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Historical scholarship at its best--a gifted scholar taking on a myth-encrusted topic and systematically demolishing the distortions that have persisted for generations. It is both timely and important, particularly at this time in our history when race has taken such a central place in our national life. ----Charles Dew, Williams College, author of The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade In this deeply and imaginatively researched, carefully argued, and engagingly written book, Robert May focuses on Christmas rituals to provide a major reinterpretation of how slavery functioned in the Old South and to expose myths about African American slave and plantation existence that persist to this day. --John David Smith, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, author of We Ask Only for Even-Handed Justice: Black Voices from Reconstruction, 1865-1877 Robert May's deeply researched portrayal of the realities and images of Christmas celebrations in the antebellum South offers new insights on the nature of slavery and its cultural impact. He shows that while not entirely mythical, proslavery depictions of holiday merrymaking and gift exchanges among slaves and their owners became a staple of the proslavery argument before the Civil War and a dominant theme in the Lost Cause romanticization of the South and slavery. But the realities of slavery were quite different, as he makes clear in this important work. ----James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

Historical scholarship at its best--a gifted scholar taking on a myth-encrusted topic and systematically demolishing the distortions that have persisted for generations. It is both timely and important, particularly at this time in our history when race has taken such a central place in our national life. ----Charles Dew, Williams College, Charlotte, author of The Making of a Racist: A Southerner Reflects on Family, History, and the Slave Trade In this deeply and imaginatively researched, carefully argued, and engagingly written book, Robert May focuses on Christmas rituals to provide a major reinterpretation of how slavery functioned in the Old South and to expose myths about African American slave and plantation existence that persist to this day. --John David Smith, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, author of We Ask Only for Even-Handed Justice: Black Voices from Reconstruction, 1865-1877 Robert May's deeply researched portrayal of the realities and images of Christmas celebrations in the antebellum South offers new insights on the nature of slavery and its cultural impact. He shows that while not entirely mythical, proslavery depictions of holiday merrymaking and gift exchanges among slaves and their owners became a staple of the proslavery argument before the Civil War and a dominant theme in the Lost Cause romanticization of the South and slavery. But the realities of slavery were quite different, as he makes clear in this important work. ----James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era

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Robert E. May is Professor Emeritus of History at Purdue University and the author of Slavery, Race, and Conquest in the Tropics: Lincoln, Douglas, and the Future of Latin America and other works about slavery and the South.

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