Local historian enlightens civic club

Skeet Willingham (left) talked about “Christmas in the Olde South” and the history of Christmas observances in the United States at Tuesday’s regular lunch meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Washington. He told that the first Christmas celebration in the New World was near Tallahassee, Florida, in 1539 by DeSoto and his men. The first English Christmas, he explained, was in Jamestown, Virginia, about 1608. Alabama, in 1836, was the first state to legalize the celebration of Christmas but it wasn’t until 1870 that it became a federal holiday. Carlton Norris (right) was program chairman for the day.