The holidays mean different things to different people. Customs, heritage, and, perhaps most influential of allocation, shape how we mark the season. Here in Florida, Christmas has never fit neatly into one box. For more than five centuries, the holiday has unfolded under palmettos and pines, with traditions borrowed, adapted, and sometimes improvised. This year, let’s take a walk through historic Florida and revisit how Christmas once looked, long before electric lights and gift receipts.
According to historians, the first recorded Christmas celebration in the continental United States likely occurred not in New England, but near present-day Tallahassee during the 1539–1540 expedition of Hernando de Soto. It was not a gentle or generous affair. De Soto and his men seized a Native village, appropriated its food supply, and forced its residents out. There, surrounded by unfamiliar wilderness, Spanish troops gathered with about a dozen Catholic priests to observe Christmas as they knew it—through Latin Mass, hymns, and a modest feast.
The site is now known as the Governor Martin Site, a quiet reminder that Florida’s earliest Christmas carried both sacred ritual and stark violence side by side.
A quarter century later, another Spaniard, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, established St. Augustine in 1565, the first permanent European settlement in what would become the United States. Residents there celebrated Christmas with a Latin Mass followed by a small communal feast known as Fiesta de Natividad. According to early Spanish records, this tradition endured for nearly two centuries.
Christmas in Florida was not always planned. In 1696, a group of Quakers traveling from Jamaica to Pennsylvania shipwrecked near Jupiter Inlet and were forced to cross the Florida wilderness on foot. Their journey, described in God’s Protecting Providence by Jonathan Dickinson, records a striking Christmas Day scene: Spanish soldiers and Native Americans exchanging small gifts in the woods.
For the Quakers, members of the Society of Friends, who did not traditionally celebrate Christmas—this unexpected display of holiday fellowship stood out as a rare moment of calm amid a dangerous trek.
Even Florida’s prisoners occasionally tasted Christmas cheer. In 1790, Josiah Smith, a South Carolina man jailed in St. Augustine, wrote of a Christmas feast shared among 30 inmates. Roast turkey, pork, corned beef, plum pudding, and pumpkin tarts appeared on the table—fare far removed from their usual rations.
“We dined together, thirty in number, very heartily,” Smith wrote, noting the songs and merriment that filled the evening. By the next day, normal prison life resumed.
Similarly, enslaved people on Florida plantations were sometimes granted brief reprieves at Christmas. According to Slavery and Plantation Growth in Antebellum Florida, some plantation owners allowed one or two days off, special meals, or small gifts. These gestures existed within the brutal confines of slavery, offering momentary relief without freedom.
By 1822, Pensacola found itself culturally torn. Long governed by Spain and now influenced by nearby French settlements, the town blended traditions freely. Christmas celebrations began to resemble Mardi Gras, complete with masked balls, elaborate dinners, and days-long festivities.
An officer stationed there described it as “a season from which care should be banished and which pleasure should preside.” Tables held roast turkey alongside gumbo and oyster stew. Absinthe, rum, and Cuban cigars flowed freely. For those who overindulged, sarsaparilla extract was said to cure the worst effects in time for Christmas Mass
Christmas in Florida has always been shaped by who was here, where they came from, and what they carried with them—beliefs, recipes, rituals, and resilience. The next time the holiday feels predictable, remember that Florida’s Christmas past was anything but. And if your table grows tired of the usual fare, adding a bit of Spanish or Creole tradition might be the most authentic Florida celebration of all.
Merab Favorite is a fifth-generation Floridian, professional storyteller, and columnist for the The Bradenton Times.
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