Christians ban Christmas
Current-day fundamentalists, take note: It was Christians of yore who first “declared war” on Christmas celebrations:
Liberal plots notwithstanding, the Americans who succeeded in banning the holiday were the Puritans of 17th-century Massachusetts. Between 1659 and 1681, Christmas celebrations were outlawed in the colony, and the law declared that anyone caught “observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting or any other way any such days as Christmas day, shall pay for every such offense five shillings.” Finding no biblical authority for celebrating Jesus’ birth on Dec. 25, the theocrats who ran Massachusetts regarded the holiday as a mere human invention, a remnant of a heathen past. They also disapproved of the rowdy celebrations that went along with it. “How few there are comparatively that spend those holidays … after an holy manner,” the Rev. Increase Mather lamented in 1687. “But they are consumed in Compotations, in Interludes, in playing at Cards, in Revellings, in excess of Wine, in Mad Mirth.”
December 30th, 2005 at 7:47 pm
Ah, Reverend Mather! The mad mirth of Wal-Mart would make him spin in his dark grave.
Unfortunately for us, it seems that the Regilous Right is interested in a theocracy…without most of them (being also good Freedom lovin’ Americans) having even the faintest notion of what this would really mean to their so-called cherished liberties and Christmas shopping.