Christmas Riot

It might seem the most inappropriate time of the year, but in the XIXth Century, it was not terribly uncommon for civil disturbances to break out on Christmas day. More often than not, these might be described as bacchanals gone out of hand, under the Lord of Misrule. But the Christmas day riot of 1853 was decidedly of an anti-clerical inception, culminating with a pitched battle between German radicals and Irish police on the streets of Cincinnati, Ohio. So we read it described in The Serene Cincinnatians by Alvin Harlow, Pg. 49:

"In December of that year Mgr. Cajetan Bedini, who stood high in the Catholic hierarchy, spent Christmas with Bishop Purcell. The Freemen's Society blamed him for the death of Ugo Bassi, an Italian priest who had joined the revolutionaries under Garibaldi in 1849, but was captured and executed. The Freemen decided to hang Mgr. Bedini in effigy in robe and mitre in front of Bishop Purcell's home and then burn the effigy. News of the project reached the police. The procession of 1,200 persons, including 200 women and some children, left Frei Manner's Halle late in the evening and marched four abreast towards the Bishop's residence, led by a powerful fellow who carried the gallows on his shoulder. But at Ninth Street they were halted by a force of police under their chief, Captain Lukens. In the ensuing melee, shots were fired by the police, a number of the marchers were wounded, one fatally, and one policeman was injured, also fatally. Sixty-four paraders were arrested, charged with rioting, but public feeling was so high that they were discharged the next day... Meanwhile, effigies were burned in several of the suburbs, with parades and banners crying, "Down with Bedini!" "Down with Snelbaker" (the Mayor), "Down with the Cincinnati Police"; and another crowd of several hundred from the West End and Over the Rhine burned Mgr. Bedini once more, on a lot near St. Peter's Cathedral and squarely in front of a watch-house."