Intro

Jake:
[0:00] Just a quick notice we get started. This week’s episode may not be up to our usual sound quality standards.

Music

Jake:
[0:06] There’s a lot of work happening in our house today, and my home studio seems to be right next to an air compressor, a sawzall and a hammer.
Please excuse any background noise that sneaks into this week’s recording.

[0:23] Welcome To Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The Hub of the Universe. This is Episode 212. The Puritan War on Christmas.
Hi, I’m Jake. This week I’ll be talking about Christmas in Boston or actually the lack thereof.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m not big on celebrating Christmas, so I feel a special affinity with the Puritans this time of year.
Boston’s founders, Are remembered as a deeply religious society, so you might assume that Christmas in Puritan Boston would have been a big deal.
You’d be wrong, though. Celebrating Christmas was against the law for decades, and it was against cultural norms for a century or more.
But why? What was it about how Christmas was celebrated at the time that made the Puritans want to stamp it out.

[1:17] But before we talk about the Puritan war on Christmas, I just want to thank Christopher L. Our latest supporter, on Patreon.
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And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Christmas In Early Boston

[2:38] I’m gonna open this week with my favorite Puritan Samuel Sewall.
Now hold on a second, you might say, Didn’t you tell us back in Episode 1 46 about the 16 90 siege of Quebec that Sir William Phipps was your favorite Puritan?
Not so fast. First of all, I did not say that he was my favorite Puritan, I said. I thought he was a contender for the most interesting man in the world.
And second of all, he wasn’t a real Puritan. I mean, sure, Cotton Mather did baptize them into the church in March of 16 90 but that was more about political expediency than spiritual conviction, allowing them to take command of the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s military.

[3:16] Samuel Sewall, on the other hand, was a Puritans Puritan. He was the first generation Bostonian, having immigrated from England in 16 62.
He attended Harvard and later worked as the Colleges Second librarian.
Although he met his liberal side in Episode 1 91 about the pamphlet The Selling of Joseph, where he argued from Scripture that African slavery shouldn’t be considered legal or godly,
he was generally known as a religious conservative, arguing against changing customs like the legalization of fancy wigs.
He’s most widely remembered for his role as a judge in the Salem Witch trials, a position to which he was appointed by the interesting Sir William Phipps, and then for his public apology for that same role in the diary that he kept for over a half century.
From 16 73 to 17 29 he recorded how he stood up in church on a fast day and announced that he was sensible of the guilt contracted through the court, held it Salem,
and that he desired to take the blame and shame of it, asking the pardon of men and asking the congregation to pray with him that God would also forgive him.

[4:24] The diary entry about that apology was written in January 16 97 and it came just a few pages after the entry for Christmas Day, December 25th, 16 96.
On that day, Sewall wrote, he buried his daughter, Sarah, in the family tomb. She just turned two years old.
He stood in the tomb and reflected on the coffins of his parents, his in laws and six of his own Children, all stacked close together.
He ordered Sarah’s coffin, the seventh to be placed across the feet of his parents. Then he started walking home.

[5:01] Even in the midst of the grief of such a terrible day, Sewall couldn’t restrain himself from noting many went to church. This day, met them. Coming home from church is I went to the tomb.
Now you might say to yourself, Puritans coming home from church, that’s the most natural thing in the world.
Well, sure, except for one thing.
December 25th, 16 96 was a Tuesday.

[5:28] When he wasn’t morning. A dead child, Samuel Sewall, spent decades noting how people in Boston observed or more properly, in his view, didn’t observe December 25th.
It was very important to Samuel Sewall. The commerce continued his usual on these days, that people didn’t avoid their work and that there were no public celebrations.
In 16 94 he wrote Tuesday, December 25th. Shops are open minute work.
Parts of pork Hey, Colin would come to town as on other days.
Mr. McCarty’s shop is open in 16 90 70 reported Snowy day shops are open, and carts and sleds come to town with wood is formerly save what abatement may be allowed on account of the weather.

[6:15] His family had a close call that year when, despite his instruction not to participate in Christmas keeping, one of his Children nearly gave in to peer pressure and attended church services.
On Christmas, I took occasion to do heart mind from Christmas keeping and charged them to forbear, Joseph tells me.
Though most of the boys went to the church, yet he went not his entries for 17 04 and 17 05 or nearly identical writing in 17 04 December 25th Monday, A storm of snow.
Yet many sleds come to town with wood hoops, coal, etcetera, as is usual,
and in 17 05 Tuesday, December 25th Very cold day, but serene morning sleds, sleighs and horses passes usual and shops open.

[7:06] They’re similar entries in 17 06 17, 13 17 17.
Even in the midst of another family tragedy, he found the time to write a note about how business didn’t stop for Christmas in Boston.
After his five month old granddaughter died in 17 11, he went to Brookline for the day writing, comforted my son and daughter what I could, prayed with them and took leave.
Got home a little after sunset.
We had much to do to get along for the multitude of sleds coming to town with wood in returning.
It was very important to him that he got caught in market traffic on the way back to Boston.
Despite the fact that it was December 25th without the family tragedy, he took similar satisfaction in the trafficking, encountered in 17 16 Tuesday, December 25th.
Shops are open and sleds come to town as At other times I went to Cambridge and found the ferryboat crowded much with passengers coming to town, and so going back in my return.

[8:06] In fact, so many of stools, Christmas Day diary entries, air like that.
It’s more interesting to take note of the exceptions, like in 17 03 when he noted disapprovingly that the Christmas keepers had a very pleasant day,
or in 17 14 when Christmas fell on a Saturday and Samuel Sewall decided to go to church that Sunday, December 26th.

[8:28] He attended the New North Church in the North End, Lord’s Day, December 26th, Mr Brown Field and I Go and keep the Sabbath with Mr John Webb and sit down with that church at the Lord’s Table.
I did it to hold Communion with that church, and so far as in me, lay to put respect upon that affronted despised Lord’s Day for the Church of England had the Lord’s Supper yesterday, the last day of the week, but will not have it today, the day that the Lord has made.
And General Nicholson, who kept Saturday, was this Lord’s Day, rummaging and chattering with wheelbarrows, etcetera to get aboard at the Long wharf and firing guns at setting sail.
I thank God I heard, not saw not anything of it, but was quiet at the new North, not for bearing labor and going to meeting on the Sabbath was bad enough.
But Samuel Sewall is discomfort with, and disapproval of keeping Christmas went far deeper than that.

[9:22] As we’ll see, the Puritans had religious reasons why they didn’t celebrate Christmas that far predated their colonization of the Massachusetts Bay, however, is U Mass.
Amherst professor and author of The Battle for Christmas. Stephen Nissenbaum wrote in 1996 article. For the American Antiquarian Society, the Puritans had another reason for suppressing Christmas.
The holiday they suppressed was not what we probably mean when we think of, AH, traditional Christmas.
It involved behavior that most of us would find offensive and even shocking today.
Rowdy public displays of excessive eating and drinking, the mockery of established authority, aggressive begging often combined with the threat of doing harm and even the boisterous invasion of wealthy homes.

[10:05] 1935 Essay In the New England Quarterly titled Christmas, the upstart Ivor Spencer uncovered the early history of Christmas in New England among both those who wish to celebrate and those who despise the very idea he was writing.
Just a few years after Boston’s ter centennial at a time when both religiosity and nostalgia for what were mistakenly thought of a simpler times were at their peak.
I think he set out to deliberately scandalize his readers when he accurately noted that the festivities were not the sort we know today.
Far from being the newborn son of man, the infant whom the three Kings brought their gift’s Christ served rather as the Lord of Misrule, patron of riotous celebration.
It was in his name that the Wassail Bowl past and toasts were given, and before the prolonged feasting was over that jails were usually filled with drunken roistering er’s.

[11:02] It’s fairly obvious why a society that saw a pathway to heaven through hard work, scriptural study and temperate denial of earthly pleasures would be threatened by a season of misrule. Wasa wing and memory.
However, there are fighting against the tide in some ways.
By the early 17th century, when first the Plymouth Pilgrim’s and then the Boston Puritans immigrated from those shores, Christmas traditions had been firmly rooted in England for centuries.
This, in Baum’s article explains. It may seem odd that Christmas was ever celebrated in such a fashion.
But there was a good reason December was the major punctuation mark and the rhythmic cycle of work in northern agricultural societies, a time when there was a minimum of work to be performed.
The deep freeze of midwinter had not yet set in the work of gathering the harvest on preparing it for winter was done, and there was plenty of newly fermented beer or wine as well as meat from freshly slaughtered animals meat that had to be consumed before it spoiled.
ST Nicholas, for example, is associated with the Christmas season, chiefly because his name day, December 6th, coincided in many European countries, with the end of the harvest and slaughter season.

[12:14] In a society that only recently emerged from feudalism where most people lived a strictly subsistence lifestyle, The Temptation toe act out during a season of relative ease, and plenty would be hard to resist,
especially when, as it was before the rise of Puritanism, the dominant culture encourage such diversions.

[12:34] This M bombs description of the seasonal celebration continues. Christmas was a season of misrule, a time when ordinary behavioral restraints could be violated with impunity.
It was part of what one historian is called the world of Carnival.
The term carnival is rooted in the Latin Karnei and Val.
Farewell to flesh and Flesh refers here not only to meet, but also to sex toe activities both carnivorous and carnal.
Christmas misrule meant that not only hunger but also anger and lust could be expressed in public.
Often, people blacken their faces, are disguised themselves as animals are cross dressed, thus operating under a protective cloak of anonymity.
The late 19th century historian John Ashton reports one episode from Lincolnshire in 16 37 in which the man selected by a crowd of revelers as Lord of Misrule, was publicly given a wife and a ceremony led by a man dressed as a minister.
He read the entire marriage service in the Book of Common Prayer thereupon, as Ashton noted, in proper Victorian language, the affair was carried to its utmost extent.

[13:45] By the time the Arbella fleet sailed for Boston, Puritanism had been in ascendancy in England for a half century, and public celebration of Christmas and other Saints days was in decline.
Back in England, Puritans were never more than a plurality or a very slim majority of the population.
But among the Puritan dissenters who packed up and moved to Boston in 16 30 they were the near unanimous majority.

[14:09] Christmas was never able to establish a beachhead in Massachusetts, much like it had been rejected by the Puritans. Separatist neighbors in Plymouth, the so called Pilgrim’s who established their colony about a decade before Massachusetts Bay set the tone for Christmas early.
Thomas Princes, New England Chronology describes how December 25th, 16 20 found the pilgrim still living on board the Mayflower.
They spent the day trying to build a communal shelter, which would be the first building in Plymouth, December 25th.
Monday they go ashore again, felling timber, sawing, writhing carrying,
begin to erect the first house about 20 ft square for their common use to receive them in their goods, leaving about 20 to keep a court of guard.
The rest return aboard in the evening.
No feasting, no public drinking, no misrule or merrymaking.

[15:05] Just one year later, however, the first challenge appeared after the original colonists were joined by a new company of mostly young, unmarried men who arrived on the ship Fortune in his history of Plymouth Plantation.
Governor William Bradford described December 25th, 16 21.
On the day called Christmas Day, the governor called them out toe work, as was usual.
But the most of this new company excused themselves and said it went against their conscience toe work on that day.
So the governor told them that if they made it a matter of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed.
So he led away the rest and left, Um, but when they came home at noon from their work, he found them in the streets at play openly, some pitching the bar and summit stool ball on such like sports.
So he went to them and took away their implements and told them that it was against his conscience that they should play in. Others work if they made keeping it a matter of devotion, let them keep their houses.
But there should be no gaming, a rebelling in the streets, since which time nothing has been attempted that way, at least openly.

[16:12] Setting a pattern that would hold to a greater or lesser degree across New England for almost 200 years, Bradford highlighted his willingness to overlook the group’s forbearance from labor itself, seen as a sin if they wanted to spend the day in quiet prayer and reflection,
it was only public displays of festivity that had to be eliminated.

[16:32] When John Winthrop and his Arbella fleet arrived in the city upon a hill. A decade later, the New England Chronology notes that their first Christmas in the New World fell on a Saturday.
But it was considered such an insignificant date that without notable weather or the arrival of a ship in Boston Harbor, nothing was recorded for the day.

[16:50] December 24th. Until this time there was. For the most part, they’re open weather with gentle frosts in the night.
But this day the wind comes northwest very sharp in some snow, but so cold that some of their fingers frozen, endanger to be lost, then skips to December 26th Lord’s Day.
The Rivers air froze up, and they have. Charlestown could not come to the sermon at Boston until the afternoon at high water in the early years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Court of Assistance was not shy about introducing laws that strictly regulated personal behavior.
In 16 31 they ordered that anyone who owned cards, dice or gaming tables should make away with them before the next meeting of the court.
The following year, they implemented a one pence fine on anyone taking tobacco in public over the coming decades.
They banned Quakers and Baptists from worshiping men from wearing wigs and women from curling their hair and the implemented harsh corporal punishments for extramarital sex.
However, there was already such a strong cultural taboo against the public celebration of Christmas that no law regarding the holiday was passed. For almost 30 years.

[18:03] That all changed the Court of General Election, held in Boston on May 11th, 16 59.
John Endicott was presiding, his governor, and there are many famous names from early Boston attending his members of the Court of Assistants or deputies Simon Bradstreet, Daniel Guqin, Edward Rawson, Roger Clap, Thomas Savage and more.

[18:23] During that legislative session, the court tackled many other topics.
What to do with individuals or families that couldn’t support themselves, forcing people who lost a civil judgment to pay up, quickly preserving proper discipline in the militia, again banning gambling and appointing an official in each port town to measure salt imports.
The session also banished six suspected Quakers from the province on pain of death, and it authorized the county treasurer and Salem to sell a couple into indentured servitude in Barbados for not paying a civil judgment against them is Quaker.
Sympathizers with governor indicates blessing.
The court also debated and passed a law prohibiting Christmas keeping, it said, for preventing disorders arriving in several places within this jurisdiction by reason of some.
Still observing such festivals is were superstitious, Lee kept in other countries to the great dishonor of God and offensive others.
It is therefore ordered by this court in the authority thereof, that who so ever shall be found observing any such day is Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting or any other way,
upon any such accounts is a force said every such person so offending shall pay for every such a fence five shillings as a fine to the county.

[19:39] But if the cultural mores against celebrating the Nativity have been successful for nearly a century, first in old England and now a new why was legislation necessary at all?
In his article on Christmas and early New England, Stephen Nissenbaum points out.
Laws are not made, of course, unless there are people who are engaging in the forbidden activity in the Massachusetts Bay Law of 16 59.
Like Governor Bradford’s earlier report suggests that there were indeed people in Massachusetts who were observing Christmas in the late 16 fifties.
The law was clear on this point. It was designed for preventing disorders.
The wording of the law also implied that the authorities were concerned chiefly as governor. Bradford had been not with private devotion, but with what the law termed disorders.
That point was reinforced by a provision in the law that threatened to impose a second five shilling fine for gambling with cards or dice, a practice the court noted there was frequent in many places at such times as Christmas.

[20:43] A generation after Boston was founded, the British crown would reassert its authority in the city, bringing the Church of England an official recognition of the Christmas holiday. With it.
However, that was still decades in the future when the band went into place, so Anglicans were not the target of the law.
Instead, Nissenbaum points to groups who lived in the colonies fringes, both physically distant from governmental authority in Boston and culturally independent from the Puritan church that tied the province together.

[21:12] Who are the people that practiced Christmas misrule in 17th century New England?
Not surprisingly, the evidence suggests that there are mostly on the margins of official New England culture or altogether. Outside it, it was fishermen and Mariners who had the reputation of being the most incorrigible centers in New England and the region’s least reformed inhabitants.
Maritime communities such as Nantucket, the aisles of shoals and especially the town of Marblehead, were notorious for a religion, heavy drinking and loose sexual practices.
There are also repositories of enduring English folk practices, places that ignored or resisted orthodox New England culture.
It is no coincidence that Marblehead was also a site of ongoing Christmas keeping Still, Nissenbaum explains, the point of the law was to prevent public disorders, so gatherings at home weren’t really affected.
Quote. This was not the secret police going after everybody.
It’s clear from the wording of the band that the Puritans weren’t really concerned with celebrating the holiday in a quiet way.
Privately, it was for preventing disorders when it comes to disorders. Nissenbaum also notes that an Anglican minister singled out to particularly dangerous seasonal practices.
The first was Mum ing.
The second strange to modern readers was the singing of Christmas carols.

[22:32] Mom ing usually involved a changing of clothes between men and women who, when dressed in each other’s habits, go from one neighbor’s house to another and make merry with them in disguise.

[22:43] Born proposed that this custom, which is still so common among us that this season of the year be laid aside as it is the occasion for much unclean Nissen debauchery.

[22:54] As for singing Christmas carols, that practice was ah disgrace, since it was generally done in the midst of rioting and chambering and wantonness.
Chambering was a common euphemism for fornication.
This and down continues. The Puritans understood another thing too much of the seasonal excess that took place at Christmas was not merely chaotic disorder, but behavior that took a profoundly ritualized form.
Most fundamentally, Christmas was in occasion when the social hierarchy itself was symbolically turned upside down in a gesture that inverted designated roles of gender, age and class,
during the Christmas season, those near the bottom of society acted high and mighty.
Men might dress like women, and women might dress and act like men.
Young people might imitate and mock their elders, for example, of boy might be chosen bishop and take on for a brief time, some of our real bishops authority a peasant or an apprentice might become Lord of Misrule and mimic the authority of a really gentleman.

[23:57] So as we’ll see in a few minutes. Puritan Massachusetts had serious doctrinal disagreements with Christmas keeping, but those mostly came to prominence in later decades.
The law banning the celebration of Christmas was passed to prevent the disorder and misrule of the yuletide season.
It was basically successful, as far as I could tell, the five shilling fine was never levied against the Bostonian, and the mere existence of the statute was enough to prevent disorders back in Old England. Things weren’t so simple.
The English parliament passed versions of a Christmas ban in 16 47 and again in 16 50 to perhaps inspiring the Massachusetts law that passed seven years later.
On December 24th, 16 52 the Puritan dominated so called rump parliament resolved,
that no observation shall be had of the five and 20th day of December, commonly called Christmas Day, nor any solemnity used or exercise and churches upon that day in respect thereof.
In his article titled Christmas, the late comer Ivor Spencer quoted a 16 57 diary entry to illustrate how, while Massachusetts may never have needed to enforce its Christmas ban, that wasn’t the case in old England.

[25:11] 25th December, I went to London with my wife to celebrate Christmas Day.
Mr Gunning, preaching an Exeter chapel on Micah. Chapter seven, Verse two sermon ended as he was giving us the holy sacrament.
The chapel was surrounded with soldiers and all the communicants in assembly surprised and kept prisoners by them, Some in the house, others carried away.

[25:34] I guess those fishermen and Mariners on the fringes of Puritan society should have counted themselves lucky.
The governor, Endicott, never send in the troops when they stayed home from work or had a bit too much to drink on Christmas Day.
However, even in the old country where they did, Nissenbaum points out that their success wasn’t as lasting as it was here in England, the success of the Puritans was limited and temporary.
Legislation banning the celebration of Christmas was contested in many places.
Even during the 16 forties and fifties, when Puritans controlled the government, there were riots in several towns.
The policy was quickly reversed in 16 60 upon the restoration of the English monarchy.
But in New England, the Puritans did largely succeed in eliminating Christmas and many of the other practices of English popular culture, David D. Hall has succinctly described the transformed culture of what he aptly terms a new Protestant vernacular.
Psalm singing replaced ballads. Ritual was reorganized around the celebration of the Sabbath and a fast days.
No town in New England had a maypole. No group celebrated Christmas or ST Valentine’s Day or staged a pre Lenten carnival on May 27th, 16 81.
The 22 year Christmas ban was overturned in the General Court of Election, this time presided over by Governor Simon Bradstreet.
But with most of the other members unchanged since 16 59.

[26:59] After the other business of the day was concluded, the Legislature considered and then passed eight changes to the province’s laws suggested by the attorney general and solicitor.
The last of the eight changes that were read, reviewed and approved stated simply, the law against Christmas keeping to be left out.
Thes eight changes, including leaving out the Christmas law, were among a number of legal changes demanded by King Charles second, who insisted that the stringent laws of Massachusetts were an affront to royal authority.
In 1935 Spencer wrote, It is not to be denied that Massachusetts did finally withdraw the objectionable statute in 16 81.
But the steps should be interpreted as representing merely formal obedience to the demands of the British government.
In reality, the whole weight of Puritan custom continued to suppress any celebration of Christmas for the better part of 200 years.

[27:53] Now that Christmas keeping was technically legal but still culturally unacceptable, impure it. In Boston, the church and its adherence began fighting a long, ultimately unsuccessful rearguard action to make sure that Christmas never gained a beachhead in the religious practice of Boston’s churches.
With Nissenbaum writing from the earliest years, Christmas reinserted itself in New England society at first of its margins. But then well before the end of the 17th century and with a great upsurge in the middle of the 18th.
And it’s very mainstream by the beginning of the 19th century and influential segment of the Congregational ministry itself was prepared to call publicly for the formal ceremonial observance of Christmas in the region’s established churches.

[28:35] In 16 84 Charles, the second vacated the Massachusetts Charter that his father, Charles, the first had ascended to in 16 29 leading to a period of unprecedented uncertainty and instability.
With the restoration of King Charles, the second and their charter vacated, the Boston Puritans lived in fear that the new government would impose what they considered the pope ish rituals of the Church of England. Even in Boston.

[29:00] Eventually, King James, the second, would institute the Dominion of New England, placing Boston under the direct control of a royal governor for the first time and leading to the first official foothold for the Church of England in Boston.

[29:13] In the meantime, December of 16 85 was a somber season that year.
Samuel Sewall was again grieving when the 25th rolled around.
His infant son, Henry, had died days before, and the funeral was held on Christmas Eve.
Thus, you can perhaps read a bit more venom than usual into his observation. On December 25th Friday, carts come to town and shops open as usual.
Some somehow observe the day but are vexed. I believe that the body of the people profane it and blessed be God no authority yet to compel them to keep it.
A great snow fell last night, so this day and night very cold with the knowledge that the authority to compel Christmas keeping might arrive at any time increase.
Mather, one of the most influential Puritan minister’s the era, gave a sermon in 16 85 titled testimony against several profane and superstitious customs now practiced by some in New England.
The four part sermon included an argument against Christmas keeping in seven sections one and the pure apostolic. All times there was no Christ mass day observed in the church of God.
We ought to keep the primitive pattern to the word Christ Mass is enough to cause such a czar studious of reformation, to dislike what shall be known by a name so superstitious.

[30:36] Three. It can never be proved that Christ’s Nativity was on the 25th of December four, though the particular day of Christ’s Nativity is now unknown to the world.
Yet it seems most probable that he was born in the latter end of September or in the beginning of October five.
God, in his word, has nowhere appointed Christians to keep an anniversary holy day in commemoration of Christ’s Nativity,
six Christmas holidays where it first invented and instituted in compliance with the pagan festivals of old observed at that very time of year Number seven.
The generality of Christmas keepers observed that festival after such a manner as is highly dishonorable to the name of Christ.

[31:22] Each of the seven sections contained a lengthy argument from Scripture. What the last one is what the Puritans seemed most concerned about.

[31:30] How few are They’re, comparatively, that spend those holidays Holy days, as they’re called after, Ah, holy manner.
But they’re consumed in competitions in interludes, in playing at cards and revel ings in excess of wine and mad mirth.
Well, Christ the holy son of God be pleased with such services just after this manner, where the saturnalia of the heathen celebrated Saturn was the gaming god.
The Feast of Christ. Nativity is attended with such profane nous as that it deserves the name of Saturn’s Mass or of Bacchus, his Mass.
Or, if you will, the Devil’s Mass rather than tow, have the holy name of Christ put upon it.
Men dishonor Christ Maurin the 12 days of Christmas than in all the 12 months besides, and that is the way to honor Christ.
The love feasts throwing themselves lawful, which began in the Apostles times, were wholly late aside amongst Christians because they had been an occasion of riotous abuses.
There is much more reason to admit the observation of Christmas festivities, which have brought a deluge of profane this upon the world.
The scandal of them calls for their abolition, rather concluded, I can remember the time when, for many years, not so much as one of all these superstitious customs was known to be practiced in this land.

[32:51] By that he meant not only Christmas keeping but also the other profane customs. He argued against gambling, drinking a toast to someone’s health, cockfighting and observing the Saints days.

[33:05] They’re good nowhere. But in New England they’re 1000 times worse than in another place.
This has been Emmanuel’s land. New England was an over ought to be a land of uprightness.
But Shellman do such things in a land of uprightness where the word of God and the ministers of God have taught them better.
Is it no provocation to defile the Lord’s land? To my knowledge, the first generation of Christians came into this wilderness with the hopes that their posterity here would never be corrupted with such vain customs.
Ask such of the old standards as there yet living, if it were not so.
Methinks I hear the Lord speaking to New England as once to Israel. I planted the A noble vine. Holy, a right seed.
How then art, they’ll turned into the degenerate plant of a strange vine.
It turns out that the degenerate plant that increase Mather was familiar with couldn’t hold a candle to the tendrils that took root in Boston the following year.
Have I tortured that plan analogy enough? Last December, we revisited the arrival of Cirebon Andrews in Boston in Episode 1 65 as the personal representative of the king in New England.
This new royal governor consolidated the governments of the New England colonies into a single Dominion of New England, any ruled by personal Fiat completely sidelining the tradition of self government that have been built in Massachusetts over a half century of relative independence.

[34:30] These measures would go on to inspire an uprising. What some might consider a coup in Boston in 16 89.
But even before the resentments leading to that uprising confessed ER, Governor Andrews got off on the wrong foot from the very moment of his arrival in Boston.
Samuel Sewall is diary Records Help Boston was introduced to their new governor Monday, December 20th, 16 86.
Governor Andrews comes up in the penance, touches at the Castle Lancet governor. Leverage dwarf about 2 p.m.
Where the president etcetera, meet him and so march up through the guards of the eight companies to the townhouse,
speaks to the ministers in the library about accommodation as to a meeting house that might so contrived the time as one house might serve to assemblies.
The next day, the town’s ministers met and debated how to handle the demand that they allow Andrews access to one of their congregational churches in order to hold an Anglican service.
The very notion was offensive. After much reflection, Sewall rights, it was agreed that could not with good conscience consent that are meeting houses should be made use of for the common prayer worship the minister of third church.
What we know is Old South meeting house would later be more or less coerced and is turning over the keys to the church and allowing an Anglican service to be held once a week.

[35:52] But before any of those details could be worked out, Governor Andrews had urgent business.
The Church of England had no grudge against Christmas keeping, and that’s exactly what the governor planned to dio.
Sewall continues.
Saturday, December 25th Governor goes to the townhouse to service for noon afternoon, a red coat going on his right hand and Captain George on the left.
Shops open today generally and persons about their occasions, some but few carts at the town with wood, though the day exceeding fair and pleasant.

[36:28] Noticed that even though he noted the service held by Andrews at what we now call the Old State House, he was also happy to point out that the shops were open and the trade in Boston streets was brisk.

[36:40] Even though it would be an uphill battle because increase Mather had just gotten done, calling Christmas the Devil’s Mass and saying that it dishonored Christ.
Governor Andrews intended to reinstitute Anglican customs, including Christmas Stephen Nissenbaum Road,
Andrew’s new Well, the significance of subverting the Puritan Sabbath and reimposing the old seasonal calendar Christmas very much included.
Andras encouraged the residents of the colony to keep Christmas and other seasonal holidays.
A few Bostonians celebrated Shrove Tuesday, meaning Mardi Gras by Dancing in the Streets and a Maypole was a record in Charlestown.

[37:20] Now the American Antiquarian Society was originally founded by Isaiah Thomas.
If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you may have heard our profile of Thomas Way back in Episode 26.
He was a printer, a patriot and the publisher of the Massachusetts spy.
When he fled Boston, his war broke out in 17 75. He ended up settling in Worcester and that’s where he used his fortune to set up the American Antiquarian Society.
It’s an amazing historical resource, and because of its founders, profession and interest, it focuses on print culture.
That perhaps explains why the essay Stephen Nissenbaum produced in partnership with Um, focuses so much on printed materials like sheet music, broadsheets and almanacs.

[38:05] Before the Andrews administration, no New England Almanac had mentioned Christmas of the Saints days, where the first almanac produced during his administration made it very clear to readers what the new official position waas.
But in his 16 87 Almanac, Tully boldly labeled December 25th in capital letters as Christmas Day,
and he also added every one of the red letter days recognized by the Church of England December 21st thereby became ST Thomas.
December 26th was Saint Stephen, and December 27th was innocents.
In all likelihood, Tully use capital letters simply because his Boston printer did not have any red ink.
The following year, Tully’s Almanac was published with the official imprint of Andrews’s deputy, Edwin Randolph, on the title page.
It was a dramatic assertion of authority over the printed word.

[38:59] This a fence lingered and in 17 06 long after the glorious Revolution and after the expulsion of Andrew’s Samuel, Sewall notes how he made some constructive edits to an almanac that was being prepared for printing in Boston August 18th.
Yesterday, the governor committed Mr Hollyhocks Almanac to me and looking it over. This morning, I blotted against February 14th Valentine, March 25th Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin.
April 24th Easter, September 29th, Michael, Miss.
December 25 Christmas and Gnome or King Charles Martyr was lined out. Before I saw it, I touched it. Not.

[39:41] Well. Governor Andrews brought the Anglican Church to Boston, founding King’s Chapel, which would be the first church in Boston toe hold, regular Christmas ceremonies and for years the only church to decorate for the season.
His personal influence in Boston was relatively short lived.
After about 2.5 years, he was ousted in in April 16 89 coup.
However, in his article on the Rise of Christmas, Ivor Spencer pointed out that Anglicans weren’t the only ones keeping Christmas in late 17th century Boston.

[40:13] A second religious denomination that observed the day was the French Hugo, not church.
But this group was always very small in numbers. In New England, it was represented by an organized church in Boston is earliest 16 87.

[40:27] Almost a ziff on cue, Samuel Sewall Diary reveals that he gave a neighbor a stern talking to just after Christmas 16 98 after learning that the neighborhood kept Christmas with the Hugo Knots.
This day I speak with Mr Newman about his partaking with the French church on the 25th of December. On account of its being Christmas Day.
As they abusively call it, he stoutly defended the Holy Days and the Church of England.

[40:53] At least Mr Newman was invited to the party that year. Samuel Sewall got the cold shoulder, providing a preview of things to come in the new century.
Writing a few days later about the conversations he had on Christmas Eve that year, he noted, it seems the lieutenant governor invites the council to dinner tomorrow at his house.
That, of course, would be some of that heathen Christmas feasting. That increase Mather had recently described as a day lose of profane nous Sewall continues.
Mr Cook asked me whether I was bidden. I told him I knew nothing of it.
Major General looked upon me in good earnest and almost angrily a going away and told me I must go.
But I heard nothing of it since and is now December 30th past three PM.

[41:42] Was Sewall waffling saying that he would actually have attended a Christmas party if he had only been invited?
That seems unlikely. As someone with this much wealth and influence of Samuel Sewall could probably show up to any party you wanted. Thio.
Nevertheless, he harbored a grudge over perhaps imagined slight. Continuing.
The grievous nous of this preacher mission is that by this means I shall be taken up into the lips of the talkers and shall be obnoxious to the governor of his coming as a person deserted and fit to be hunted down if occasion be,
and in the meantime shall go feebly up and down my business as one who is quite out of the lieutenant governor’s favor.
The Lord pardon my share in the abounding of iniquity by reason where of the love of many waxes cold.

[42:28] As the 17th century turned to the 18th, Samuel Sewall is empty. Social calendar wasn’t the only sign that the Puritan church was relaxing its stranglehold on Boston’s religious culture.
Cotton Mather delivered a sermon in 17 12 titled Grace defended a censure on the ungodly nous by which the glorious grace of God is too commonly abused.
A sermon preached on the 25th day of December 17 12 containing some seasonable admonitions of piety.
It’s notable both for its condemnation of Christmas. Keeping consistent with his father increases sermons and also for a surprisingly tolerant view of the growing number of people in Boston who made the choice to celebrate the holiday. He said.
It is an evidence of front, under the grace of God for men to make the birth of our holy savior and encouragement and an occasion for very unholy enormity ease Children.
We lay the charges of God upon you that if any people take this time for anything of a riotous tendency, you did not associate with him in such ungodly nous.
I do not now dispute whether people do well to observe such an UN instituted festival. It all or no good men may love one another and may treat one another with the most candid charity.
Well, he that regarded the day regarded it under the Lord, and he that regard, if not the day, also shows his regard under the Lord. It is not regarding of it.

[43:53] Can you and your conscience think that our holy savior is honored by mad mirth by long eating by hard drinking, by lewd gaming by rude, rebelling by a mass fit for none but a Saturn aura, Bacchus or the night of a Mohammed in Ramadan?
You cannot possibly think so.

[44:12] What a contradiction. He simultaneously denounced mirth making on Christmas Day as unholy and ungodly, while also acknowledging that people who partook in such Mistral to regard a day might be regarding it under the Lord.

[44:26] Nissenbaum is, paper points out,
Cotton Mather’s father, increased.
Mother would have readily agreed with his son’s angry warning about the bad things that went on a Christmas,
but he never would have accepted Cotton Mather’s willingness to accept the idea that it was possible for good Christians to differ in candid charity about observing the holiday at all for increase Mather.
As for other 17th century Puritans, The licentious fashion in which Christmas was commonly practiced was just uninterested expression of its pre Christian origins as a seasonal celebration.
The holiday was riotous at its very core.
For Cotton Mather writing a generation later in the early 18th century, the essence of the holiday could be distinguished, at least in principle, from its historical origins and the ordinary manner of its celebration.

[45:16] Completely unsurprisingly, Samuel Sewall was one of the last holdouts, sticking to his insistence that Christmas be ignored for years after the wider Puritan culture was relaxing its position.
This is illustrated by the stand he took in the year 17 22.
That year, Governor Shoot proposed A that year, Governor Shoot proposed adjourning the Legislature for a Christmas break, something that would have never flown in the days when Governor Endicott supported a formal ban On Christmas.
However, before he asked the body to vote, he first tried to win over the old stick in the mud. Sewall Sewall is Diary Records, the drama that started with this first exchange with the governor on the topic on December 19th.

[45:58] His Excellency took me aside to the southeast window of the council chamber to speak with me about a journey. The General Court to Monday. Next, Because of Christmas, I told His Excellency I would consider it.

[46:10] December 20th. I invited Dr Mather to dine with me, not knowing that he preached after dinner, I consulted with him about the A German of the court.
We agreed that it would be expedient to take a vote of the council and representatives for it.

[46:26] Friday, December 21st the governor took me to the window again, looking eastward next to Mrs Phillips is and speak to me again about adjourning the court to next Wednesday.
I speak against it and propounded that the governor would take a vote for it, that he would hold the balance even between the church and us.
His Excellency went to the board again and said much for this adjourning.
All kept Christmas. But we I suggested King James the first to Mr Dudley, how he boasted what a pure church he had and they did not keep you’ll.
Mr. Dudley asked if the Scots meaning the Presbyterians kept Christmas, His Excellency protested. He believed they did not.

[47:08] The governor said they adjourned for the commencement in artillery, But then tis by agreement.
Colonel Taylor spoke so loud and boisterously for adjourning that was hard for any to put. In a word.
Colonel Townsend seconded me and Colonel Partridge because this would prolong the sessions.
Mr. Davenport stood up and gave it a his opinion that could not be convenient for the governor to be present in court that day and therefore was for adjourning.
But the governor is often absent. And yet the council and representatives go on.
Now the governor has told us that he would go away for a week and then return, and if you liked what we had done, he would consent to it.
The governor mentioned how it would appear tohave votes passed on December 25th, but His Excellency need not have been present nor sign any bill. That day.
I said the dissenters came a great way for their liberties, and now the church had. There’s yet they could not be contented, except they might tread all others down.

[48:08] After three days of heated debate, Mr Sewall lost Saturday, December 22nd, about a quarter of an hour before 12.
The governor adjourned the court toe Wednesday morning 10 o’clock and sent Mr Secretary into the House deputies to do it there.
The Legislature may not have met on Christmas Day, but that didn’t mean that commerce didn’t go on.
And, of course, Samuel Sewall was watching like a hawk.
Tuesday, December 25th. I chose to stay home and not go to Roxbury lecture.
The shops were open and carts came to town with wood, who polls and hey as another times being a pleasant day. The street was filled with carts and horses.

[48:52] There’s no entry in Sewell’s diary for the next Christmas, but in 17 24 and 17 25 the governor simply adjourned the court without debate.
17 24. December 24th Court is pro road to the 20th of January, just about 11 o’clock December 25th.
Shops are open. Carts, sleds. Horses come to town as a four times and 17 25.
Friday, December 24th The lieutenant governor adjourns the General Court to Tuesday, December 28 December 25th.
The shops are open and much timber fuel. Hey, etcetera, brought to town.

[49:34] By the second decade of the 18 hundreds, strict Puritanism was on the decline, and celebrating Christmas was on the rise.
Spencer’s article illustrates how these trends continue. Does the 18th century wore on?
For the 1st 100 years, the admonitions of men like Mather were listened to, it would seem, and the force of New England puritanism remains strong, causing Christmas to be looked upon as a sack religious yet semi pagan ceremony, a breeder of drunkenness and disorder.
As the 18th century wore on, however, the strength of that way of life began to ebb, and the festival made some friends outside the Episcopal Church,
take the instances in the life of the Reverend Manasseh Cutler, one of the shrewdest men, whoever drove a hard bargain with the American Congress.
In 17 65 he attended an Anglican Christmas service at King’s Chapel, and eight years later he himself preached a Christmas sermon from his congregational pulpit at Ipswich.

[50:32] A century after Boston’s ban on Christmas expired, the ancient tradition of memory returned with rowdy wasa wing carried out by groups known as the Boston Antics.
Bostonian Samuel Breck wrote about him in his memoirs, saying he remembered them coming to his father’s house, his latest 17 82.

[50:51] They were a set of the lowest black guards who, disguised in filthy clothes and ofttimes with masked faces, went from house to house in large companies.
And like it or not, of treating themselves everywhere, particularly into the rooms that were occupied by parties of ladies and gentlemen would demean themselves with great insolence.
I have seen them at my father’s when his assembled friends were a cards, take possession of a table, seat themselves on rich furniture and proceed to handle the cards to the great annoyance of the company.

[51:21] The only way to get rid of them was to give them money and listen patiently to a foolish dialogue between two or more of them.
One of them would cry out, Ladies and gentlemen, sitting by the fire, put your hands in your pockets and give us our desire.
When this was done and they had received some money, a kind of acting took place.
One fellow was knocked down and lay sprawling on the carpet, while another bellowed out, See, there he lies, But Harry dies. A doctor must be had.
He calls for a doctor who soon appears and enacts the part so well that the wounded men revives.
In this way they would continue for a half an hour, and it happened not infrequently, that the house would be filled by another gang. When these had departed, there was no refusing admittance.
Custom and license. These vagabonds Thio enter even by force anyplace they chose.

[52:16] As the 18th century turned to the 19th, public Christmas celebrations slowly became the norm.
The remnants of the Puritan church were further weakened as a schism divided. The churches we now know is congregational from Unitarian.
Diverse Protestant denominations flourished, and the first major wave of Irish immigration brought a newly reinvigorated Catholic church and its Christmas customs starting in the 18 forties.
A few businesses closed on Christmas Day and in the late 18 forties, newspaper stopped delivering On the day, Ivor Spencer noted the rise of another familiar Christmas customer.
On the same time, the trading gift’s increased very rapidly to the great joy of shopkeepers.
It was in the 18 forties. If the advertisements or a sound guide, the presence became not the exception but the rule.
At the start of the decade, comparatively few notices were to be found in anyone paper.
By 18 50. On the other hand, Boston editor was whimsically telling his readers that one might almost as well attempted number. The sand on the seashore as to enumerate the various articles used is Gift’s.

[53:25] Soon states started making December 25th an official holiday, and a Spencer wrote, Massachusetts joined their ranks in 18 56 but did not content itself with rest but merely from financial business.
The legislators provided also that the general court should not sit except for the transaction of extraordinary matters, that no trial should be held by the judiciary and that all public offices should be closed.

[53:52] I’m sure Samuel Sewall turned over in his grave that same year, old H. W. Longfellow marked the holiday with a melancholy entry in his diary.
25th. Not a Very Merry Christmas. We’re in a transition state about Christmas here in New England.
The old Puritan feeling prevents it from being a cheerful, hardy holiday, though every year makes it more so.

[54:17] Spencer’s article continues, although by 18 60 or soon afterwards, the layman of the more Protestant churches have given up the austere opinions of their forefathers and had accorded Christmas a hearty welcome.
Their ministers did not give it some warmer reception.
Only the passing of years induced the latter to forget the increasingly unpopular doctrines of their imposing and pious predecessors.

[54:41] Even in the year Spencer’s essay was published, there were some official Acknowledgments of congregational ISMs, austere Puritan past,
in 1935 the obviously closed doors of the older New England churches on Christmas morning act as a reminder of the old puritanical prohibitions.
But in every other regard, the old taboos have been for Gotten no longer to Santa Claus suggest the devil.
No more presence looked upon with suspicion. No clergyman denounced reckless mirth and impious feasting.
Vanished is the Lord of Misrule.
Now the stately windows of Boston plays with candles on Christmas Eve, and strolling singers chant the carols of the Middle Ages up and down the streets of Beacon Hill.

[55:26] Today. Of course, keeping Christmas is by far the dominant custom and Boston and beyond.
But it’s a largely secular, entirely commercialized Christmas that neither the Puritans, northern Anglican antagonists would recognize.
I find myself is a non Christian in the odd position of both not celebrating Christmas but also not approving of the way that most people do celebrate it.
After decades of reflection, I can’t see a reason to observe Christmas, if not to celebrate the birth of a savior.
Whoever like Governor Bradford of Plymouth, I think that if you want to celebrate Christmas, it should be a matter of devotion.
Should be a day of quiet prayer and reflection without rebelling in the streets.
Like Cotton Mather, I find myself wondering how the Christian Messiah is honored by mad mirth and rude rebelling as someone standing on the outside looking in. It doesn’t seem like the performative acts of charity carried out during the season.
Honor. The one who commanded when thou do assign alms, do not sound the trumpet before the is the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets that they may have the glory of men.
Verily, I say unto you they have their reward.
But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand do with that.
Bynum’s maybe in Secret and Thy Father, which see if in secret himself, shall reward thee openly.

[56:51] Likewise, it doesn’t seem possible that spending huge sums of money in the Christmas shopping season is the right way to honor a guy who drove the money changers out of the temple and giving a receiving elaborate gift.
And acquiring more possessions is hardly in keeping with the advice he gave a rich man who asked how to get to heaven.
If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell all that thou hast and give it under the poor and Thou shalt have treasure in heaven.
Then come and follow me.

Wrap Up

[57:20] To learn more about Christmas and early Boston, check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 212,
I have links to the articles by Ivor Spencer and Stephen Nissenbaum that I quoted from so extensively as well as Nissenbaum is Book The Battle for Christmas.
I’ll link to the anti Christmas sermons of Increase and Cotton Mather.
The text of the 16 59 Christmas ban and it’s 16 81 Repeal and Thomas Princes. New England Chronology.
I’ll also include the diaries of Samuel Breck, William Bradford and, of course, Samuel Sewall. My favorite Puritan.

[57:57] If you’d like to get in touch with us, you can email us at podcast of hub history dot com.
We’re hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
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Jake:
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That’s all for now. Stay safe out there, listeners and don’t travel for Christmas this year.