Dubuque Christmas Market

The Christmas market on Main Street always arrived early in Dubuque. It didn’t sneak in. It simply appeared one morning, as if dropped there by a tired hand. By the 1860s, everyone expected it. By the 1890s, nobody could imagine December without it.

The Dubuque Herald tried to explain the thing every year. It usually gave up by the second paragraph. Crowds were too big, smells too mixed, vendors too hopeful. “Main Street bustles with the commerce of the season,” the paper wrote in one of its calmer years, leaving the rest to the reader.

 

The smell was the first sign. Pine wreaths stacked in carts. Wet horses cooling in the snow. Oysters that had traveled too far, too fast, and looked a little startled by the journey. The Herald said, “A mild aroma accompanies the oyster barrels.” Mild was one word for it.

Everything on Main Street felt slightly temporary. The toy sellers from Milwaukee. The farmers from the western hills. The crates of live chickens brought in by wagon. They sat on the curb and blinked at the world, unaware that they were part of a holiday tradition. The market made them important for a day or two. Then they became supper.

 

Children made the most of the toy stalls. Tin soldiers. Painted horses. Mechanical birds that chirped when wound. The Herald liked those birds. “A fine bit of German handiwork,” it said, even though the birds sometimes lost their chirp halfway home. Kids still believed in them.

 

The evenings were the best time. Gas lamps glowed along the street, making the snow look warmer than it was. The market lights made every face seem familiar, even if it wasn’t. A brass band wandered up and down playing patriotic marches. They were never quite in tune, but they tried. The Herald praised them for their “brisk effort.”

 

Firecrackers caused most of the problems. Someone always set them off near the horses. The Herald warned the public every December. “The mayor advises caution,” it wrote in 1884, “for horses do not appreciate sudden explosions.” People read the warning. Then they ignored it. That was the pattern.

 

The runaway-horse incidents became part of the tradition too. Nobody liked them, but nobody seemed surprised. A boy would lose his hat. A chicken would escape. Someone would shout, “Look out.” The Herald reported each event in short, resigned sentences, the way you’d describe the weather.

 

In between all that, the market kept moving. Pine wreaths sold quickly. Apples disappeared first. Oysters went last, even when the barrels dripped suspiciously. The Herald remained optimistic: “The trade is brisk,” it said, which meant brisk enough.

 

The river men showed up every year. Steamboat crews had a way of walking into town as if they’d brought the Mississippi with them. They bought toys, candy, mittens, anything that looked like home. A reporter claimed one crew bought every ginger cake on Main Street and gave them to children. The paper didn’t say whether this was admirable or foolish. It simply noted that it happened.

 

By the late 1880s, the market had spread into the side streets. More lamps. More stalls. More people trying to sell something before the cold got the better of them. Window displays grew elaborate. A stuffed bear wearing a red scarf. A small wooden train circling a mountain made of cotton. Children pressed their noses to the glass until the shopkeepers knocked on the window.

 

Inside the stores, the holiday felt more orderly. Wool mittens. Tin cups. Flannel shirts. If you needed anything practical, this was the place to find it. If you wanted something surprising, you had to stay outside, where the market kept its odd charm.

 

The Herald summed it up neatly in 1890: “There may be grander bazaars in the great northern cities, but none more sincere than the one on our Main Street.” It was the quietest compliment the paper ever gave the market, and probably the truest.

 

By the turn of the century, the market changed. Electric lights arrived. Department stores took over the old stalls. Everything became cleaner. Brighter. Easier to explain.

 

Still, people remembered the older version. The smell of pine in the cold air. The toy birds that chirped until they didn’t. The oysters packed in ice that never seemed to last long enough. The firecrackers that caused problems and became part of the season, anyway.

 

The Dubuque Christmas Market was never perfect. It wasn’t even orderly. It was simply there—once a year, every year—turning Main Street into something warm for a little while.

 

People liked it for that alone.