Christmas Whiskey — Those Pre-Prohibition Flasks

 

From ancient times, the holiday season has been identified with the imbibing of alcoholic beverages.  It has nothing to do with the religious aspects of Christmas and everything to do with celebrating those two other occasions that come along about  the same time.  I refer to the Winter Solstice, when daylight slowly begins to return to the Northern Hemisphere and to the inauguration of the New Year.  Both events traditionally have involved considerable liquid celebration.  One pre-Prohibition expression was the Christmas flask, very popular in the 18th and early 19th Century until outlawed permanently, beginning in 1920. 

The first four Christmas flasks shown here are label-under-glass (L-U-G) bottles, that is, the container was hand blown, probably in a mold, with a recessed area in the front.  Then the painted or lithographed image was placed into the recess, sometimes held by bee’s wax.  Then another very thin piece of separately prepared glass asvery carefully put over the top of the image and glued.

The process of creating these bottles obviously was tedious and time-consuming. Wages  for glassblowers and other workers at that time were very low.  As a result, glass houses could produce the bottles in great numbers at low cost and sell them cheaply to saloonkeeper and liquor dealers.  They in turn would fill them with no-name liquor and put their own identifying labels, careful not to spoil the image on the front.  Often these labels began with the words, “Compliments of....”  With few exceptions, pre-Prohibition Christmas flasks were not sold -- until today when they command healthy prices from collectors.

Noted for their sense of humor, the three sons of Melchior “Melky" Miller, a farmer distiller of Accident, Maryland, were responsible for the Christmas flask showing an aproned bartender about to open a bottle of rye whiskey dated 1891.  Melky’s boys had an evident genius for business and built Miller’s Maryland Rye Whiskey into a highly respected local and regional brand. Although production was relatively small -- only 29 bushels of grain processed daily according to Federal records -- the quality of the company’s whiskey was high. [A more complete account of the Millers may be found on this site at Oct. 28, 2011.]

John Hrobsky & Son obviated the problem of having the label washed off their Christmas  flask by including it under the glass.   Their saloon was on Vliet Street on Milwaukee’s near North Side and just a few blocks from my Milwaukee residence of several years.  My favorite tavern on Vliet Street was the “Trails End Lodge.”  As a frequent customer during the 1950s I sometimes was given a bottle of egg nog for the holidays, the special recipe of the owner, Mitzi.  Although the bottle in which it came was not special like Hrobsky’s, the egg nog was excellent.

The next flask was issued by C. M. Emrich, a hotel owner in Washington D.C.  In addition to his hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue near the railroad station, Emerich also operated a “European plan” hostelry across from the B&O depot on New Jersey Avenue at C street.  He advertised that the latter had been “Remodeled and Refurbished throughout”  and now featured “Electric Light & Steam Heat.”

Although paper labels were much less likely to survive in their original mode than a protected ones, some did.  An example is flask from 1902-1903, shown here.   Proclaiming “Holiday Chimes” it was a standard label to which the distributor could overprint his name.  In this case it was Otto F. Lieders.  As a proprietor, Lieders was described by a contemporary as “one of Buffalo’s most popular hotel men.”   No doubt giving away whiskey contributed to his popularity.

The flask shown here, a particulate favorite of mine, is in generally good condition with a just a bit of damage to the paper at the left top. The boy must have had a full bladder since he has been able to write extensively in the snow to wish us a “A Merry Christmas + a Happy New Year,” as his dog looked on.  This flask bears the identification of Dan Longbrake, a liquor dealer from Lake View, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. 

The next flask, is also bears a slightly damaged paper label, one that depicts a strange Christmas scene.  It appears to be a Father Christmas (or Santa Claus) looking back over his shoulder at a large two-masted sailing ship apparently about to sink in heavy seas.  Not the most merry of holiday illustrations.  The label identifies Joseph Horter of Zanesville, Ohio, as the benefactor.  An immigrant from France,  perhaps the label reflects the perils of Horter’s travel across the Atlantic.

C.C. Conrad of Harrisonburg, Virginia, issued a Christmas flask with traditional looking label featuring holly branches and a greeting.  Conrad apparently  began his career in liquor as a local saloonkeeper but determined that selling booze by the bottle was more lucrative than pouring drinks over the bar.   His price list of whiskeys and other liquor was a long one. Conrad’s flagship brand was “Oakwood Whiskey,” sold four quarts for five dollars.

A benign flask featuring Santa Claus from Fred Singer of Booneville. Illinois, belies the tumult being caused by local prohibitionists.  In July 1916 they reported Singer to the local police for failure to obtain a proper license.  The authorities obliged by raiding him and seizing his entire inventory.  Singer retaliated by demanding an invoice be made of all the alcohol seized and vowed to replace his stock immediately and resume business.  A  Booneville newspaper account commented:  The “wet” and “dry” fight here is causing an upheaval in the city’s affairs.”  

The Empire Liquor Co. flask is unusual by appearing on an amber rather than clear bottle and bearing a label that wraps around much of the body.  Located at 43 Peachtree Street in Atlanta, this liquor house was operated by Asher F. Furstenburg.  The liquor house first appeared in city directories in 1880 and was in business into the early 1900s.

Christmas flasks disappeared with the coming of National Prohibition in 1920.  When Repeal came 14 years later,  Congress passed elaborate new laws on how liquor was to be prepared, labeled, packaged and sold.  Among restrictions were those on giveaway items.  Liquor purveyors could sell their products in special containers for the holidays but they could not give them away.  Thus the tradition of the small gifted Christmas flask was not resurrected.  Most such examples, including all the flasks shown here, are over 100 years old and considered antiques. 

Note:  Thanks go to John Pastor, former publisher of the American Bottle & Glass Collector magazine, bottle auctioneer, and a collector himself of Christmas flasks.   Several of the bottles shown here are from his personal collection.  To learn more about label-under-glass, see my post of November 1, 2023.