Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Christmas Complaint of the Puritans: Toys & Sports

Hear, all ye people; hearken, O earth, and all that therein is: and let the Lord GOD be witness against you, the Lord from his holy temple. Micah 1:2

"In seventeenth-century England, the twelve days of Christmas were traditionally celebrated with
--feasting,
--dancing, and
--general revelry,
drawing the sustained ire of Puritans.

One disapproving figure reflected that the youth were “so addicted to their toys and Christmas sports that they will not be weaned
from them.”
The Puritans sought to turn Christmas into a fast day, with an act of Parliament in 1643 declaring that it should be observed “with the more solemn humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins, and the sins of our forefathers who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights.”

Two years later, the Directory of Public Worship was unequivocal that feasts such as Christmas had no warrant in scripture.
The attack on Christmas in England was sustained, fierce, hugely divisive, and ultimately a failure.

The festival was restored under Charles II in 1660 to much public acclaim."
YaleISM