Christmas became a national holiday in 1870. Increase Mather, who was the Puritan Michael Jordan of hating Christmas, grumbledin 1687 : The early Christians who first observed theNativity on December 25 did not do so thinking that Christ was born in thatMonth, but because the Heathens Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, andthey were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christianones. The episode involves a bunch of Dickens-worthy Puritan names, including Mr.Starve-mouse,Mr.Love-none, andMr.Gruntch-meat. American Christmas wouldnt come roaring back, becoming nearly universal, until the mid-1800s, but it was not because of any campaign by churches. Instead they worked in the fields. But once in North America, these seekers of religious freedom had control over the governments of. American disagreements about the celebration of Christmas reach back to the nations colonial beginningswhereironically, it was a Christian group, Puritans, that offered the discouraging words. When Boston Banned Christmas | Harvard Divinity School (HDS) Pagans, Puritans, and Putting Christ Back in Christmas Puritan Easter, or The Devil's Holiday - New England Historical Society So I take it if they call the people are under duty to attend? The question was whether December 25th should be an exception to the general rule. The Puritans believed there was no Scriptural basis for the celebration and declared that "whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of. If you have already purchased access, or are a print & archive subscriber, please ensure you arelogged in. 2023 Yankee publishing, Inc., An Employee-Owned company, all rights reserved. Still, others were content to remain within the structure of the national church but set themselves against Catholic and episcopal authority. It supplied ethics that somehow balanced charity and self-discipline. 'Trappings of popery and rags of the beast'. The Time Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans Declared War on the English Instead of feasting and giving gifts, puritans commemorated Christmas by praying, reflecting on sin and working instead of resting. Sometimes they got things wrong, perhaps mainly by taking important truths and pushing them to some extremes sometimes to unbiblical extremes. The secularists today oppose it because they want to keep Christ from being honored. The Puritans had different reasons for opposing Christmas than we find in today's secular "war on Christmas." We live in an age where we see evidence of cultural decline, the erosion of values, the decline of civility, the denial of truth and the elevation of unreason. But if you know much about the Puritans, you might be asking if this is a contradiction in terms. So he went to them, and took away their implements, and told them, that was against his conscience, that they should play, and others work; if they made the keeping of it matter of devotion, let them keep their houses, but there should be no gaming, or revelling in the streets. Youll Love a Lets Go Brandon T-shirt How AI Marketing Shapes Identity, At Moms for Liberty Summit, Mama Bears Declare Spiritual War on the Radical Left, Contrary to Popular Narrative the Supreme Courts 303 Decision Gutting Civil Rights Laws is not About an Individual Standing Up For Her Beliefs, 2023 CPAC Lived Down to Expectations, But Dont Buy the Narrative: The GOP is Not as Divided as You Might Think, Espionage Allegations Against Russian Church Raise Religious Freedom Issue in Ukraine, As Tensions Escalate in the Balkans, the West Could Hand Putin a Valuable Weapon, that the symbols and traditions of Christmas should be protected for use by those who celebrate Christmas.. The Puritans and Christmas | The Puritan Board To Puritans, the Church of England retained too much of the liturgy and ritual of Roman Catholicism. Why did the Puritans cancel Christmas? | Sky HISTORY TV Channel Required fields are marked *. How few are there comparatively that spend those holidays (as they are called) after an holy manner. The War on Christmas has one silver lining these days: Jon Stewart has his own annual tradition of getting righteously angry over why this is a thing on television, and he talks about it on the Daily Show. Those narratives focus on a series of debates on the separation of church and state, usually pertaining to religious displays in town centers, or religious songs in public schools. They werent quite sure what they should do to recognize the Nativity, they just knew it wasnt going to be at all associated with what their theological opponents did. Ralph Orr has looked at this matter and said this in part: The New England culture was permeated with Puritan values. Outside this Puritan stronghold, however, Christmas cheer began to infiltrate colonial culture. A version of this article appears in print on, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/opinion/the-puritan-war-on-christmas.html, Helen Yentus; Photograph by SuperStock/Getty Images. Puritans, Pagans, and Imperfect Christmas Gifts If Bill O'Reilly, Sarah Palin, and the other generals in the war really want a fight, they should start now on the construction of a time machine and and brush up on their Calvinism. Good for its historical context, and finishes with the key biblical issues. Would love your thoughts, please comment. But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in mad Mirth., Worldly Saints: The Puritans As They Really Were by Leland Ryken (Author). So naturally, official suppression of Christmas was foundational to the godly colonies in New England. Some of our Dutch Reformed friends would absolutely go to church on Christmas but would refuse to take part in anything that seemed to secularize the day: so no gifts, no tree, no holiday specials on TV, no fancy meals, no fruitcakes, no Christmas cards (unless they contained Scripture verses), no plastic reindeer in the front yard, certainly no talk of Santa Claus. They are not the majority of Americans.. Temple sex and human sacrifice to name two. For the Puritans in England and in the New England colonies Christmas was a, well, un-Christian imposition on what should be a perfectly normal December 25th, thank you very much. Children served as bishops, servants as masters, that sort of thing. Mince-pies, mummers, holly and church services all fell victim to a determined Puritan attempt to stamp out the celebration of Christmas under the Commonwealth. Religion Dispatches is your independent, non-profit, award-winning source for the best writing on critical and timely issues at the intersection of religion, politics, and culture. Back in the 1950s, America's right wing John Birch Society warned that the war was being waged by Communist infiltrators, saying 'one of the techniques now being applied by the Reds to weaken the pillar of religion in our country is the drive to take Christ out of Christmas.' May Day celebrations, which included the hated Maypole, were punished severely. Both lessons point us toward the Saviors gracious acceptance of our own imperfect offerings. The Puritans objected to the Popish associations of Christmas and to the excesses such as play-acting, gambling and dancing with which as the great national holiday it was associated more than any other season. It wasn't a real religious holiday. As they gained strength, Puritans were portrayed by their enemies as hairsplitters who slavishly followed their Bibles as guides to daily life or hypocrites who cheated the very neighbors they judged inadequate Christians. Some caution must be taken though some pagan customs are irredeemable. As we appear to be learning in our growing comfort with the language of grace, we can accept the truths cherished by others, even if we disagree on much else. Under siege from Church and crown, certain groups of Puritans migrated to Northern English colonies in the New World in the 1620s and 1630s, laying the foundation for the religious, intellectual and social order of New England. When the Puritans believed that Indigenous people might attack them or undermine their economy, they lashed out most notoriously in 1637, when they set a Pequot village on fire, murdered those who tried to flee and sold captives into slavery. As Paul said in Romans 14:5: One person esteems one day as better than another, while another esteems all days alike. The real American crisis over the holiday happened centuries ago. It counseled moderation within psychology that saw worldly prosperity as a sign of divine favor. I am a sucker for the spice-scented ambiance that settles upon our communities as Christmas approaches. They came to England with rigid views which in the circumstances of 1644 they were in a position to press. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned Christmas: "Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as [C]hristmas or the like, either by forbearing labour, feasting, or any other way upon such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending, shall pay for every such offence five shillings as a fine to the county," reads The Cha. When the Puritans rebelled against King Charles I, inciting the English Revolution, the popular celebration of Christmas was on their hit list. From 2 Nephi 29 to the most recent General Conference, where we were reminded of the good to be found in those with whom we may have even serious theological disagreement, Latter-day Saints have reasons to resist this inclination. He found them in the streete at play, openly; some pitching the barr, and some at stoole-ball, and shuch like sports. After that incident, no one again tried to take off work for Christmas in the colony. OK. As he is every year, O'Reilly is concerned that atheists will ban Americans from celebrating Christmas by "banish[ing] any mention of Jesus in the public square." This is a limited list of some denominations that at least seem to have mostly rejected the 'Christian' aspects of Christmas. are already casting them as attacks on the Christian holiday, as a scholar who has written about the Puritans, so committed to creating a godly community, the ways that Christmas had been celebrated in England, Massachusetts authorities executed them in Boston, and had no objection to moderate drinking, You can read us daily by subscribing to our newsletter, they executed a teenager who had sex with animals, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. When winter cold settles in across the U.S., the alleged War on Christmas heats up. Yet the Puritan attack on the established church gained popular strength, especially in East Anglia and among the lawyers and merchants of London. May church leaders establish special days to celebrate the great acts of salvation? I am profoundly grateful that some elements of that early New England asceticism have remained to temper the neo-pagan materialist excesses of a modern capitalist Christmas. Essentially, the Puritanswhich is what the Plymouth Pilgrims werewanted to "purify" the Anglican Church of its Roman Catholic vestiges, and in particular, things that could not be found in the Bible. What has been called the secularization of Christmas might also be described as an emphasis on the cultural Christmas, with less interest in the religious version. The Original War on Christmas: Why Puritans Cracked Down on Celebrating, Copyright 2023 Heavy, Inc. All rights reserved. I do know of one URC elder who does not attend such services but the minister would have no choice in the matter. Yet, as a loosely confederated collection of gathered churches, Puritanism contained within itself the seed of its own fragmentation. Anxiety over the War on Christmas is, in other words, an American tradition. They believed the Church of England was too similar to the Roman Catholic Church and should eliminate ceremonies and practices not rooted in the Bible. Im talking Baptists in the 1600s.
But as a scholar who has written about the Puritans, I see their hostility toward holiday gaiety as less about their alleged asceticism and more about their desire to impose their will on the people of New England Natives and immigrants alike. There is a lot we can learn from the Puritans. The movement found wide support among these new professional classes, who saw in it a mirror for their growing discontent with economic restraints. Purchase at Koorong.com. The Restoration of 1660 ended Puritan rule and the English ban on Christmas. Dec 16, 2021 What did the Puritans think about Christmas? A decade later, a larger, better-financed group, mostly from East Anglia, migrated to Massachusetts Bay. Even the sun, universally worshipped as a god by pagan cultures, God used to symbolize an aspect of the Christ (Malachi 4:2). The Puritans in Plymouth and Massachusetts used their authority to punish or banish those who did not share their views. When Massachusetts Banned Christmas | HISTORY In November there was the social media furor about Starbucks red cups, as Ed Simon relates here in RD. Christmas in Colonial and Revolutionary America - Fraunces Tavern Museum Some congregations went further, declared themselves separated from the national church, and remade themselves into communities of visible saints, withdrawn from the English City of Man into a self-proclaimed City of God. Subsistence farmers were called upon to enter the world of production for profit. The earliest documentary evidence for their aversion to celebrating Christmas dates back to 1621, when Gov. Through the reigns of the Protestant King Edward VI (1547-1553), who introduced the first vernacular prayer book, and the Catholic Mary I (1553-1558), who sent some dissenting clergymen to their deaths and others into exile, the Puritan movementwhether tolerated or suppressedcontinued to grow. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. A Review of The Toxic War on Masculinity. Comments which are simply attacks on myself, or are done in bad taste, or use rude language, or are possibly defamatory will not be posted. One such faction was a group of separatist believers in the Yorkshire village of Scrooby, who, fearing for their safety, moved to Holland in 1608 and then, in 1620, to the place they called Plymouth in New England. The long term result was that English-speaking dissenters from the Church of England, in the colonial era and in the early years of the new nation, tended to either actively oppose or at least ignore Christmasthat included Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, and Quakers.