I know that we are quite a ways away from Christmas – 227 days to be exact – and most of our thoughts aren’t thinking about December. However, there was a time in our nation when Christmas was very much on the minds of certain politicians during the very merry month of May.
Let’s go back in our history books to 1620. The Puritan Pilgrims have settled in and established the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Their first governor, John Carver, only lived 5 months. William Bradford is perhaps the most famous of governors, serving a total of five inconsecutive terms lasting 31 years. We know that the Pilgrims came with a desire for religious freedom among other things. They brought very little except for one thing that stands out – a passionate hatred for Christmas.
Christmas was “celebrated with religious festivities that included carols and plays, but the holiday was also associated with extravagant feasts, gambling, and drinking.”1 Everything from Catholicism to Satanism was blamed for the origins of the celebration.
Stephen Nissenbaum, the author of The Battle for Christmas, writes, “In their strict interpretation of the Bible, the Puritans noted that there was no scriptural basis for commemorating Christmas. “The Puritans tried to run a society in which legislation would not violate anything that the Bible said, and nowhere in the Bible is there a mention of celebrating the Nativity,” Nissenbaum says. The Puritans noted that the scriptures did not mention a season, let alone a single day, that marked the birth of Jesus… The noted Puritan minister Increase Mather wrote that Christmas occurred on December 25 not because “Christ was born in that month, but because the heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those pagan holidays metamorphosed into Christian [ones].” According to Nissenbaum, “Puritans believed Christmas was basically just a pagan custom that the Catholics took over without any biblical basis for it. The holiday had everything to do with the time of year, the solstice and Saturnalia and nothing to do with Christianity.”2
The Puritans didn’t just hate Christmas. They hated Easter, Resurrection Sunday, as well and for the same reasons.
Governor Thomas Prence finally put his foot down and outlawed Christmas on May 11, 1659. “A law [was passed] banning Christmas, forbidding “feasting and similar satanic
practices”—with a penalty of five shillings. Back in 1621, the Plymouth Colony scrooge, er, governor had personally confiscated toys.”3 Stores and schools were open on Christmas, churches were ordered closed, and business ran like normal. Those who celebrated Christmas had to do it quietly in their homes with the windows shuttered and the doors barred.
Twenty-two years later, Governor Edmond Andros lifted the ban and “attended Christmas Day religious services at Boston’s Town House in 1686, [where] he prayed and sang hymns while flanked by Redcoats guarding against possible violent protests. Until well into the 1800s, businesses and schools in Massachusetts remained open on December 25 while many churches stayed closed. Not until 1856 did Christmas—along with Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July—finally become a public holiday in Massachusetts.”4
While finding it extremely difficult to do, I want to be careful and kind with my comments. I will take the high road and suggest that, at the heart, the Puritans wanted what all dedicated Christians want – the purity of Christmas. We want it to be a celebration of our Savior who was born to die. And we all know that the true meaning of Christmas has been blurred or eradicated globally by all the other trappings. However, that is an individual issue, not an issue with what Christmas is intended to celebrate.
For me, the issue is cleared up in Romans 14:5-6. “One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. (6) He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord; and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it. He that eateth, eateth to the Lord, for he giveth God thanks; and he that eateth not, to the Lord he eateth not, and giveth God thanks.”
WHAT we celebrate is just as important as HOW we celebrate – and WHO. If we are celebrating Christmas and Easter – the “what” – we should be celebrating Jesus. That’s the who and when we consider WHO we are celebrating, that should affect how we celebrate. Let the truths of these final two verses in Romans sink in today. And Merry Christmas 227 days early!
Romans 14:14 says, “I know, and am persuaded by the Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself: but to him that esteemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean…Romans 14:22 Hast thou faith? have it to thyself before God. Happy is he that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth.”
1https://www.obscurehistories.org/pilgrims-christmas-ban
2https://www.history.com/articles/when-massachusetts-banned-christmas
3https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/may-11
4https://www.history.com/articles/when-massachusetts-banned-christmas
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