Bill Anderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in small part: "Christmas actually did disappear from a significant portion of America in the past. The Puritans banned it after rediscovering the pagan roots (England and the Massachusetts Colony 1659-1681 - the penalty in Boston was 5 schillings). Indeed after the American Revolution Christmas fell out of favor as it was considered an `English tradition' not to return to popularity for many years resulting in the eventual declaration of federal holiday until June 26, 1870 - close to 100 years into the nation's history."
I think a fuller elucidation would be instructive here, as it illustrates the intertwining of religious-cultural, secular-cultural, and political trends in British North America. The term "Great Awakening" refers to two American religious trends and periods, although maybe I'm conflating the name of the earlier with the later one, which may have been called the Reawakening or New Awakening or something like that; however, the two are connected. Looking up "Great Awakening" in my old Funk & Wagnalls Std. Ref. Encyc. I see only a reference to Jonathan Edwards, one of the clerics responsible for promoting and/or creating the original, in the middle of the 18th Century in New England. Even Puritanism and its descendant Congregationalism had its spasms of further extremes of religiosity, you see. Funk & Wagnalls treat the Great Awakening as purely a temporary, regional phenomenon of New England; however, although that spasm passed, it diffused and simmered, to come back noticeably in a broader and milder evangelic form throughout the USA, especially in the South, ca. 1800, and continues to this day. In other words, it'd become an intellectual-clerical movement in the latter half of the 18th Century, eventually to flower in popular form via revivals, etc., at the turn into the 19th. The revival embodied a form of cultural nationalism in a form of the previously Puritan idea of America as a new Israel (a theme later to be echoed in Identity), and it tended to skew rural and Democratic. Among other things, it was unfriendly to foreigners, Christmas (as mentioned by Bill above), and drunkenness, spawning a movement of eventual antipathy toward heavy drinking, then drinking in general, and finally toward alcohol prohibition. The most prominent thing about Christmas at that time was drunken revelry. Opposed to that axis was one that skewed Federalist and urban (epitomized by New York City), influenced by German immigrants (chiefly Lutheran). It was later to be reinforced by Irish immigration. The cultural embodiment of this pole could fairly be said to be Washington Irving, who, not coincidentally, popularized Christmas as a supposedly traditional American thing. So in their own ways, both the pro- and anti-Christmas tendencies invoked patriotism, tradition, and religion. Bill also wrote: "And before I go, many are unaware of the relationship between Christmas and `Ground Hog's Day'." But besides there being a relationship between the solstitial and mid-winter holidays, as carried on to this day, there are possibly even tighter ties between the solstitial and mid-autumn holidays. A few years ago I read an explanation that many Halloween practices were originally part of Yule, and many Christmas practices were originally part of the mid-autumn witch's sabbath. (The midpoint holidays between the solstices & equinoxes are sometimes known as witch's sabbaths.) Be Irony? Is Truly, Robert _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list Libnw@immosys.com List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
