Xmas

A couple weeks ago the president kicked off the annual War Against Christmas in St. Louis by repeating his campaign promise to a boisterous crowd of supporters: “I told you that we would be saying ‘Merry Christmas’ again.”  He rebranded the annual “holiday party” for the media a Christmas Party.  The Trumps’ holiday cards boldly wish all a ‘Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year’.  

This blasphemous departure from generic civil religion upset many people, among them even some Christian leaders.  The general concern is that in a multi-cultural society like America, expressions of religious sentiment must be watered down and rendered indistinct to avoid riling sectarian zealots.  But the only people too zealous to abide an open celebration of Christmas or any religious holiday are usually atheists.

And Puritans.  

Philip Stubbes, in his The Anatomie of Abuses (1580s) exemplifies the Puritan view of the holiday centuries ago in England:   

That more mischief is that time committed than in all the year besides, what masking and mumming, whereby robbery whoredom, murder and what not is committed? What dicing and carding, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used, more than in all the year besides, to the great dishonour of God and impoverishing of the realm.

Calvin’s view of Christmas had been a bit more ambivalent.  He condemned the ‘reason for the season’ in a sermon he preached on Christmas day in 1551:

“…It matters not whether we recall our Lord’s nativity on a Wednesday, Thursday, or some other day. But when we insist on establishing a service of worship based on our whim, we blaspheme God, and create an idol, though we have done it all in the name of God. And when you worship God in the idleness of a holiday spirit, that is a heavy sin to bear, and one which attracts others about it, until we reach the height of iniquity…”

But he was more acquiescent in a letter he wrote four years later:  

As to festival days, they were abolished at Geneva before I left France; and those who had procured their abolition, were actuated by no spirit of contention or spite, but solely by the desire of abolishing the superstition which had been so prevalent in Popery…my writings bear witness to my sentiments on these points, for in them I declare that a church is not to be despised or condemned, because it observes more festival days than the others. From this recent abolition of feast days, here is what has resulted.  Not a year has passed without some quarrel and bickering, because the people were divided, and to such a degree as to draw their swords.

Meanwhile we have done what we ought, to appease these troubles. The most feasible means that could be devised for that purpose, seemed to be to keep the holy day in the morning, and open the shops in the afternoon, though this plan did not much remedy the evil…when we believe that we are serving God in observing certain days, we are chargeable with a superstition contrary to his word; and yet this belief has taken such root among the people, that they can scarcely be turned from it. 

Then as now Christmas was more than a sentimental religious celebration.  Its clandestine observance and official condemnation in mid-17^th Century England were symbolic of the deep political and religious forces that ignited the English Civil war.*  The Puritan revolt against Charles I in the 1640s was due in part to fears that he would outlaw traditional Calvinist beliefs and attempt to reunite the Church of England with Rome.  Popular Christmas rituals seemed to exemplify the corruption and immorality of Roman Catholic customs of the time, which an ascendant Protestant theocracy struggled to suppress. 

As in Calvin’s writings, Puritans criticized the celebration for several reasons: there was no scriptural basis for the ritual celebration of Christ’s birth, the holiday was an idolatrous human invention, and the various trappings of Christmas harkened back to pagan rites and festivals.  After taking control of the government in the mid-1640s, the Puritans made a strong effort to abolish Christmas, but were unsuccessful.  

The prohibition of the holiday often led to violence, as in London in 1647, when a Christmas mob fought with law enforcement over the removal Christmas decorations.  Celebrations of Christmas were also associated with the Royalist cause, and so had political connotations; when the monarchy was restored in 1660, Christmas was openly celebrated again.   The English Civil war determined the power structure of the government, in particular, the relative powers of parliament and the monarchy, but the conflict over Christmas was one conspicuous expression of deeper political and religious conflicts in English society. 

Christmas divided the Puritans and Royalists of 17^th Century England and divides us today.  Which side one takes in the so-called “War on Christmas” is likely predictive of political, economic, and ethnic interests, aside from the religious ones.  For atheists and secular humanists, who may want freedom from religion more than they want freedom of religion, it is not so much the vulgarity, excess and criminality of the Christmas season that is upsetting as its insistent theology.  

The celebration of Christmas remains a divisive issue, and perhaps will always be so.  Yet it seems possible that atheists and Puritans could find common cause in advocating for a quieter, more restrained, less materialistic holiday. 

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*Much of this interesting history is detailed in a fascinating article by Chris Durston that appeared in the December 1985 issue of History Today, (“The Puritan War on Christmas”).  Other sources for this article include “John Calvin’s Christmas Observance” posted at rbVincent.com. and “Calvin’s Response to Being Forced to Observe Christmas” posted at Heidelblog.net 9/10/15 by R. Scott Clark.