When there was no Christmas in New England...

PRIME December 2012 By Debbie Gardner debbieg@thereminder.com In the modern world, the holiday season is filled with activities and celebrations, as evidenced by the annual listing of Holiday Happenings in this month's issue. But that hasn't always been the case, at least in New England. Early settlers to the Massachusetts Bay Colony frowned upon the celebration of a holiday that they deemed to be both disruptive to society and unsanctioned by scripture. To put it simply, Christmas was banned in Boston. According to the website masstraveljournal.com, the ban lasted nearly 22 years, with celebrations of the holiday not beginning to gain favor until the mid-1800s. Dennis Picard, museum director at Storrowton Village, located on the grounds of the Eastern States Exposition in West Springfield, said the Christmas ban wasn't actually that long, lasting perhaps 10 years or so. However, he pointed out, the ban was a reflection not of a "Bah Humbug" spirit on the part of our Pilgrim ancestors toward Christmas, but of the prevailing culture of the time. "The Puritans controlled the state legislature and [the banning of Christmas] was passed as a state law," Picard, who teaches a three-hour seminar on the history of religious celebrations in New England, said. The ban, however, didn't just apply to the popular winter holiday "but all holidays that had become secular," according to Picard. "Christmastime in England had become like an old-fashioned Halloween, it was like hell night," Picard said. "It was an excuse for people to drink . think of Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol.' Father Christmas was a big, jolly guy with a goblet in his hand, he was the incarnation of Bacchus [the Roman god of wine]." He noted that this ban reflected the Puritans' desire to dissociate themselves from all teachings of the Roman Catholic and Anglican Church, both of which sanctioned a religious celebration of Christmas. Picard said the Puritans – founders of the Congregational Church and other reform church sects – felt the Catholics and Anglicans had allowed their religious observances to become "too influenced by the thinking of man." Simply put, the Puritans did not celebrate any holiday that was not specifically referenced through scriptures in the Bible. That meant no Christmas celebration and no Easter either. "It was a regular school day," he said, adding that adults carried out their usual tasks on Dec. 25. Picard added as an aside that Christmas itself wasn't celebrated by the Catholic Church until the year 400, and that originally it was a fall holiday. The celebration was moved to Dec. 25 when the church began trying to convert pagans in northern Europe. Today's December date more closely matches that of the pagan's winter solstice celebration. However, as early as the end of the American Revolution, sentiments toward Christmas began to change. Picard said there are records of Christmas being celebrated in Granville, Mass., and North Granby, Conn., around that time. "People that did celebrate, whatever their particular beliefs, would [do so] in their parlors with like-minded friends," he noted. Those celebrations usually consisted of an afternoon of country-style music, and perhaps a prayer service. This form of religious observance most likely applied to Hanukkah for the region's small Jewish community, which Picard said existed from Revolutionary War times. There is no documented evidence of Hanukkah celebrations in the Pioneer Valley until the 19th century, he said, though there were "sizable Jewish communities in Rhode Island and along the coast." And though a more familiar form of the Christmas celebration did exist during Colonial time in what is now New York City – which was populated by Dutch settlers as well as in what is today Pennsylvania – settled by people with Germanic roots – it was after the Civil War before celebrations resembling what we refer to as "an old fashioned Christmas" began to appear in New England. According to a Dec. 24, 1957 article in the Springfield Union, an Episcopalian minister in Leominster, Mass., was the first to publically celebrate the holiday in December 1875. In an article provided to PRIME by Maggie Humberston, head of the library and archives at the Wood Museum of Springfield History, that minister, Rev. C. Collard Adams, erected the first public Christmas tree inside St. Luke's church, "the first time it had ever been done in New England." The article recorded that "On Christmas Eve, people came from miles around to see it." The same article also noted the first time stores closed for the Christmas holiday in Springfield, including Forbes & Wallace Department Store, Old Corner Book Store, and Gill's Art Store, was 1885. "I think people find it interesting to know what the background [of the holiday] was [in New England]," Picard said. "Some people [are] very disappointed to learn that their great, great grandparents did not chop down a tree and deck the halls. "It was just not part of what they did," he continued. "The [Puritans] back then were not celebrating Christmas as a negative thing. They just didn't acknowledge it . it just wasn't part of their culture."