<![CDATA[Some contemporary commentators in the US, Canada and the UK lament what they call the “War on Christmas,” which seems to consist of people acknowledging other winter holidays and not assuming that Christmas will be universally celebrated. Once there really was a government-backed ‘war on Christmas,” leading to legal penalties and sometimes to actual fighting. This ‘war’ was largely carried out by devout Christians. In Boston in 1621 William Bradford, the governor of the newly formed Massachusetts Bay Colony, instructed people to work on Christmas Day. His fellow Puritans complied, but some others said their consciences forbade them. The Governor reported later that he “told them that if they made it mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed. … [Later] he found them in the street at play, openly; some pitching the barr and some at stoole-ball, and such like sports. 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 mater of devotion, let them keep their houses, but there should be no gaming or revelling in the streets. Since which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least openly.” Apparently open attempts resumed soon thereafter; in 1659, the Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law strictly forbidding Christmas observance, saying the law was necessary “for preventing disorders” associated with “such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries.” The Puritan Mayor of Canterbury attempted to enforce a similar ban in 1647 when the Puritan Parliament was governing England, ordering shopkeepers to open for business as usual on Christmas Day. When many shopkeepers disobeyed, the Mayor set out to rebuke them, flanked by soldiers. He got as far as threatening one defiant shopkeeper with the stocks before an angry crowd knocked him down, vandalized the shops which had opened, and began a very rough game of football up and down the streets. Officials and Puritan preachers who tried to stop them were pelted with anything that came to hand; most wisely retreated indoors. Attempts to legally punish the leaders of the so-called “Plum Pudding Riots” were met with furious demonstrations in favor of Anglicanism and the King. Why did some Christians object so fervently to Christmas? As with most questions of history and religion, the answers are complicated.
The Puritans objected to the way in which people observed Christmas. Some (like Governor Bradford) saw it as an excuse for idleness. Others were concerned about just how that idleness was used. New England Puritan minister Increase Mather lamented that people who celebrated Christmas were “consumed in… revellings,in excess of wine, in mad mirth.” Christmas celebrations often featured heavy drinking and gambling, which the Puritans understandably saw as unwholesome.
There was also controversy over the tradition of wassailing, in which poorer people banded together and went to the homes of the rich, where they sang or put on pantomimes and expected to be given food and drink. Sometimes this seems to have been a pleasant and friendly interchange all round; but fights sometimes developed when the rich folk were unwilling to play host. Puritans were also unhappy with mummers who tramped the streets and visited houses in elaborate costumes, often cross-dressing and sometimes engaging in highly bawdy antics.