Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff, Lauren bogabam Here. Once upon a time in America, Christmas was not a big deal. It might be difficult to fathom now when ads for chocolates and jewelry pop up around Halloween and decked out trees appear in living rooms by Thanksgiving. In fact, Christmas used to be flat out illegal. When the Mayflower landed at what is now Cape Cod, Massachusetts in sixteen twenty, the Pilgrims brought some
serious baggage. They were aiming to establish a colony and a new way of life in the New World. One thing the Puritans wanted to leave behind was Christmas. In England, as in much of Europe, Christmas was rife with unbridled partying. The harvests were done, The cattle were slaughtered so that they wouldn't have to be fed throughout the winter, and that made fresh meat and fresh wine, as well as time to eat, drink and carry on plentiful. Pure didn't
buy into the idea of Christmas. The Bible notes no date for Jesus's birth, a Scholars still disagree about why Christmas is celebrated on December though one popular theory goes that the date was picked to overlap Saturnalia, a celebration honoring Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture. In effect, the date could have co opted a pagan holiday to encourage the acceptance of Christianity throughout the world. At any rate,
in the Puritan mind, there was nothing to celebrate. But we spoke with Penny Reestad, a history professor at the University of Texas and author of the book Christmas in America, a History. She said, Christmas time has really gotten out of hand. What was going on in England with the feasting and the gambling and the general debauchery. They took as a sign of the decline of civilization and a
decline of all the things that they valued. So they were really positing this idea of not celebrating Christmas as an opposition to all the decay of English society. They were so serious about treating December twenty five as just another day that everyone on the Mayflower, some of whom mind were not Puritans, worked on the first Christmas Day in America. They didn't get time and a half either. The non Puritans in the bunch were not as keen on a Christmas van Riese Dad says it wasn't long
before they acted out. She explained some of these newcomers refused to work. One of those first Christmas is William Bradford, the English separatist and early governor of Plymouth Colony, said okay, that's fine, until you're better informed. That's okay. Apparently they went out on the street. The word at the time was frolicking, playing street games. He basically told them to take it indoors, and he said, I don't mind if you're doing this, but I don't want to see any
of it. It sets a bad tone that those were not his exact words. Not all of the colonies were so against the idea of celebrating Christmas, though settlements further south, like the one in Jamestown, Virginia, let loose. The ban in New England never was completely successful. Here's a quote from Stephen Nissenbaum's book The Battle for Christmas, A Social and Cultural History of our most cherished Holiday. It was fishermen and mariners who had the reputation of being the
most incorrigible centers in New England. The region's least reformed inhabitants maritime communities such as Nantucket, the Isles of Shoals, and especially the town of marble Head were notorious for irreligion, heavy drinking, and loose sexual activity. There were also repositories of enduring English folk practices, places that ignored or resisted orthodox New England culture. It's no coincidence that marble Head was also a site of ongoing Christmas keeping. A changing society,
though would not be denied. Here's a quote from Christmas in America, a history in the end. Whether slowly in New England or more rapidly in the Middle Colonies. In the South, the forces of pluralism and the need for social harmony shaped and encouraged Christmas celebration, Yet its status as a holiday remained haphazard and varied widely. It would take the project of nation building in the wake of the Revolution to begin to define an American conception of Christmas.
Even after the colonies declared independence, years passed before Christmas became the holiday we know it as today. Congress was in session on Christmas Day in seventeen eighty nine, the year after the Constitution was ratified. The Senate worked on Christmas Day in seventeen ninety seven, the House met on Christmas Day. In eighteen o two, Christmas began to take
its present form. Later in the eighteen hundreds, different religions and denominations, Protestants and Catholics among them, emerged in America, and they held Christmas as both the Holy day and a day of celebration. The Puritans couldn't help but be influenced. People of different religions made up local governments, and trade between various networks helped calm the antipathies between the factions.
As America prospered, partially thanks to the labor of the enslaved and partially thanks to win US realization, a middle class was born, and the idea of giving and receiving Christmas gifts took hold. An emphasis on home and family followed away from the frolicking in the streets and raucous drinking, feasting and sex. Finally, in eighteen seventy two, and fifty years after the Puritans landed at Plymouth and put the squeeze on the idea of Christmas as a celebration, the
US declared Christmas a national holiday. Ever since, celebrations big and small, secular and non secular, have marked the day. Today's episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this amounts of other merry topics, visit hous to forks dot com. Brainstuff is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.