Planted for me on my birthday is this blood red iris named "The Countess". Below is an article shared by the NY Times on the Puritan Ban on Xmas in England during the regime of Oliver Cromwell in the 17th century. Erzebet was taken and locked up towards Epiphany, when Xmas celebrations would probably have been taking place. Her Calvinist/Lutheran upbringing was an interesting mix. Where would she stand on the views of The Puritans?
Lexington, Va.
EACH year, as wreaths and colored lights are hung on any structure that
can support their weight, another holiday tradition begins: the
bemoaning of the annual War on Christmas.
The American Family Association has called for boycotting
Old Navy and the Gap for, out of political correctness, not using the
term “Christmas” in their holiday advertising. Parents have criticized
schools for diminishing Christmas celebrations by giving equal time to
Hanukkah and Kwanzaa. And the Catholic League used to have a Christmas
“watch list” for naming and shaming “Christmas kill-joys.”
Anxiety over the War on Christmas is, in other words, an American
tradition. But few realize how far back that tradition goes. The
contemporary War on Christmas pales in comparison to the first — a war
that was waged not by retailers but by Puritans who considered the
destruction of Christmas necessary to the construction of their godly
society.
In the early 17th century in England, the Christmas season was not so
different from what it is today: churches and other buildings were
decorated with holly and ivy, gifts were exchanged and charity was
distributed among the poor.
Also much as it is today, it was a period of carousing and merriment.
The weeks around Christmas were celebrated with feasting, drinking,
singing and games. Mummers would blacken their faces and dress up in
costumes, often in the clothes of the opposite sex, to perform plays in
the streets or in homes. Carolers, too, would sing door to door as well
as in the home. Wealthy lords threw open their manors, inviting local
peasants and villagers inside to gorge on food and drink. Groups of
young men called wassailers would march in and demand to be feasted or
given gifts of money in exchange for their good wishes and songs.
Puritans detested these sorts of activities, grumbling that Christmas
was observed with more revelry than piety. Worse, they contended that
there was no Scriptural warrant for the celebration of Jesus’ birth.
Puritans argued (not incorrectly) that Christmas represented nothing
more than a thin Christian veneer slapped on a pagan celebration.
Believing in the holiday was superstitious at best, heretical at worst.
When the Puritans rebelled against King Charles I, inciting the English
Revolution, the popular celebration of Christmas was on their hit list.
Victorious against the king, in 1647, the Puritan government actually
canceled Christmas. Not only were traditional expressions of merriment
strictly forbidden, but shops were also ordered to stay open, churches
were shut down and ministers arrested for preaching on Christmas Day.
The Puritans who came to America naturally shared these sentiments. As
the Massachusetts minister Increase Mather explained in 1687, Christmas
was observed on Dec. 25 not because “Christ was born in that Month, but
because the Heathens Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they
were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed into Christian”
ones. So naturally, official suppression of Christmas was foundational
to the godly colonies in New England.
On their first Christmas in the New World, the Pilgrims at Plymouth
Colony celebrated the holiday not at all. Instead they worked in the
fields. One year, the colony’s governor, William Bradford, yelled at
visitors to the colony who, unaware that Christmas was celebrated more
in the absence than in the commemoration, were taking the day off. He
found them “in the streete at play, openly; some pitching the barr, and
some at stoole-ball, and shuch like sports.” After that incident, no one
again tried to take off work for Christmas in the colony.
The Puritans in the Massachusetts Bay Colony went one step further and
actually outlawed the celebration of Christmas. From 1659 to 1681,
anyone caught celebrating Christmas in the colony would be fined five
shillings.
Well into the 18th century, those who attempted to keep the tradition of
wassailing alive in New England often found themselves arrested and
fined. Indeed, the Puritan War on Christmas lasted up to 1870, when
Christmas became a legally recognized federal holiday. Until then, men
and women were expected to go to work, stores were expected to remain
open, and many churches did not even hold religious services.
So the next time someone maintains that they are defending traditional
American values by denouncing the War on Christmas, remind them of our
17th-century Puritan forefathers who refused to condone any celebration
or even observance of the holiday. In America, our oldest Christmas
tradition is, in fact, the War on Christmas.
