At the turn of the nineteenth century, holidays were not a huge part in the American culture. They were celebrated but they were not seen as major component throughout the year. Christmas was probably effected the most at the turn of the century because with all of the technological advances taking place, new things were available to buy as Christmas presents.  People would buy the new things for Christmas just to have them, and everyone wanted them because they were the new and in things.

                The big changes to Christmas occurred when people started to buy Christmas presents out of the Sears Roebuck and Montgomery Ward. It was almost like people were continuing to do this because it was really the first time a catalog came into play and people took advantage of it. People were buying all types of things from teddy bears to a sheet music cabinet. The teddy bear became a really popular gift after a cartoon displayed Theodore Roosevelt save the life of a bear. Before everyone really got into the idea of buy from catalogs and buying gifts for people in general, they thought it wasn't celebrating Christmas in the right way. Personally I think that after people started buying presents for each other, people started to become closer. Buying a gift for someone really shows them that you cared enough to spend your money on them, which is something that people started to accept. People would buy all sorts of things as Christmas presents. The popular gifts included toy cars with rubber tires, woman’s corset, and boy’s worsted sweaters. Dodge and Chevrolet used this to their advantage and introduced themselves to the world. Popular kid’s toys included things like Lincoln logs and tinker toys. Along with the new idea of gifts came a new idea of Christmas.

                The whole idea of Christmas changed as well. Washington Irring wrote a book, The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, which played a major role in introducing these ideas to the world.  The book itself had a sketch of a squire who had invited peasants into his house for the holidays, mainly referring to Christmas. Washington himself thought that Christmas should be a time where the lines between status, and ranking, should disappear. The book itself was not based off of any events or times in Washington’s life so they do not know where he got the idea from, but because he put it in the book and many people saw it, it began to be an image of Christmas in the heads of people during this time. Historians actually say that Washington was responsible for “inventing” this tradition by implying that the story was suppose to be the true customs of the season.

                After this happened people really began to fully accept Christmas and it was turned into a family centered holiday of peace. Peace would be considered an understatement in some cases. Before Washington really got to put his idea out into the world, Christmas was not celebrated like most people wanted it to be. Riots would usually take place during this season. Christmas riots were the reason that New York had to have its first police force in the city. Members of the upper class wanted to change the idea of Christmas, so they took it into their own hands. Later is when Washington stepped in and made the idea of a peaceful and heart-warming time come true, even without having a riot.

                Christmas was not the only holiday that changed at the turn of the century. Arbor Day was officially launched by J. Sterling Morton. The point of the day was to encourage people to plant trees on bare and possible torn-up land. Within twelve years, forty-four states had named Arbor Day as an official holiday, and 600 million trees had been planted on the land. New Year’s also became recognized as a major holiday during this time. People celebrated it during the day on January 1^st instead of the night before. As everyone knows, today, the night of is the time to celebrate and watch the ball drop but that was not a concept known to them yet. Lastly, Easter was being viewed as a major holiday at the turn of the century. During the civil war it was used as a day to mourn the ones that had dies in the war. After the civil war, it became a favorite holiday in the United States. In 1878, President Hayes had the first Easter egg hunt on the front lawn of the White House. People also used this day to dress up in bright, spring colors. Many of the holidays became more important at the turn of the century and they were used to bring people together and create peace between everyone.

                Yes, Christmas was the holiday that changed the most and became one of the most favorite holidays to everyone, but other holidays changed too. I think that every holiday did have one thing in common and that was that they brought everyone closer and made everyone forget about their social status or how much money they had for a day and celebrate a holiday that was loved by everyone as one. So I think Washington had it right when he said that the lines should disappear and every should celebrate together.

Boy's Worsted Sweater

Easter in the City 

Christmas Tree in a House

People planting trees on Arbor Day

Women's Corset 

Family Christmas in the 1900's 

This website gave me the background of Christmas and then also listed some things that people would buy for Christmas which was helpful.

Christmas History in America

This website was really helpful because it told me how Christmas was viewed before and after the Civil War and then it also talked a lot about Washington so that was really helpful. 

American History: A Survey by Alan Brinkley

The book was helpful because again it gave me the basic information that i needed to start my research.

The Fabulous Century, 1870-1900

This book was really helpful because it actually gave me more holidays than just Christmas and talked about how they changed at the turn of the century. 

American Culture History

This website talked about what clothes were popular at that time which was helpful because I could use that to see what people would be interested in at that time. 

Classwork for Carnegie

What does Carnegie seem to have believed would be the best way to improve the lives of other people, and how can you tell? 

Carnegie seemed to have believe that the best way to improve the community, or world, would be to educate groups so they could go out and continue to educate others. Carnegie was also big into promoting peace throughout the entire world. I can tell this by reading the wed site on Carnegie Trust and Institutions.

What is your opinion of this approach?  What is a counter argument? 

I think this is a good idea but i don't know how realistic it would have been. It seems easy to say this but hard to make it happen so I could of seen him having problems with that. The counter argument would be worrying about yourself before you worry about other people. 

If you had hundreds of millions of dollars to give away, what would you do?

If I had that much money i would probably donate a part of it to charity. I have always been involved in community service so I would do my part in that and make improve that as much as possible even if it just included me helping out a lot. Then after I did this I would use some of the money for some fun of my own. I have always wanted to go to Bora Bora and stay in one of the little houses over the water. So I would probably do that and then maybe take some other trips because that is a lot of money. 

Geronimo Essay

Geronimo is know as one of the greatest American leaders. He is known very well because of his attempt to fight and save the Apache land in the west. Geronimo comes up a lot in our everyday life. He is in many movies that were made from middle 1900’s and on. There is also great controversy about him, even in very recent topics that have taken place. 

Geronimo was born in 1829. He was known as a medicine man for the Apache. He was known for being vicious, very brave, and for having a lot of determination for getting what he wanted. His determination was a main reason why he would not give up the land, and he continued fighting for it for so long. The whole time the US army, joined by the Mexicans, were trying to take the Apache land, Geronimo was fighting back. The US army finally got him to surrender on September 4, 1886 after a rough 30 years of him fighting. Geronimo was known as the last Indian warrior to formally give up to the US forces. The surrendering of Geronimo ended the Indian wars in the South West. While he was roaming the west, with any followers that would go with him, he led raids against the Mexican and American settlers. This was understood to be revenge because of the killing of his family that the Mexicans had done earlier in his lifetime. General George Crook was the one to finally get Geronimo to surrender. In the movie, Geronimo- An American Legend, it was understood that General George Crook promised a nice reservation that the Apache could live on and that is what led Geronimo to surrendering. After his official surrender, General Crook moved Geronimo and all of his Apache tribe to a reservation in Florida then Alabama, and they finally ended up in Oklahoma. In the movie, the land that was given was far from the land that was promised and this made Geronimo regret fully his decision to surrender.

Geronimo- An American Legend is a well known movie. Wes Studi was in charge of playing Geronimo.  It was made clear that this was some big shoes to fill, because the directors wanted to be as accurate as possible. There are many other movies made about Geronimo, such as Geronimo’s Last Raid, Geronimo (1939), and Geronimo (1962), but Geronimo- An American Legend is the most well known of the all. Critics said that this movie was very accurate and Geronimo’s character was portrayed very well. Critics also said that his character was very mean but that they could have made him even meaner. The way that Wes Studi showed how much Geronimo cared about the Apache land and just how much he wanted to fight for it was very accurate in the movie.  I have seen the movie and based off of what I have found about Geronimo, I found that the movie was very accurate to me as well.

Yes, Geronimo is in movies that have been made recently, but he is also a topic of a very recent situation which was the killing of Osama bin Laden. Geronimo is very popular when it comes to pop-culture. The definition of pop culture is cultural activities or commercial products, suited to, or aimed at the taste of the general masses of people.  Even Geronimo’s face has been found on t-shirts, stamps, jigsaw puzzles, and posters. It is so easy to find Geronimo in today’s pop culture because he was such a great warrior and he became a hero. There has been a lot of controversy over the topic of Geronimo’s name being used in the killing of Osama bin Laden. Geronimo’s name was sent to the president, by the US army, as a code word that confirmed bin Laden had been killed. Many Native Americans were not happy about this and viewed it as an insult because it compared a great American hero to a much hated terrorist. Many high ranked people have been putting their thoughts about this topic out for everyone to know. Chairman Jeff Houser, who is actually from and Apache tribe, actually asked Obama for a formal apology because of the way Geronimo had been used in the situation. The Onondaga Nation Counsel of Chiefs said that the US military forces make it a habit and continue to convey “original people” of North America as “enemies and savages”. Loretta Tuell, staff director and chief counsel of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, said it to be inappropriate to link one of the greatest Native American heroes to one of the most hated enemies. Steven Newcomb continued with this idea and said it is disrespectful to use Geronimo’s name because it makes people think of the Indians as enemies of the United States. Many people did not agree with the use of Geronimo’s name in this way and many of them spoke out about it. I do not think it is right either because even though my family has been watching westerns ever since I was little about cowboys and Indians that are very superficial, it still made me very aware that they are part of the United States history and everyday life so the fact that the army used a great hero’s name like this just doesn't seem right.

Geronimo continues to be thought about in today’s world even if some of the things that are said are not true. Yes, he is sometimes pictured as a superficial Indian character but he is still a great part of the United States history and should not be forgotten.

http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=geronimo&FORM=HDRSC2#view=detail&id=4B5734806CADD5244D4C54CA3E6CAF34EC377866&selectedIndex=2

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/dec/15/real-geronimo-avoided-war-claims-robert-utley

http://www.csulb.edu/~aisstudy/nae/1875-1890.html

sources: 

http://www.heard.org/currentexhibits/geronimo.html
This website was very useful because it gave accurate information about Geronimo and his life while growing up. 

http://unmpress.com/books.php?ID=20000000005364&Page=book
This website was useful because it gave specific examples of where Geronimo shows up in pop culture. 

http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9F0CE1DF103BF933A25751C1A965958260
This websitre was very good because it was an actual New York Times article that was written on how acurate the Geronimo: An American Legend the movie was. 

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/geronimo-surrenders

This website talked all about the actual day of Geronimo's surrender and talked a lot about the actual surrender itself.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2011/05/use-of-geronimo-codename-in-bin-laden-operation-stirs-american-indian-backlash/1#.Ul1Mn4ZJ5vM
This website was very good because it talked about the controversy that is going on because of the use of Geronimo's name in the killing of Osama bin Laden. It was also useful because gave the actual names of people and their input about the situation.  

Free Response: Cowboys

Cowboys today are known as free, independent men that would ride around the west on their horses and would fight, and usually beat, the Indians whenever they came across them. In reality, this is not true. Cowboys were low-paid workers that would watch the cows all day. This job was not something that a person would usually be proud of. Cowboys also were not the ones to get into bar fights to impress women, basically if a women knew you were a cowboy then your chances were over. Cowboys also ran away from the Indians. Cowboys were only interested in watching the cows and that was it. No part of them wanted to get into with an Indian. If and when they saw an Indian they would run, and if they got caught by the Indians their reaction was not to fight them, it was to play dead and hopefully they would go away.

People think that they know everything about the history of the west just because they seen a movie with a cowboy in it. The west was not the same as the way it was portrayed in the movies and Buffalo Bill shows. One thing that was different was really the only people that fought the Indians were the United States army. Random cowboys would not go out and take out a whole community of Indians with a couple buddies, that just never happened.  Another thing that the movies are very good at is making the West look like a desert. Some parts of the west were desert but not all of it. The west also included mountains and forests. Some movies with cowboys in them get some things right, but a lot of it is staged and made up to picture the west as something it is not.

 Reasons why cowboys got their image of being courageous and independent was mainly because of the Buffalo Bill shows that were shown all throughout the United States. In his shows he would have bar fights and the cowboys fighting Indians. Later his shows inspired movies and shows that came out, which all of them influenced the way people saw cowboys, and that is why people have such a wrong vision of the west. Both movies and the Buffalo Bill shows were guilty of giving off the false impression of cowboys and everything that came with them.

Chapter 15 Reflection

Before we started this unit, I knew that after the war it was a very troubled time and there was a lot that had to be done so that the south could officially recover from the civil war. I also knew that the African Americans had a very hard time recovering because since they had just become free, life was very different for them. I didn't know details but I knew the basic idea of how it was in the south.

I found it very interesting about Jim Crow Laws. I thought it was unfair how people back then could give people a different Literacy test, which people had to take so they could vote, that was harder just based on the fact that they were black. I think people should know about the history of where they live so they can learn that times weren't always easy for everyone, especially dealing with the United States history. I found the Jim Crow laws very interesting to learn about, because even when you hear about how the blacks were treated, it was not put into perspective for me until I heard that it happened even when it came to being able to vote. I learned that white southerners would do everything possible to make sure the black could not get their way in any form.

Animoto video

I made an animoto video is about what I think the major events in history were! I really liked the project because you could Put anything you want into it. 

Love history class