The West End’s Christmas Elephant

On Christmas Eve 1896, the Society of the New Jerusalem church on Bowdoin St. in the West End held a Christmas festival for children, which featured an elephant bearing candy. Christmas festivals at West End churches, including the Twelfth Baptist Church on Phillips Street, were typical of the nineteenth century.

On the afternoon of December 24, 1896, the Society of the New Jerusalem, on Bowdoin Street in the West End, held its annual Christmas festival for children. The festival took place in the church’s vestry, or its room used for meetings. The guests were eleven children cared for by the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. After the children ate dinner in the vestry, they heard a Christmas story from Rev. James Reed, who had been New Jerusalem’s pastor since 1868. They sang Christmas carols and heard Mozart’s “Kinder Symphony” (“Children’s Symphony”) played by organist O.B. Brown. Shortly after, a lighted Christmas tree filled with presents underneath was revealed from behind a screen. Next to the tree, on the stage, was, according to the Globe, “a large elephant…having upon his back a big bundle composed of packages of candy, which were distributed with the presents to the children.” This elephant “took the place of Santa Claus” at the Church of the New Jerusalem for an unconventional Christmas gathering enjoyed by the children. The Boston Globe never indicated whether the Society of the New Jerusalem managed to rent a live elephant for its Christmas gathering, or used a fake one.

The Society of the New Jerusalem is a “Swedenborgian” church, referring to the teachings of Emmanuel Swedenborg. In 1874, Rev. Reed gave a lecture in his Bowdoin St. church on “the Swedenborgian doctrine of the spirit world.” This referred to the ubiquitous presence of angels who could not be seen or felt by humans, and the idea of a spiritual body which leaves the material body upon death. In 1893, the Society of the New Jerusalem honored Reed’s twenty-fifth anniversary of service. Reed was also a donor to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which explains their presence at his church’s Christmas festival. The aforementioned Society investigated cases of cruelty and negligence toward children, as it still does today, particularly court cases involving “neglect, non-support, [and] guardianship,” and supported children “placed in homes, institutions and families.” In 1895, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children introduced a bill in the state legislature to prohibit life insurance policies for children under 10 years old. The organization was concerned that child life insurance incentivized negligence and made the deaths of young people “a profitable event.” In 1882, the office of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children was located at 1 Pemberton Square, near Scollay Square in the West End.

On Christmas Eve in 1896, another West End church, the Twelfth Baptist Church on Phillips St., held its own Christmas gathering, albeit without any elephants. The Sunday school children of Twelfth Baptist received presents from under a large Christmas tree, “which was prettily illuminated and weighted down with gifts of all kinds.” Before presents, the guests enjoyed “a musical and literary program” organized by W.H. Pryor, the church’s superintendent. Pryor also served on the finance committee of the Massachusetts Equal Rights Association, a Black mutual aid society which advocated for “agitation in aid of our people in the South” and to guarantee “equal civil and political privileges” for Black people nationwide.

The West End Christmas gatherings hosted by the Society of the New Jerusalem and the Twelfth Baptist Church, in December 1896, shared commonalities despite the fact that only the former had an elephant present. Both churches were connected to state-wide organizations fighting for social justice in different forms, and shared an interest in the well-being of the West End’s children over the holidays.