Christmas in America by Penne L. Restad

During the Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries, the celebration of Epiphany spread westward, but the Roman Church, with its celebration of the Nativity set in late December and its emphasis on Jesus’ incarnation and divinity, recast it to commemorate the adoration of the Magi. In Constantinople, Epiphany continued to consecrate Jesus’ baptism, but the Eastern Church began to mark December 25 as the day of his birth. The dual celebration, that of birth and baptism, that had defined the old holy day ceased to exist.

Over the nest thousand years, the observance of Christmas followed the expanding community of Christianity. By 432, Egyptians kept it. By the end of the sixth century, Christianity had taken the holiday far northward and into England. During the next two hundred years in Scandinavia it became fused with the pagan Norse feast season known as Yule, the time of year also known as the Teutonic “Midwinter.” Sometimes around the Norman incursion in 1050, the Old English word Christes Maesse (festival of Christ) entered the English language, and as early as the twelfth century “Xmas” had come into use. ………………

In England (around the period of the Protestant Reformation) the Anglican Church repeatedly, but with little success, tried to gain control over the day (Christmas). Its custom had been to begin Christmas on December 16 (known as “O Sapientia”) and celebrate for nine days. But during King Alfred’s reign (871-899 C.E.), a law passed extending the celebration to twelve days, ending on Epiphany.

Celebrants devoted much of the season to pagan pleasures that were discouraged during the remainder of the year. The annual indulgence in eating, dancing, singing, sporting, card playing, and gambling escalated to magnificent proportions. By the seventeenth century, under the reigns of the Tudors and Stuarts, the Christmas season featured elaborate masques, mummeries, and pageants. In 1607 King James I insisted that a play be acted on Christmas night and that the court indulge in games……………

It fell to the Puritan reformers to put a stop to the unholy merriment and to bend arguments over the proper keeping of Christmas into an older and more basic one – whether there should even be an observance of the day. Defying the decision of the Anglican Convocation of 1562 to maintain the church calendar, the Puritans struck Christmas, along with all saints’ days, from their own list of holy days. The Bible, they held, expressly commanded keeping only the Sabbath. That would be their practice as well.

In taking the offensive against Christmas-keeping, Puritans distributed colorful diatribes against the excesses of the holiday. Philip Stubbes’s Anatomy of Abuses (1583) condemned revelous celebrants as “hel hounds” in a “Deville’s Daunce” of merriment. William Prynne’s Histriomastix (1633) inveighed against plays, masques, balls, and the decking of houses with greens. “Into what stupendous height of more than pagan impiety…have we not now degenerated!” he lamented. Christmas he thought, ought to be “rather a day of mourning than rejoicing,” not a time spent in “amorous mist, voluptuous, unchristian, that I say not pagan, dancing, to God’s, to Christ’s dishonour, religion’s scandal, chastities’ shipwracke and sinne’s advantage.”