A Holiday Gift from Frederick Douglass

One hallmark of a classic work of literature is its timelessness.  No matter when it was written or what has changed since that time, it continues to be relevant today.

Such is the case for Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, one of my favorite works from the nineteenth century.  Douglass was writing about chattel slavery, which was outlawed more than a century and a half ago, but his fascinating insights into manipulation and more can help us to make the best of our own lives and world today.

Here, then, is a timely reflection on what Douglass had to say about this time of year, the period between Christmas and New Year's Day.

---

"It's the most wonderful time of the year."

If you grew up in the United States, as I did, you probably can hear these words in your head, as famously delivered by classic crooner Andy Williams.

What's so wonderful?  Well, Andy gives us a long list of reasons: "parties for hosting," "marshmallows for toasting," "much mistletoeing," and more.  (Did you know that the word "mistletoeing" is an example of something called a functional shift?  No, you probably didn't, and now my job is to make you care.  I'll have to get to work on that challenge and write a column on this common linguistic phenomenon in 2026.)

You probably have your own list of things that make the holiday season wonderful.  Perhaps it includes time with family and friends, religious observances, white elephant exchanges, and, lest we forget, wassailing from door to door.

In short, this "wonderful time" is what we make of it.  You can choose to spend the time as you wish.

The same was true for Frederick Douglass, but with a disturbing dimension.

In Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, this formerly enslaved man described the world in which he lived in rural Maryland and, as if opening up a watch and explaining the workings of its gears, exposed the mechanisms that made it tick.

In a particularly interesting and revealing section, Douglass describes the ways that enslaved people spent the holidays.  He begins, "The days between Christmas and New Year’s day are allowed as holidays; and, accordingly, we were not required to perform any labor, more than to feed and take care of the stock."

If you know anything about chattel slavery in the United States, you might be surprised by this description.  Were the slaveholders really so touched by the Christmas spirit?

As Douglass goes on to explain, this gesture looked like a gift of time — something akin to modern vacation days that we have today, days we can spend as we wish.  He says, "This time we regarded as our own, by grace of our masters; and we therefore used or abused it nearly as we pleased."  Some — the "staid, sober, thinking and industrious ones," as Douglass puts it — continued working, making things for their households, for example, or hunting for food.  "But by far the larger part," Douglass explains, "engaged in such sports and merriments as playing ball, wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whisky; and this latter mode of spending the time was by far the most agreeable to the feelings of our masters."

While we might admire people who work even when they don't have to, most of us also would probably agree that everyone deserves some time to relax.  To our modern sensibilities, it may seem that neither option — continuing to work or seizing the opportunity to enjoy oneself — was necessarily wrong, but Douglass, as he often did, saw with penetrating perception the underlying principles at work here, and he alludes to them when he observes that indulging in "sports and merriments" was the option that "was by far the most agreeable to the feelings" of the slaveholders.  Why? 

Holidays as "safety-valves"

Douglass, who spent some two decades in slavery before escaping in 1838, understood this complex system in a way that none of us ever will.  He offers this explanation:

From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of the slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the slaveholders at once to abandon this practice, I have not the slightest doubt it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the slaves. These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for these, the slave would be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe betide the slaveholder, the day he ventures to remove or hinder the operation of those conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a spirit will go forth in their midst, more to be dreaded than the most appalling earthquake.

In short, providing the enslaved men and women with "safety-valves" was a kind of psychological manipulation.  There's more, though, and the second part of this manipulation strikes me as particularly relevant to our own lives.

A Lesson in Self-control

The situation that Douglass describes here is a paradoxical one: the masters were maintaining their control by letting go of it temporarily.  Douglass had a keen eye for paradox, and he pointed to a number of examples in his narrative.  In this case, the paradox has another dimension, one that seems especially twisted.

Referring to the masters, Douglass writes, "Their object seems to be, to disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest depths of dissipation."

There's a magnificent phrase for you: "to disgust their slaves with freedom."  The irony is tantalizing.  Humans naturally wish to be free.  How, then, could freedom ever feel disgusting?  Once again, Douglass pulls the cover off slavery and exposes the gears at work:

For instance, the slaveholders not only like to see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who can drink the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way they succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully labelled with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it down, and the result was just what might be supposed; many of us were led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as well be slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to the field,—feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of slavery.

It's a fascinating (and despicable) feat of deception.  "You want freedom?" the slaveholders implicitly asked.  "Here, try it on."  The "freedom" that the enslaved people experienced, however, had been crafted to leave them dissatisfied, even disgusted, and so, Douglass explains, they felt that they didn't want it after all.

The full picture is more complex, of course.  Obviously, many of these people still wanted their freedom, and some, including Douglass, managed to achieve it.  Still, the trick played by the slaveholders probably did have a mollifying effect on many.

I believe it still has such an effect on many of us today.

Seeing as Douglass Saw

Most, perhaps all, of us have, at one time or another, talked ourselves out of pursuing something we thought we wanted — or perhaps someone else talked us out of it.  "I could not do that job," we might think, and we fixate on aspects that seem beyond our abilities, outside our interests, or just beyond our tolerance (for risk, conflict, or whatever).  In some cases, a friend, partner, or family member might have made the case for us.

We are right to consider various aspects of a job (or a relationship or some other kind of opportunity), but we need to make sure we are examining an accurate and complete picture of the thing we are thinking of pursuing.  A picture of a job or a relationship that contains only the negative aspects of it is a deceptive one, just like the picture that the slaveholders were crafting for the men and women they were trying to keep in slavery.  Yes, a job as, say, a manager comes with some things that you may not like, just as freedom comes with opportunities to do self-destructive things such as drinking too much, but it also may come with many positive things: opportunities to make a positive difference for other people, for example, and the accompanying feelings of fulfillment.

Whether someone is trying to manipulate (or even gaslight) us or we are acting as our own worst enemies, we all are susceptible to being disgusted with what would actually be good for us and for the world we could be serving.

The key is to see, as Frederick Douglass did, the truth and not merely a contrived version of it.