This article from December of 1963 spotlights East Hampton and the choicest side dishes of the Christmas holiday.
The seasonal article was published in This Week, a magazine that ran from 1935 to 1969 as a supplement for newspapers across the country. In 1963 This Week was at the height of its popularity, according to the Aug. 14, 1969, New York Times.
Clementine Paddleford, the article’s author, begins by praising East Hampton as a picturesque small town, outlining its history as Jeannette Edwards Rattray (1893-1974) guides her on a tour. The piece focuses on Home, Sweet Home, East Hampton’s historical house and museum celebrating the life of the actor and composer John Howard Payne (1791-1852). The museum’s name comes from Payne’s most famous song, which, according to lore, celebrates fond memories of his East Hampton home.
In this article, Mrs. Rattray and fellow cooks from East Hampton’s founding families, Amanda Halsey Ruland Talmage (1906-1990), Jean Edwards Dayton (1906-1995), Pati Armitage Osborne (1923-1997), and Maria Dayton Parsons Sherrill (1894-1968), share family recipes, some of them passed down through the generations. Local staples like clams, corn, and potatoes form the basis of this Christmas feast.
Christmas was very different among the earliest New England settlers who came to East Hampton. Puritans in New England officially resisted any Christmas festivities, believing the holiday was a pagan and Roman Catholic tradition. However, English Christmas customs continued to be celebrated, much to the displeasure of the theocracy.
Over time, the various ways Mid-Atlantic colonists celebrated the holiday began to influence East Hampton’s traditions. Christmas as we know it in America today did not begin to take shape until the 1850s, about 200 years after East Hampton’s first settlers arrived.
Though the methods of celebration and the nature of traditions change, as the holiday season continues many of us feel deeply the words John Howard Payne wrote in 1822: “Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam / Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.”
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Moriah Moore is a librarian and archivist in the East Hampton Library’s Long Island Collection.
