The War on Christmas: The Early Years
Back in the 17th Century the shit was real:
During the Reformation, some Puritans condemned Christmas celebration as “trappings of popery” and the “rags of the Beast.” The Roman Catholic Church responded by promoting the festival in a more religiously oriented form. Following the Parliamentarian victory over King Charles I during the English Civil War, England’s Puritan rulers banned Christmas, in 1647. Pro-Christmas rioting broke out in several cities, and for weeks Canterbury was controlled by the rioters, who decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans. The Restoration of Charles II in 1660 ended the ban, but many clergymen still disapproved of Christmas celebration.
I’d love to see Bill O’Reilly on TV shouting monarchist slogans.
52 Responses to “The War on Christmas: The Early Years”
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December 26th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Thus, the ultra-godly Puritans were actually ultra-godless Secular-Progressives. Who’d have guessed that?
December 26th, 2008 at 10:46 am
Bah! Humbug!
December 26th, 2008 at 10:53 am
You’re actually more right then you may realize. Two hundred years later, the descendants of the Puritans had morphed into Congregationalists and were splitting into Unitarian and Trinitarian branches — the Unitarians are now the ultra-secularist Unitarian Universalists and the Trinitarians are now the progressive Christian United Church of Christ.
December 26th, 2008 at 10:57 am
I’d love to see Bill O’Reilly on TV shouting monarchist slogans.
Well then, just watch his show…
December 26th, 2008 at 10:58 am
For more on this, I highly recommend Professor Stephen Nissenbaum’s Pulitzer-Prize nominated book The Battle For Christmas. I had the opportunity to interview him last year for a post on the topic of the commercialization of Christmas.
December 26th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Well then, just watch his show…
Quite. Although one must note that O’Reilly only supports Republican monarchs.
max
['Anything else would be TREASON!']
December 26th, 2008 at 11:54 am
Two hundred years later, the descendants of the Puritans had morphed into Congregationalists and were splitting into Unitarian and Trinitarian branches — the Unitarians are now the ultra-secularist Unitarian Universalists and the Trinitarians are now the progressive Christian United Church of Christ.
True. I’ve known this for a while, but never had it really explained. How did the Puritans morph into some of the most dogma-free Christian denominations out there?
December 26th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Because they were the most literate, philosophically adept religious group in our early years.
They also had a great number of members and former members who were smart as a whip and disagreed with all the sexist, xenophobic, and precious claptrap. When you have the quality of dissent that the Puritans had, you’re bound to change your mind a little bit.
December 26th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
I agree that “The Battle for Christmas” was an excellent book, but I agree with what I take to be the gist of P.J.Rodriguez’s post (The Pop View, linked above) that it was somewhat reductive in tone.
Nissenbaum made it sound as if the good luck visiting in exchange for food (wassail) and alms that was practiced at Christmas (and indeed in most other big holidays) was nothing more than a subtle form of blackmail. It is true that the festivities were prone to periodically degenerate into rowdiness, but they also had a very positive aspect in affirming and renewing social ties. Christmas was used by St Francis and others to combat the supposed danger of Manicheanism (excessive contempt for the created world — the very kind of hyper-asceticism manifested by the Puritans who wanted to suppress Christmas).
I found this quote in an old book on Christmas carols from 1912:
December 26th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
I read somewhere that Unitarians have even higher SAT scores than Jews and Asians — se non e’ vero…! (Note that Louisa May Alcott’s Unitarian Little Women did not go to church on Christmas to celebrate (unlike their rich Episcopalian neighbor Laurie) but stayed at home on Christmas opening their mostly homemade presents — one of which was a Bible.)
Here is more on Nissenbaum’s book:
December 26th, 2008 at 1:20 pm
What, he hadn’t been spouting monarchist sentiments already?
December 26th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Actually this was not a secret back when overtly patriotic Americans were not required to be know nothing ignoramuses. Back in about 1959 when I took the annual 5th grade US History test-contest in school, sponsored by the American Legion, one of the questions was whether the Pilgrims celebrated Christmas. The correct answer, as indicated above, was no. So the American Legion, not exactly as bastion of leftish anti-American sentiments, considered this to be a reasonable thing for a 5th grade American student to know.
Today no doubt O’Reilly et would take this as evidence that the American Legion lies somewhere to the left of such godless anti-American organization as ACLU and the Methodist Church. I’m personally okay with manitaining some dubious national myths — my parents were pretty sane and well-informed even though they were indoctrinated on Charles and Mary Beard US history texts when they were children — but I do draw the line at the notion that ignorance is patriotic.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
If Christmas first began being emphasized to counter the “Manichaeans” (the more historically accurate term would be “Albigensians”, as this sect had only a loose connection to the real Manichaeans) then it raises the question whether it should be such a big holiday in the United States today. Our society doesn’t suffer from an excess of neo-Manichaeanism, we suffer from an excess of materialism, which is quite the opposite thing.
An indication of today’s materialist blindness is that whereas in previous centuries the commonest Christological heresies were variants of Docetism, which denied the humanity of Christ, today’s Yglesian hipsters fall into the opposite and equally serious heresy of Arianism, which denied His Divinity. Personally I can see how people could have fallen into Docetism, but Arianism is simply absurd. The popularity of neo-Arianism says many things about our society, none of them are good.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
The descendants of the puritans are about as noble & decent examples of Americans as have been so far. I salute them. That doesn’t change the fact that their ancestors were still insufferable twits. Give me (mostly) agnostic Anglicans anyday.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Back in about 1959 when I took the annual 5th grade US History test-contest in school, sponsored by the American Legion, one of the questions was whether the Pilgrims celebrated Christmas. The correct answer, as indicated above, was no.
Technically true, although as it happens I visited Plimouth Plantation a few weeks back, and the (presumably knowledgeable) actors who play the circa 1620s English residents of the settlement indicated that a small minority of the village’s early residents were non-separatists who indeed enjoyed a bit of merriment and feasting for the holiday — much to the disapproval of their separatist neighbors.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Hector, I don’t think most hipsters “yglesian” or otherwise have a significant enough religious faith in anything to be guilty of heresy. Speaking of which, “heresy” and all you do realize this is the 21st century and not the 13th, or Franco’s Spain or some such.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
I believe that what got the Plymouth Rock puritans in trouble with the King and kicked out of Holland was a tract they published condemning the King for re-establishing the feast of Christmas. Boston public schools did not recognize Christmas as a holiday until the 1830’s.
When I was kid growing up in Oklahoma in the 70’s, the true hard-core fundamentalist would not allow Christmas trees in their houses because it was a pagan symbol. They were appalled at the commercialization of Christmas. That was before the fundamentalist moved into politics in large numbers and started the long deterioration into the decadent movement of Bill O’Reilly’s right wing.
December 26th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Really? Thinking that Jesus was a decent person with some good ideas but was not, in fact, the son of god is “absurd”?
Pray tell, do you also agree that it is “absurd” to claim that Mohammed was not, in fact, narrated the koran by an angel? You claim it “absurd” to doubt that Joseph Smith was given some gold tablets and told how to translate them? You feel it is “absurd” not to think that Gautama Buddha ascended into nirvana, whereas most of us go through the wheel of reincarnation over and over again?
December 26th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Re: An indication of today’s materialist blindness is that whereas in previous centuries the commonest Christological heresies were variants of Docetism, which denied the humanity of Christ, today’s Yglesian hipsters fall into the opposite and equally serious heresy of Arianisn
???
You yourself mention a huge exception: Arianism. And to a lesser extent Nestorianism tried to create an impermeable wall between divinity and humanity in Christ.
Plus there were various non-Curistian and pseudo-Christian systems which saw Christ as an Enlightned Teacher, a Prophet and the like. The most obvious of these is Islam.
December 26th, 2008 at 6:57 pm
Hey, Hector, Transhumanism’s basic concept is descended from some of the Gnostic sects belief that “it’s better to be God than to worship God.”
Jesus, assuming he existed at all, was merely another prophet and claimant to the throne of Israel, who was supported by the Sicarii (the original “terrorists”, almost indistinguishable from Al Qaeda today), and was betrayed by the Roman double agent (or triple agent, since he eventually ended up working for himself) Paul who tried to have Jesus’ brother stoned for heresy and was himself stoned for heresy by Jessus’ followers, then escorted out of town by Roman troops when Jesus’ own followers swore never to eat, drink, or sleep until they’d killed him. And this was the asshole who founded the Roman Church.
Transhumans will destroy your pathetic deity by destroying those who believe in this asinine concept.
In other words, the Christians to the lions!
Have a nice day!
December 26th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
Maynard,
I believe that it is logically incoherent to say that Jesus was a “wise teacher” but not the son of God. Jesus made claims to divinity which, in a normal human, would be evidence of monstrous pride and megalomania. He claimed to be the only vehicle of salvation, and to be one being with the Father. Either he was just another power-hungry maniac, fundamentally no different than Antiochus Epiphanes, Nero, or Hong Xiuquan, or he was the Son of God. You can decide that he was a non-divine prideful liar (in which case you have the new dilemma of trying to explain how he could, on other occasions, show such tender and humble charity) or you can conclude that the was the Word made flesh. None of this ‘wise teacher’ business though.
DRR,
As for the definition of ‘heresy’, I’m using that as a neutral descriptor, not a term of abuse. A heretic is one who alters a self-contained and self-consistent body of ideas by accepting most of the basic tenets but denying some of them. I am an Anglican, but I can state as a neutral matter of fact that Anglicanism is a heresy of Catholicism. (This doesn’t make it any more or less true). To the orthodox believer, heresy is more dangerous than simple unbelief, because the heresy draws strength from those aspects of the faith that it retains; being a mixture of truth and falsehood (in the mind of the orthodox) heresy is more powerful and more dangerous than falsehood alone.
JonF,
I don’t believe that in any previous age the neo-Arian “wise teacher” business was THE default position among the intellectual elite, as it is in much of the modern West.
December 26th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Re: I believe that what got the Plymouth Rock puritans in trouble with the King and kicked out of Holland was a tract they published condemning the King for re-establishing the feast of Christmas.
Um, well, no. First off the Pilgrims, of Plymouth Rock fame, were not Puritans. They were a sort of unique little splinter sect not really close to any of the other religious groups competing at the time in England. They didn’t really want to challenge royal authority or even the Established Church; they just wanted to separate themselves from the worldiness of mainstream society and found their own New Jerusalem. Holland didn’t kick them out; but they found the Dutch too materialistic, and besides they didn’t want their children to grow up speaking Dutch. I have no idea what they thought of Christmas, though I assume they didn’t celebrate it. King James meanwhile didn’t reestablish Christmas since the Church of England had continued to keep the feast day after breaking with Rome
December 26th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Well, according to the New World Encyclopedia:
If you believe in Providence, I think this is a really preferred approach, no?
According to this site, Constantine himself eventually repudiated the Nicene Council’s condemnation of Arianism, so repulsed was he by the ugly persecuting zeal of its Athanasian opponents. Why seek to revive it?
The whole episode was rather discreditable as was the Albigensian crusade, certainly.
Several years ago, incidentally, my SO and I made a memorable pilgrimage to the ruined Albigensian fortresses on the French/Spain border. Saint Francis’s mother was reputed to have been a member of the sect, by the way.
December 26th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Re: I don’t believe that in any previous age the neo-Arian “wise teacher” business was THE default position among the intellectual elite
Among late Roman Pagans it was. Some of them were even willing to see Jesus as a sort of divine being, albeit in a thoroughly pagan way. I forget the emperor’s name, but one of them (pre-Constantine) included an idol of Christ in his private shrine along with Mithra, Apollo, and assorted others.
And the Arians as you noted denied Christ’s divinity, positing that he was simply the first created being. And again I remind you that Islam also taught a very human Jesus.
December 26th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
the opposite and equally serious heresy of Arianism, which denied His Divinity
Depending on what you mean by “divinity”, this might not be quite right (though of course there’s plenty of precedent for loose usage).
Arianism proper allows that Christ was divine all right, and that He existed before the creation of the world; He was never just a man.
The deviation from orthodoxy is in the view that He was created by God the Father, and that before His creation he didn’t exist. (And, famously, in the view that Christ is not of the same substance as God the Father.) In that sense Arians took Christ to be a (divine) creature, in contrast to the orthodox doctrine that He was uncreatedly begotten by God the Father yet co-eternal with Him (and of the same substance).
The view that Christ was not divine and just a man is better described as Ebionism.
December 26th, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Actually, I remember reading that Boston didn’t make Christmas a holiday until 1860!
Of course, it would have been King Charles II that reinstated Christmas after it had been abolished by Cromwell. It is my understanding that in Calvanist Scotland it is still not celebrated much. Hogmanny, or New Years is the big celebration. In Catholic countries, epiphany is the present- giving time. And even in the USA Jan. 6 used to be referred to as the “old Christmas.”
I think the Pilgrims were Calvinists —
There is a striking depiction of an 18th century German Pietist Christmas celebration in Penelope Fitzgerald’s short novel, The Blue Flower.
December 26th, 2008 at 10:41 pm
JonF:
From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plymouth_Colony#Origins)
“In Leiden, the congregation found the freedom to worship as it chose, but Dutch society was unfamiliar to these immigrants. Scrooby had been an agricultural community, whereas Leiden was a thriving industrial center, and the pace of life was hard on the Pilgrims. Furthermore, though the community remained close-knit, their children began adopting the Dutch customs and language. The Pilgrims were also still not free from the persecutions of the English Crown; after William Brewster in 1618 published comments highly critical of the King of England and the Anglican Church, English authorities came to Leiden to arrest him. Though Brewster escaped arrest, the events spurred the congregation to move even further from England”
I prefer to put more stock on the political persecutions as a motivator for movement to the new world than I do cultural differences with the Dutch but maybe that is the materialist in me.
December 26th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
My understanding is that Constantine never repudiated Arianism, but remained an Arian as did his son. He merely incorporated Jesus as another “face” of the Arian God, which was apparently a common approach to “accepting” a rival sect which had political value.
December 27th, 2008 at 1:34 am
Whenever someone resorts to the Trilemma argument for the Divinity of Christ (aka “Mad, Bad or Glad”) you know it’s time to turn the page…
December 27th, 2008 at 1:36 am
RE: I prefer to put more stock on the political persecutions as a motivator for movement to the new world than I do cultural differences with the Dutch but maybe that is the materialist in me.
Well, except that King James approved the emigration of the Pilgrims to the New World– in fact their original destination was supposed to be Jamestown Virginia, though there is a tale that the Mayflower captain was paid to go off course deliberately.
Re: My understanding is that Constantine never repudiated Arianism, but remained an Arian as did his son.
Constantine was not even baptized until his deathbed. And like any good politician he played both sides, favoring whichever party seemed to be most advantageous to him.
His sons were Arians, although the Arians themselves went into schism in those years, with some seking accomodation with the Nicene party, others espousing an even more radically Christo-Pagan doctine. Julian the Apostate, Constantine’s nephew, who sought to restore Paganism outright, came from the latter party.
Re: I think the Pilgrims were Calvinists
No. Though they may have borrowed a little bit from Calvin. The Puritans were doctrinaire Calvinists. The Pilgrinms were very unique, their closest contemporaries would have been the German Anabaptists (or maybe the Moravians).
December 27th, 2008 at 2:34 am
It got even worse – “Soldiers were sent round London on Christmas Day before dinnertime to enter private houses without warrants and seize meat cooking in all kitchens and ovens.”
You know, when soldiers seize your Christmas meat, now, that’s a War on Christmas!
More here from the intersection of a Churchill binge with being closer to the height of the manufactured-for-ratings War On Christmas.
December 27th, 2008 at 2:48 am
It is interesting that infant vs. late Baptism is a point over which Christians dispute to the point of separating into sects. The names of the sects change over the centuries but the points of dispute have some continuity even where continuity among the congregants cannot be ascertained.
The Albigensians believed in late or even deathbed baptism. As did the (much later) Baptists and anaBaptists. My FIL, who was a northern Baptist (in Pennsylvania or NY State), and who himself had undergone full immersion adult baptism, told me that his paternal grandfather helped to build the local church and was very pious, but so humble that he never felt himself quite worthy of accepting baptism — I suppose he died without it.
December 27th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Christmas wasn’t an important holiday in Scotland until the 1960s. That’s because the Presbyterian state church didn’t encourage it – they too thought it was bogus. The main winter holiday was Hogmanay, aka New Year’s. It’s no accident that the most famous New Year’s song in the English language is in Scottish.
Christmas as celebrated in the English speaking world owes a great deal to Washington Irving, who did a lot to popularize the folk traditions of New York Dutch-Americans (Santa Claus), and to Charles Dickens, a Unitarian who did a lot emphasize the ‘good will to all men’ aspect of the holiday.
December 27th, 2008 at 8:24 am
MikeN,
Great, that’s an intelligent way to respond to an argument.
December 27th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Ha! Charles Dickens was a Unitarian? I didn’t know he was an Arian.
December 27th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Wow, thanks, John Kay, for a great link. You can’t kill Christmas! I think Cromwell was even more reviled for Santa-cide than regicide on his native turf (I mean Father Christmas, of course, since Santa is a later invention).
At any rate, we may now have the trappings of a sort of Dickensian-Unitarian-cum secular Christmas, but as for the allocation of holidays and days off, the Puritan spirit still prevails on our shores.
December 27th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Great, that’s an intelligent way to respond to an argument.
As opposed to being a pretend Crusader?
For pedantry’s sake, the Kirk isn’t established — though legally recognised as the national church of Scotland, it’s not the “state” church.
And yeah, the British Christmas is part via Dickens, part German royalty, and the innovations of the 1840s made possible new traditions, such as Christmas cards sent with the penny post.
December 27th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Re: but as for the allocation of holidays and days off, the Puritan spirit still prevails on our shores.
How so? Almost everyone gets Christmas off (emergency and safety workers and some gas station attendants excepted), and many people get Xmas Eve day off. Some people even got Friday off this week and there are some workplaces (many factories; all schools) which shut down for the whole two week holiday period. Anyone think we should have the whole 12 Days of Christmas off?
December 27th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
You have said it.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:04 pm
Re: You have said it.
You really haven’t explained, you know. I don’t think there was ever a time and place, now or in the past, where people in large numbers took the entire festival season off work. I fail to see anything Dickensian about that.
December 27th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
Dec. 25 to Jan 1, inclusive would not be outrageous.
For the rest, I would venture that we have the among least number of legal holidays, religious or secular, of any industrialized nation. If I am wrong, please correct me.
December 29th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
The reasons for the war on Christmas are most aptly articulated by Charlie Brown: “Isn’t there anyone who knows the meaning of Christmas?”
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