Many are aware that our modern idea of the holiday season began with the pen of New Jersey cartoonist Thomas Nast and his depiction of Santa Claus. But the thousands who travel each year to Williamsburg, Va., for a true Colonial Christmas are unaware they are seeing it through the eyes of New Jersey tutor Philip Fithian. Emma L. Powers wrote for the Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter what is generally known about the holiday.

“No eighteenth-century sources highlight the importance of children at Christmastime – or of Christmas to children in…