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Comic Jon Stewart says Congress met most Christmas Days in its early years

The Rhode Island controversy over Gov. Lincoln Chafee's decision to call the decorated spruce tree in the State House rotunda a "holiday tree" instead of a "Christmas tree" spilled over to Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" program on Dec. 6.

During a segment on the "Tree Fighting Ceremony" that focused on Fox News' assertion that there is a culture war against Christmas, Stewart said, "Perhaps you'd prefer to celebrate Christmas the way our Founding Fathers did."

Then he cut to a video clip from a documentary from the History channel cable network that stated: "On Dec. 25, 1789, the United States Congress sat in session and continued to stay open on Christmas Day for most of the next 67 years."

"That's right," Steward added. "When the country was founded, Congress had exactly the same attitude about the sanctity of Christmas celebrations that a 7-Eleven does today. 'Yeah. We're open.'"

We were intrigued by the idea that members of Congress in the early days would be on the job most Christmas Days, even if Dec. 25 fell on a weekend. So we started digging.

As the program made clear, Stewart was quoting a History channel program, "Christmas Unwrapped - The History of Christmas."

A Google search also brought us to an American Civil Liberties Union website on the "Origins of Christmas." It includes this quote: "Congress met on Christmas Day every year from 1789 to 1855, with only three exceptions."

It lists the source as a 2007 article from the journal Word and World called "Christmas Was Not Always Like This: A Brief History" by Bruce David Forbes. The ACLU web page also references the History channel website, which says that "Christmas wasn't a holiday in early America—in fact Congress was in session on December 25, 1789, the country's first Christmas under the new constitution."

We turned to Donald Ritchie, historian of the U.S. Senate. He had his doubts, saying that Congress typically took Christmas Day off. They didn't take a longer Christmas break, as they do now, because, in those days, traveling back to the home districts took too long.

From there, we dug into the records. Our first discovery: the claim that "On Dec. 25, 1789, the United States Congress sat in session" is flat-out wrong.

The web page "Dates of Sessions of the Congress, 1789-present" says that the last session of 1789 for both the House and the Senate was Sept. 29. By the time Christmas came around, Congress had been out of session for nearly three months. Both bodies reconvened on the first Monday in January 1790.

The web page also shows that there were three years from 1789 to 1857 when Congress had a formal recess that extended over Christmas Day. But that doesn't mean they were on the job on Dec. 25 during all the remaining years.

To find out, we went through the journals that were the predecessors of The Congressional Record.

So how many times did the House and Senate meet on Christmas Day during the first 68 years of Congress?

Once each.

The Senate assembled and immediately adjourned on Christmas Day in 1797; the House met on Christmas in 1802.

Our ruling

Jon Stewart, ridiculing Fox News' coverage of the "War on Christmas," repeated a claim by the History channel that Congress met nearly every Christmas Day from 1789 to 1856. The ACLU makes the same claim, based on a magazine article.

But daily records show the complete opposite, with just one exception each for the House and Senate.

So the assertion that Congress met virtually every Christmas during that period is completely False. The idea that members would do so when there's a 1 in 7 chance that Dec. 25 would fall on a Sunday makes this idea ridiculous. So gather friends and family around the hearth as we give this Christmas claim by Stewart, the ACLU and the History channel a collective Pants On Fire!

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Originally posted by Niki2:
The tax was actually a fee requested by the National Christmas Tree Association during the Bush administration. It was passed by a Republican controlled Senate and House, and was co-sponsored by John Boehner. It’s purpose was to fund research into, and promotion of, the Christmas tree industry which had been struggling to compete with artificial trees imported from China.

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From Politifact:

It lists the source as a 2007 article from the journal Word and World called "Christmas Was Not Always Like This: A Brief History" by Bruce David Forbes.

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Obama creates new tax on Christmas trees, fees get passed on to consumers.

Republicans, bloggers needle Obama for creating new tax on Christmas trees - true?

In Oregon, fresh cut Christmas trees are as cherished as hazelnuts and Hood strawberries: We grow a lot of them, so we own them. So it was with some astonishment that PolitiFact Oregon heard that President Barack Obama was trying to make it more expensive for people to buy holiday trees.

"Is President Obama 'the Grinch who taxed Christmas' trees?" queried a headline on the Los Angeles Times website. A Republican congressman from Louisiana issued a press release, slamming the Democratic president for trying to "sneak through this new tax on Christmas trees." By the end of Nov. 9, 2011, the conservative Heritage Foundation had logged more than 2,000 comments on its blog post, "Obama Couldn’t Wait: His New Christmas Tree Tax."

Locally, we spotted a Multnomah County GOP retweet of the Republican National Committee: "Obama admin creates new tax on Christmas tree farms, fees get passed onto the consumer."

What in the name of Rudolph and Frosty and the Polar Express was going on?

Oregon is the No. 1 grower of Christmas firs and pine, harvesting more than 7 million trees. (That’s twice the haul of No. 2 North Carolina.) Was the president seriously imposing a new "tax" that might make our holidays a little less ho-ho-ho?

As it happens, a national fresh tree group had sought the 15-cent tree assessment to better promote its products. It’s a "checkoff program"much like the ones already in place for beef ("it’s what’s for dinner")and pork ("the other white meat").

The Agriculture Department approved the idea. The Internet exploded. By the end of the day, the White House had decided to re-assess.

Betty Malone, an Oregon tree farmer who heads up the Christmas Tree Promotion Now campaign, said she was stunned anyone would describe the tree fee as something dreamed up by the president.

"It’s absurd. We’ve been working on this for three-and-a-half years. The industry has talked about this for 20 years," Malone said. "This started long before Obama" was in the White House.

To be fair, not everyone in the industry embraces the idea, although the National Christmas Tree Association reports the majority of responses to the proposed program were positive.

Would the fee be passed on to consumers? That’s unclear, said Bryan Ostlund, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Christmas Tree Association. "It doesn’t get automatically passed along, but somebody along the line has to cover it."

Finally, there’s the question of whether the 15-cent assessment is actually a "tax." The federal government monitors the agricultural marketing board that administers the money, but the revenue doesn’t go to government. Rick Dungey, spokesman for the national tree association, insists it is not a tax. (He also says consumers should not see a difference in tree prices.)

In Oregon, at least, revenue has to go into the general treasury in order to be considered a tax. If the government doesn’t touch the money, even though government mandates it, the assessment is neither a tax nor a fee.

But we digress. We’re talking about the federal government. Let’s turn to federal sources, with the help of national PolitiFact.

"It certainly doesn't smell or quack like a tax," said Robert Litan, the vice president for Research and Policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and a former associate director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton.

On the other hand, Dan Mitchell, an economist with the Cato Institute, says "a coercive levy is a tax."

We also checked with Stephen Bell, communications director for U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise, the Louisiana congressman who vowed to block Obama’s sneaky tree tax, and Sean Spicer, an RNC spokesman. It didn’t matter to either of them that industry had sought the assessment or that industry was denying it’s a tax.

"It doesn’t matter who asked for it," said Bell. "It’s at the sole discretion of the Obama administration to impose a tax, and they decided to impose this 15-cent tree tax."

This is a tax, added Spicer, because "it’s not voluntary. It’s not a contribution to a cause."

So, where does that leave us? Sources appear split on whether this truly is a tax and whether the cost would be passed along to consumers. As for the claim that Obama created this new tax, that suggests that he came up with the program -- when it’s clear the idea preceded his presidency and originated with the industry.

Those are pretty big facts to ignore. So we rate the claim Mostly False: The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression.

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Either way, what FauxNews reported isn't "fact".

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