What A Christmas Feast Looked Like For Ellis Island Immigrants

Between its opening in 1892 and closing in 1954, Ellis Island saw many variations of a Christmas celebration. Families were often kept on Ellis Island for months at a time, and more were turned away after the Quota Act of 1921. The crowds of people were from all over the world — in 1925, the Christmas party attendees on Ellis Island were from all over Europe, Japan, Africa's Gold Coast, and the Sahara Desert. People came with many of their own traditions, so Christmas was seen as a time to introduce them to American life. Jewish people were offered their own foods, but without a Kosher kitchen until 1911; many rightly doubted the veracity of the officials' claims that they were serving proper Kosher food and just ate bread and an apple.

Christmas dinner appears to have been rather traditional. It wasn't an event to feed new immigrants their beloved foods but to introduce them to what Americans eat. In 1898, the feast consisted of turkey, celery, and cranberry sauce, a familiar feast before Christmas dinner started deviating from Thanksgiving. In 1908, a journalist commended the mince pie, a dish with quite a long history. The tables were bare, and the dishware used was in poor condition, but the food sounded good and filling.

Gifts were given: dolls to little girls, bouncy balls to boys, and rattles to younger children. Often, a cake of soap wrapped in cloth was given to everyone. Songs were sung in every language, with the papers of the time leaning into the joy that came over the immigrant's faces when their language was heard. Later, as deportation became more common, the joy would be brief. Christian missionaries saw it as a day to preach the gospel and convert new arrivals.

In 1921, after the passage of the Quota Act, Secretary of Labor James J. Davis, seemingly on a whim, allowed those held at Ellis Island to spend 90 days in America for Christmas. Those who had nowhere to go stayed on Ellis Island and were served a ton and a half of turkey from Vermont and a full bog's worth of cranberry from New Jersey, one of five states producing much of America's cranberry crop. At the end of their 90 days, most of the hopeful immigrants were sent home, and the turkey from Vermont and cranberry from New Jersey would be the only taste of America they would get.