Folks have told me a great many things about Christmas lately - how and with whom to celebrate it, what to buy and where to buy it, and even how to talk about it. I have actually heard folks in the pulpit, at the lunch table, and even on my television speak fervently on the subject of the season’s greetings, whether “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays” is more proper. Bless their hearts, they just get so excited about Christmas and they should. It is only recently that we have had the freedom to celebrate it!
Following the English Protestant Reformation, groups such as the Puritans, the forefathers of today’s evangelical Christians, strongly condemned the celebration of Christmas, considering it a Catholic invention and the “trappings of popery” or the “rags of the Beast.” Following Oliver Cromwell’s victory over Charles I during the English Civil War, England’s Puritan rulers banned Christmas in 1647. Protests followed as pro-Christmas rioting broke out in several cities and for weeks Canterbury was controlled by the rioters, who decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans. In Colonial America, the Puritans of New England shared radical Protestant disapproval of Christmas. Christmas celebration was outlawed in Boston from 1659 to 1681, but was revived by the Royal Governor. The celebration of Christmas fell out of favor after the Revolutionary War because it was seen as an English custom, but it was revived in the 1820s by several short stories by Washington Irving depicting harmonious warm-hearted holiday traditions he claimed to have observed in England.
I hope you can forgive me for not joining those important high-minded debates at Christmas time. I’m sure they’ll work it out. Meanwhile, I’ll be visiting family and trying to pick out some gifts while trying to keep perspective on what its all about. Dr. Suess has always been helpful in that regard:
“”And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow, stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so? It came without ribbons. It came without tags. It came without packages, boxes or bags. And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore. Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn’t before. What if Christmas, he thought, doesn’t come from a store. What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.
Welcome, Christmas, bring your cheer. Cheer to all Whos far and near. Christmas Day is in our grasp so long as we have hands to clasp. Christmas Day will always be just as long as we have we. Welcome Christmas while we stand, heart to heart and hand in hand.”
In Christmas Spirit,
Jonathon Fagan
Chairman, RCDP
