurred.
Some Appalachian Christmas stories attempt to explain how certain traditions
and images such as gift giving, mistletoe, Poinsettia flowers and Christmas
trees came to be associated with Christmas. In some cases, these traditions
and images became significant because they were featured in the celebration
of the birth of Christ. One of the more popular Appalachian "tall
tales" - the story of how farm animals talk to one another on Christmas
Eve - was actually part of a centuries-old tale of the first Christmas miracles.To learn more about the Appalachian mountains and its people, please refer to the links below.
Chuck Larkin, one of our featured storytellers, has an interesting site called Chuck Larkin's Christmas Tales that contains other traditional Christmas stories and their cultural origins.
Photos courtesy of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
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