Christmas-banned In America?
Yes, it's true. Christmas was actually banned in Boston from 1659-1681 by the early Pilgrim settlers, and you could be fined 5 shillings for exhibiting the Christmas spirit. These Puritans believed the holiday traditions as practiced by their Catholic co-religionists in England were in a state of high decadence - more like a carnival holiday than a religious festival, filled with Popish pageantry and immoral behavior, and basically a waste of time. They brought their disapproval with them to the New World and when given the chance, acted on their disapproval.
Other colonies, however, were more lenient, and in the Jamestown settlement, Captain John Smith claimed that Christmas was well celebrated without incident. After the American Revolution, what English celebratory traditions remained were generally in a state of disrepute, and the observance of Christmas gradually diminished in intensity.
The celebration of Christmas became more widespread after Washington Irving wrote, in 1819, "The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent", a series of stories that took place in an English manor house. He made up a series of traditions mostly out of whole cloth, like the crowning of a Lord of Misrule, but he emphasized the easy mingling across class lines and the peaceful and joyful celebration of Christ's birth.
In England in 1843, Charles Dickens wrote "A Christmas Carol", which also emphasized the family, good will and compassion, and de-emphasized community and church-centered observations, and this had a tremendous impact on Christmas celebrations on both sides of the Atlantic. Still, before the Civil War, many northerners considered the celebration of Christmas to be a sin, whereas the South celebrated it more freely. Alabama, Louisiana, and Arkansas, were, in fact, the first states to make Christmas a legal holiday in the 1830's.
After the Civil War, children's books helped spread the holiday traditions across the country, especially tales about Santa Claus and the trimmed Christmas tree. Sunday school classes also encouraged the celebration of Christmas, and magazines directed towards women were filled with articles about Christmas decorations and how to make them. In 1870, Christmas was finally declared a Federal holiday.
Now Christmas is a major holiday, celebrated in a host of ways. Family meals, home decorations, ornate trappings around Christmas trees, caroling, gift giving and Christmas cards are just a few of the ways the holiday is celebrated in modern times. Large portions of our economy are dependent on it, and despite recent efforts of some groups concerned about the separation of church and state to limit its visibility, Christmas is in no danger of losing its allure to millions of its adherents.
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