Did you know Christmas has been illegal in The United States? Did you know it was considered unpatriotic at times? Did you know many of our traditions come from sketch books and fiction stories made popular in the 1820's?
The American Christmas Ritual is one that spans across Catholics, Protestants, New Agers, and 'Nones.' It would seem then our practice is mostly a conglomeration of various older traditions synthesized into something new. Where did it all come from?
Medieval Catholic Festivals were full of feasting and drinking as they are today. But what is different from our Christmas, is that Medieval Christmas festivals were frequently public activities, not limited to the domain of the family sphere. The idea that Christmas is "only in my home" or "only family time" or "predominately family time" is thoroughly un-Catholic because it places the Familial Order above The Ecclesial Order.
Mass is the heart of The Catholic Church, and thus the source of Catholic Culture, not the family. The family is chronologically the first interaction a child has with a culture, but that culture being Catholic means The Mass is logically first. This makes sense since The First and Great Commandment is to Love God with all our heart and mind and soul, and the Second is like unto the first, to love neighbor as ourselves. This then must be reflected in our Christmas celebration.
For this reason the most important Christmas activities of Medieval England were Mass, Morning Prayer, and Evening Prayer. In between such services people sung, feasted, visited others, and played games.
Medieval Christmas 400's-1500's AD
Preceded by Advent
By 480-567AD Catholics make a Penitential Season, Advent, to prepare for this. Monks are required to fast. "Preparation" for Christmas was not sweets and Christmas hymns, but fasting, penance, confession, to prepare the heart to receive God, not on fatness, but by getting lean and mean.
Preparation for food did start, but this meant hard work like salting meats for storage, slaughtering of animals, a month long process of making Christmas pudding, etc.
December 6th was in Advent, but a day for "The Boy Bishops" in which a boy was mock "ordained" and allowed to command around people for the day. Typically done at royal court and/or in particular families. Holy Innocents Feast on December 28th had a similar practice. The boy took the bishop or priest's seat at the Magnificat, "He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek."
Christmas Eve was "Adam and Eve" Day
St. Irenaeus recounts how Mary is the 2nd Eve, St. Paul tells us Jesus is the 2nd Adam
Christmas Day then is a celebration of the Birth of the Second Adam!
The Christmas Mass, "Christ's Mass"
The daytime Mass was the first. The Gospel was not about stables, shepherds, or angels but was simply John 1:1-14 where Christ the Eternal Word became flesh! All genuflect at "the Word became flesh."
The Vigil Mass was the second Mass added to the Christmas Mass
The third was the Mass at Dawn.
NOTE: Anyone find it strange that "Midnight Mass" can be at 6, 7, or 8 pm? What does 'midnight' mean anyway?
Matins and Evensong
In the Medieval era people gathered at parishes for Matins before Mass on high feast days.
The daytime was full of full, festivities, and fine foods. People gathered back at the parish for Evening Prayer to round off the day. (Baptists still coming back to the 'church' on Sunday evening for prayer or catechesis is a remnant of this Catholic practice.) The Christmas Creche
Introduced by St. Francis of Assisi himself in 1223, this picked up immediate popularity. Later Mary and Joseph were added, then shepherds, angels, and other figures.
Days off Work, Christmas Leisure
Many areas protected having several, or seven, or all twelve days off.
Christmas Plays
Before the age of movies there was The Play. The Shepherd's Cycle [of Wakefield] and Paradise Play were two famous ones during Christmas time.
Public Games
Dice, gambling, cards, etc.
Early form of field hockey and rugby combined
Early form of soccer and/or rugby
These were played by adults and were frequently rough
Public Singing and Dancing
"Caroling" was when some sang and others danced in a circle around those singing
People dressed for the cold to partake in public activities
Medieval reenactments and plays of Biblical Stories were popular, analogous to Passion Plays
Halloween during Christmas?
Mari Lwyd was a Welsh wassailing custom. One person dressed up with a horse skull and a white sheet and carolers would come to doors like on our Halloween. A chanted song battle or riddle off would occur. If the house gave in the Mari Lwyd and company were welcomed into the house for wassail (spiced or mulled, hot wine) with snacks.
The Scandinavians dressed up like the 'Yuletide Goat' and scared people, much more like our Halloween
The Irish put candles in their windows and left an open chair at the dinner table to commemorate the departed
The medieval Christmas still remembered it had just become astronomical winter (December 21st) or meteorological winter was around late November to early December. The darkness meant many Christmas customs included ghost stories. This is the longer tradition Dickens pulls his Christmas spirits from in A Christmas Carol. They did not have such a hard division between All Souls on Nov. 2 (or Halloween on Oct 31st) and Christmas as we have now. One built into the next and took on a new flavour without being completely lost. E.g. a Catholic reading of Marley is that he is an apparition but is in purgatory paying for his miserliness/avarice.
Feasting
King John of England, Christmas of 1213 had a feast including 24 hogshead of wine, 200 heads of pork, 1,000 hens, 500 lbs of wax, 50 lbs of pepper, and 100 lbs of almond
Bishop Swinfield of England in 1289 had 41 guests over who feasted on 2 and 3/4 cows, 4 deer, 4 pigs, 60 hens, 8 partridges, 2 geese, and 40 gallons of wine
Lord's of Manors gave tpeasants special bread, meats, and as much beer as they wanted on Christmas
"Boy Bishop" on Holy Innocents, December 28th included a large feast
On the Third Day of Christmas, on the Feast of Holy Innocents, a boy was mock elected as Bishop. He would celebrate a faux Mass, give a homily, one said Evensong for The King, etc. He was given food and money as gifts. This is similar to the St. Nicholas Day custom of electing a 'boy bishop' who then commanded the family what to do that day.
The Outlawing of Christmas in the US & UK 1530-1680's
The Reformation hit England in the 1530's. By 1534 Henry VIII declared himself the supreme head of The Church in England, a functional separation from The Roman Catholic Church. By 1549 the first Prayerbook formed Anglicanism and produced the first English liturgies. By 1603 a group wanted to further "purify" Anglicanism of Catholicism. They became known as the "Puritans." By 1620, seeing they couldn't win the political struggle, some moved to "The New World" to form Plymouth, i.e. "The Pilgrims." Some twenty years later The Puritans who remained in England won the fight with force. "Plymouth" as the founding American city has become something of a myth. The Catholic "Avalon" is around the same time, 1625'ish, and the Anglican Jamestown is the earliest at 1607. Nonetheless, the Puritans have remained a powerful influence on the American imagination and on our current political trends. The Puritans passed the "Penalty for Keeping Christmas Law" in 1659 fining people 5 shillings who were caught with Christmas paraphernalia, caught feasting, not working, etc. etc.. 5 shillings is, apparently, roughly $64 in 2024.
Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan, took over England in 1645. Christmas was hated by Puritans as a Catholic innovation. So Cromwell, true to form, outlawed Christmas. This continued from 1645 until 1660. Exhibiting Christmas practices or behaviours was penalized with a 5 shilling fine. Christmas Day was to be a "fast day." Also, all shops, stores, and markets were to be open. Sound familiar?
It is thus all too Puritan for American shops to celebrate "We're open Christmas Day!" This tendency has also been noted in Max Weber's famous The Protestant Work Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism. It's important to remember here that Puritans are a sort of English Calvinism, who see money as proof of hard work, which is proof of being elected by God. Taking multiple days off and wasting money and time on feasting and fun doesn't correspond with this Protestant theology at all. "Wasting time," unnecessary leisure, too much social time, etc. was a fineable offense in Puritan America. The Puritans saw time as a gift from God that thus must be managed, even leisure time. Who decided what was a moral use of time was the civil government. In this way they continued the Erastian tradition of Henry VIII of having civil over ecclesial in matters of faith and morals. This has become an American Dogma in many Secular and Protestant modes of thinking. Feasting & Fun is thoroughly a Catholic thing because we see time as a gift, rather than as a commodity, e.g. "I'm out of time," "I don't have enough time," "I need to spend more time," etc. The Catholic notion is that leisure is a basis of culture and that some of this needs to be unmanaged, spontaneous, organic, an outpouring of the gifts God has given us. It is not to be managed by the civil nor ecclesial since it is devotional and personal, though the Church may ban practices if they run against the faith. Such a ban is analogous to telling someone it's illegal to drive off the road on the highway, have fun driving across America. That is, it leaves tons of ability for development and growth.
When Charles II returned to throne he brought back Christmas and other festivities, meriting him the title, "The Merry Monarch." Recall that The Reformation and the 'Age of Discovery' are going on around the same centuries. The United States' Southeast was settled by Anglicans, the North by Puritans, and a dash of Baptists came to The South later on. All three were from England. All three then were simply stripping down ancient English Catholic practices. Just like Puritan England then, a Puritan outlawed Christmas in Boston in 1649 with a 50 shilling fine for violation. This remained until 1681 when a non-Puritan governor came into office. That is, in the 17th c. century, Christmas was more of a Southern tradition because of its Anglican roots.
Christmas Keeping as Unpatriotic 1680's-1800's AD
Anglicans in Virginia were known for celebrating Christmas but this all became suspicious as tensions rose between The Colonies and Great Britain. By the time the Revolutionary War broke out in the 1770's celebrating Christmas was too Anglican, therefore too English, therefore made you suspect of being a Loyalist, therefore it could lead to you being perceived as unpatriotic at best or a traitor at worst.
In other words, in the 1600-1700's, Christmas was not an American tradition. It was rarely celebrated, and frequently only by well-to-do Anglican Virginians who owned lots of land and slaves as a kind of 'Old World English custom.' It is therefore not all that radical that George Washington crossed the Delaware to attack the Brit's Hessian mercenaries on Christmas day. Christmas wasn't much of a holy or secular day.
Now to balance this view John Smith's men in Jamestown did celebrate Christmas. So no one is saying people didn't celebrate Christmas, only that it wasn't a major holiday or custom of Americans. It all depended on the group you were with, what Old World group you came from, and why you were in the Colonies. Puritans wanting to 'do their own thing' were happy to abandon Christmas. The Puritans deliberately attacked how Catholic cultures cultivated time. They wanted to abolish many customs of the Church Kalendar as "Catholic innovations" that needed to be "purified" or burned away, things like Easter, Christmas, Whitsunday, and pretty much all the Solemnities and Feast days of the Church. The Puritans deliberately created Thanksgiving Day, Commencement Day, Training Day, and Election Day as an alternative calendar to the Catholic one that had been built up over the millenia. The Puritans saw themselves as a "City on a Hill," a new Moses-Joshua situation in which God was ordaining a new Calendar like at the end of the Book of Leviticus or the feasts demanded to be kept in Deuteronomy. They functionally made the Civil Order into the Ecclesial one, they turned secular politics into theology, they turned the State into the Church. This tradition has been continued by Google and others who want to create new holidays ex nihilo from committees based on secular values rather than from supernatural mysteries or local devotions to saints. Christmas represented something of the Old World and the so-called "corrupt Church" which they were going to purify to return to 1st c. practice. We now know this was all made up. The Anglicans wanting gold, guts, and glory saw themselves as Anglicans, or at least as English citizens, and so kept to Christmas customs, many of them being medieval English Catholic customs passed down from their forefathers. The Virginians Plantation owners and Cavaliers were known to continue these medieval "merry making" customs of Christmas unlike other parts of America.
Returning to Washington's attack on Christmas morning -- this changed the fate of The Colonies. Many consider it one of the most important battles of the War of Independence, the one that changed the tides and led to American victory. By 1783 that war is over, our country is a youngster, and Christmas really ain't a part of its blood yet.
America Increases in 'Christmas Spirit' 1800's-1860's
It was some 30 years later, in the early 1810's-1820's that changed all Christmas for America. Washington Irving sketches, writings, and Charles Dickens' novellas like Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, but especially -- you guessed it -- A Christmas Carol that became instance classics. A young Dickens, only 24, was suddenly internationally famous for his Christmas writings. He published a Christmas story every year just for the holiday. They depicted a "traditional Christmas" focused on the family and home that arguably never existed. This missed the fact that a "traditional Christmas" was focused on Christ's Mass at the parish which poured out into joy and celebration at parish homes. Nonetheless, pamphlets depicting a kind of Family-Around-the-Table Christmas were thought to be 'the ancient practice.' Americans as mostly Protestant were largely ignorant of Catholic history and took up the idea quickly. Thus, the Christmas as a "[only] family time" custom was born.
Some of this has remained prevalent for a few reasons: (I) the English variation of Protestants all follow the English Reformation notion of Erastianism: that Civil is above Ecclesial in matters of Faith & Morals, meaning church traditions are irrelevant in the public square and only those we all "agree on," ie the civil ones. Morals are about what we ought to do, so customs and traditions are categorized as moral matters. (II) Anglicanism, as Erastian, removed the Church as protective institution between the Civil Order and the Family, allowing Secular Civil customs to invade each family without an equal or stronger influence from the Church. Thus if a State or set of businesses wants to push a fad on families, the Church as a shield against taking advantage or warping the family's customs around Christ is no longer availalbe (III) Catholics in England who may have come to America were used to hiding out in houses for Masses, devotions, etc. This resulted in an English Catholic devotion that was super domestic. This is a two-edged sword: on the one hand its emphasis predates Vatican II's cry to revive the Ecclesia Domestica and this tradition can say it has been doing this for half a millenia. On the other hand, the home custom on Christmas can be separated from the Church when the Church is no longer public (like it being outlawed in England). Christmas as primarily a family affair rather than a Christian Festival on the Church's Kalendar is what comes out of all this. Once detached from Christ's Mass, family customs have and will increasingly dissolve based on arbitrary taste and preference. The Secular then has an easy route of influence on families and its catechesis and customs thus will seems stronger than the Church's IE there it is possible and maybe even likely that Christmas in the year 2340 for Secularism and even some Christians will be primarily about a mythical man named "The Grinch" who brings presents to girls and boys and who reminds bad little boys and girls to grow their hearts to be nicer to their grandma and aunt at the Christmas supper, forgetting about it's about making room in your heart to receive the love of God through fasting in Advent, and to share that love with one's family, as well as the poor and the needy. What's important to see here, is that there arguably has always been a stream of the American Christmas tradition that is Secular, that is, not having to do with Christ. By the 1820's Christmas shopping is a fad. Companies pick up on the growing fad and are able to grab it, commodify it, and exponentially grow interest in buying goods. I.E. Secular Consumer Christmas and Christ's Nativity Christmas have run side by side, along with the arguments about it, since the beginning of its celebration in the U.S. Without Catholicism as a predominant social factor, many folks didn't have the resources to the Tradition, history, or true Christian customs around Christmas to drive them toward the mystery of the Nativity with gift giving as a sharing of that love with those we love, and nor would they have the resources to protect them from the excesses of mindless consumerism for its own sake with a corrupted St. Nicholas. Pope Francis & Pope Benedict XVI both have made a point of trying to protect Catholics from Consumer Christmas.
Santa Clause begins to be used in nationalistic propaganda cartoons during the Civil War. The Dutch immigrants brought over Dec. 6th St. Nicholas customs of gift giving. This somehow moves to December 25th and moves Jesus out of the way for Santa Clause (not sure how this happened, if you know lemme know!). Customs around the Christ Child or Santa Clause bringings presents picks up both in the North and the South. Not all are on board for these innovations though. The Richmond Examiner went so far as to publicly say in this newspaper that there was no Santa Clause and to further declare Santa Clause on Christmas was a foreign agent that would corrupt the Virginia "merry making" Christmas customs that had been around since the 17th c.
Christmas Cards, Santa Clause, Rudolph, & Romance 1870's-Today