Christmas in the Colonies

by Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Christmas as a holiday in America goes all the way back to the early settlers.  As time passed the celebration of the Birth of Jesus Christ has gathered a number of traditions along the way.  Families gather each year, exchanging gifts, decorating Christmas Trees, and attending church service.  Back during the English Colonies, however, whether or not you even celebrated the Blessed Event depended upon the region you lived in.

The Puritans in New England frowned upon Christmas, harshly discouraging their flock from participating in the festivities.  The southern colonies were a polar opposite of the Puritans, celebrating Christmas with joy, and in some cases, all month long.  The middle colonies' more diverse inhabitants carried out varied versions of Christmas, enjoying more localized observations that were closer to the traditions of the homeland from which they came.  For most Americans during the Colonial Period, Christmas served as an important day.

The majority of colonists in the English Colonies along the Atlantic Coast of the New World were Christian, and the majority of those Christians were Protestant.  The northern colonies were founded primarily on a desire for religious freedom, and all of the colonies, while diverse in their beliefs, were highly religious.  America's colonial culture was a melting pot of many cultures, so in The Colonies different groups lived and worked in the original thirteen, but congregated in different regions.  The result was that the different parts of colonial society maintained their own unique identities and practices.  Christmas is a great example of how different the various regions truly were from each other.

Massachusetts, dominated by Puritans, stood against the holiday.  At one point the Puritan majority even made Christmas illegal in the regions under their influence and control.  The Puritans objected to the traditions that had been added, recognizing their Pagan origin.  Santa Claus was seen as a character that had been created to avert one's eyes away from Christ's birth.  The first known reference to Santa Claus by the Puritans appeared in 1773, at a time that Puritan ministers were preaching against the celebration of the holiday.  They saw no scriptural reasons for celebrating it, and viewed the holiday as one that was filled with paganism.  The holiday, from the Puritan point of view, dishonored Jesus Christ, and they continued to make sure Christmas was not a part of the Winter Season until the Puritans lost power thanks to a renewed fervor that religious freedom be extended to each of the States after the turn of the nineteenth century.

The Quakers of Pennsylvania were also against celebrations of Christmas, for many similar reasons as the Puritans.  Defections, however, were common.  Some Puritans and Quakers would reach out to other Protestant denominations, such as Calvinists, so that they may be able to celebrate the day despite their religion's opposition to it.

Some historians have argued the defections were a part of the reason that the strict rules against Christmas were eventually relaxed.  Anti-Christmas denominations began to fear losing their congregations because of their rigidness regarding the holiday.

Despite some folks standing against the celebrations, other groups were more than happy to be festive and enjoy Christmas, anyway.  After all, the Puritans and Quakers did not control all regions of the English Colonies.  Because the Original Thirteen were filled with such a variety of groups and cultures, many celebrated and enjoyed the day.  For some, the holiday was a part of the larger cultural experience of the region. Inhabitants of Dutch, German, and Huguenot as well as some of English descent, celebrated the day with large parties and social gatherings.  Some groups joined together in the celebration, uniting their celebrations, sharing traditions and community activities.

The largest and most festive celebrations of Christmas, however, emerged in the southern colonies. While the celebrations remained small and localized for those on the frontier, for the most part in the south Christmas flourished.  Granted, they were very different than what we experience today, but they were very festive celebrations, nonetheless.

A common Christmas tradition was the firing of muskets and cannons in celebration, especially in the southern colonies.  Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were known to celebrate the day.  John Adams' writings reveals he did not.  In an 1809 letter Jefferson mentions his grandson joyfully exclaiming “Merry Christmas”.  In the letter he also refers to 1762, stating that the day was one of “greatest mirth and jollity.”  George Washington was known to celebrate the Twelve Days of Christmas, as it often was throughout the colonies.  In fact, he was married to his wife Martha on January 6, the twelfth day of Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany.  Washington also participated in fox hunts, as was commonly done at that time of the year in Virginia as part of the festivities.

In 1702, at the College of William & Mary, tradition had dictated that students would prevent faculty from entering the school as a means of starting Christmas festivities.

Worship service took precedence in almost all celebrations of Christmas in The Colonies.  The southern colonies were largely devout Anglicans who saw the liturgical season of Advent, which leads to Christmas, as one of penitence and reflection.  

During the Revolutionary War the fighting did not take a break for Christmas, and the Battle of Trenton began with the famous event of George Washington and his army crossing of the Delaware River on Christmas Night.  Fighting typically slowed during the Christmas Season, not because of the holiday, but because of the weather.  

Gifts were typically reserved just for children and servants if given at all.  Christmas’ religious meaning remained at the forefront of all of the celebrations.  Christmas mattered to most people in colonial and revolutionary America, despite being celebrated very differently than it is today.  Nonetheless, the similarities between the celebrations then and today were still focused on one fact; Jesus, the Savior of the World, had been born.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary