At eleven o’clock on Christmas morning, 1895, the doors of the Banquet Hall at Biltmore House swung open. The night before, the room had been full of Vanderbilts and their friends in evening clothes. Now it filled with a different crowd: the men who had cut the stone, the women who kept the house, the farmhands, and hundreds of their children, all walking into the largest private home in America to find a Christmas tree nearly forty feet tall with presents waiting underneath it for them.
What Was Christmas at Biltmore Like in 1895?
Short answer: George Vanderbilt celebrated his first Christmas at Biltmore House in 1895 with family and friends, gathered on Christmas Eve around a spruce tree nearly 40 feet tall in the Banquet Hall, with music, gifts, and a long dinner. On Christmas Day he opened the same hall to his estate employees and their families. Every worker received a gift, every household received a Christmas dinner, and, according to the Asheville Citizen, each servant received an envelope with ten dollars inside. Biltmore still holds a Christmas party for its employees and their children every year.
A House Finished Just in Time
George Vanderbilt, the youngest son of William Henry Vanderbilt, had spent six years building his chateau in the mountains outside Asheville, North Carolina. He officially moved in on October 26, 1895, signing the first line of the house’s guest book. Two months later, he was hosting Christmas.
He was 33 and still unmarried, but he didn’t celebrate alone. Dozens of family members and friends rode down from the north in private railcars, stepping off at the base of the hill and making their way up to the house, where George met them on the Esplanade.
Christmas Eve in the Banquet Hall
The centerpiece was the Banquet Hall, a room so tall it could hold a tree almost forty feet high. Evergreen garlands, holly, and mistletoe covered the mantels, and the brand-new electric lights glowed through the greenery, still a marvel in 1895. The local paper put it simply: “the guests gathered in the Banquet Hall, where there was a Christmas tree forty feet high, beautifully decorated.”
A musical group called the Imperial Trio played. Gifts were exchanged under the tree, and dinner ran course after course, from local game to delicacies shipped down from New York. George was particular about the details. According to Biltmore’s own history, he insisted the firewood be perfectly dry, because wood left in the rain “snaps when it burns.” The celebrations stretched all the way to New Year’s Eve, when the guests toasted their host and sang in 1896 with “Auld Lang Syne.”
Christmas Morning Belonged to the Workers
Here’s the part of the story that rarely makes it onto the postcards. Building and running Biltmore took hundreds of people, and many of them lived on the estate with their families. On Christmas morning, George opened the Banquet Hall to all of them.
Vanderbilt and several of his guests handed out the gifts themselves. Every estate worker received a present, and every household went home with a Christmas dinner. The Asheville Citizen reported that “each servant received an envelope containing ten dollars,” a significant sum in 1895. Some families also received their own Christmas trees and trimmings, so they could decorate their own homes. With help from a family friend, Mrs. Charles McNamee, George prepared gifts for somewhere between 300 and 500 people that year.
Edith’s List of 600 Children
George married Edith Stuyvesant Dresser in 1898, and she took the tradition and made it personal. Edith kept detailed lists of the employees’ children, more than 600 of them, and picked out a gift for each one by name. In 1905, the New York Times reported that nearly 1,000 children attended the Biltmore Christmas party, with gifts bought from Asheville merchants and handed out by George and Edith themselves. One of the helpers that year was the novelist Edith Wharton.
When George died suddenly in 1914, Edith could easily have let the custom fade. Instead, she and their daughter, Cornelia, kept it going. In 1916, the party was held outdoors at Antler Hall, and the two of them posed for a photograph with Santa Claus.
The Tradition That Outlasted the Fortune
Most of the great Vanderbilt fortune didn’t survive the generations that followed. As we told in How the Vanderbilt Fortune Actually Disappeared, the Fifth Avenue mansions were demolished and the money ran out. Biltmore itself lost money for decades after George’s death, until his grandson turned it around, a story we cover in The Biltmore Estate: How a Vanderbilt Gamble Became a Family Empire.
The employee Christmas party survived all of it. Today, Biltmore’s events team holds the celebration one night each November for employees and their families, with a visit from Santa and more than 300 gifts for children every year. The guest lists are kept on spreadsheets now instead of in Edith’s handwriting, but the idea is the same one George started on Christmas morning, 1895.
What This Story Actually Teaches
The Vanderbilts are usually remembered for what they spent on themselves: the ballrooms, the Newport cottages, the costume balls. Biltmore’s first Christmas is a reminder that the same family, in the same house, also spent its first holiday making sure the people who worked for them were seen and cared for. Proverbs 3:27 says, “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to act.” (NIV) George Vanderbilt had more power to act than almost anyone in America. On that first Christmas, he used some of it on the people closest to his door.
Most of us will never host a party in a banquet hall. But nearly everyone has someone whose work makes their life easier, and Christmas is a natural time to notice them. The gift doesn’t need a forty-foot tree. It just needs someone to remember their name, the way Edith did, one list at a time. Everything we have was entrusted to us, and that includes the chance to be generous with it.
Frequently Asked Questions About Christmas at Biltmore
When was Biltmore’s first Christmas?
In 1895. George Vanderbilt moved into Biltmore House on October 26, 1895, and hosted family and friends there for Christmas Eve that year.
How tall was the first Biltmore Christmas tree?
Nearly forty feet. It was a spruce, set up in the Banquet Hall and decorated with garlands and early electric lights.
Did George Vanderbilt give gifts to his workers?
Yes. On Christmas Day 1895, every estate worker received a gift and every household received a Christmas dinner. The Asheville Citizen reported that each servant also received ten dollars.
Does Biltmore still have an employee Christmas party?
Yes. It is held one night each November for employees and their families, with more than 300 gifts given to children each year.
Who owns Biltmore today?
George Vanderbilt’s descendants still own it through The Biltmore Company. See who owns the Biltmore Estate today.
Keep Reading
This story is part of our Vanderbilt series. See every Biltmore story and the full family saga on the Vanderbilt series page.
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This content is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial advice. Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
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