Why the Puritans cracked down on celebrating Christmas

[JonLP24]

In recent years, department store greeters and Starbucks cups have sparked furor by wishing customers "happy holidays." This year, with state officials warning of holiday gatherings becoming superspreader events in the midst of a pandemic, opponents of some public health measures to limit the spread of the pandemic are already casting them as attacks on the Christian holiday.

But debates about celebrating Christmas go back to the 17th century. The Puritans, it turns out, were not too keen on the holiday. They first discouraged Yuletide festivities and later outright banned them.

At first glance, banning Christmas celebrations might seem like a natural extension of a stereotype of the Puritans as joyless and humorless that persists to this day.

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.

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/24/why-the-puritans-cracked-down-on-celebrating-christmas_partner/

[LakeArenal]

1. Personally, I find all organized religions are about controlling people.

Convincing many that slavery now means salvation when you die.

To me (no others need agree) it’s the
Great Hoax of the world.

[Doreen]

12. Something like religion is used to control the masses.

[uponit7771]

2. "desire to impose their will on the people " sounds like anti abortionist who believe life starts at

... conception vs sentience

[struggle4progress]

3. "Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy"

H.L. Mencken

[marybourg]

4. Jehovahs Witnesses don't celebrate Christmas, either.

[FreeState]

7. Or Easter, Birthday, anniversaries etc.

They do memorialize the death of Jesus but that’s it.

[hunter]

10. That was my childhood up until the fourth grade.

The Witnesses kicked my mom out because she wouldn't stay out of politics.

Then we were Quakers.

If you want to know freedom ignore the flag salute.

[underpants]

5. Increase Mather - cool name

[hunter]

6. Christmas was a time of intense religious warfare in my family.

I'm a little PTSD about it.

The majority view was that Santa was Satan and that Christmas is a lie. Stories about the birth of Jesus? All fabrications.

I had just one grandparent who liked to celebrate Christmas in mid twentieth century U.S.A. Affluent-Christians-Dreaming-of-a-White-Christmas style. Her minority view, backed by intense U.S.A. social pressure and her fierce will and deep purse often prevailed.

I had two grandparents who regarded Christmas as a Northern European Winter Solstice feast and drinking party -- the last big blowout before you start stacking the winter's dead outside like cordwood waiting for the ground to thaw because the only alternative was cremating the dead on their boats on the water. Alas most of their winter dead had no boats or nearby ocean.

I had one very high functioning autistic spectrum grandpa who didn't really understand Christmas and didn't like the noise. He'd put about three hours into it and that was his limit. His most heroic Christmas moment was when he built a huge Christmas Tree out of smaller trees and branches he'd pulled out of a dumpster on Christmas Eve. My mom lost the religious war against Christmas that year.

[skip fox]

8. "God's altar needs not our polishings though

his harness and whip need kept in good repair."

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Odd article

"Puritan efforts to crack down on Christmas revelries in England before 1620 had little impact". Well, yeah, because they weren't in charge before 1620. It wasn't a random "desire to impose their will on the people"; it really was about "their alleged asceticism". When they did get control in England in the 1650s, they did indeed suppress Christmas. And the Puritan-adjacent Presbyterianism in Scotland meant Christmas was a minor holiday, that was also suppressed at times (it only became a bank holiday there in 1871, and many other people worked as normal): https://libraryblog.lbrut.org.uk/2016/12/origins-bank-holidays/

[marybourg]

11. Agree, on all points.