Good evening again, Robert! The earlier draft went out moments ago by mistake, before I was ready to send this. So let me close up a couple of lose ends toward the bottom of this message, otherwise, it is going out the second time, pretty close as it did a moment ago...
Robert Goodman wrote to Frank Reichert... I previously wrote: > >Lutherans began migrating into America during the > >colonial period, To which, you replied as follows: > But they were not evenly spread thru the colonies. Mostly these were > Germans who tended to wind up in Penna., Del., & NJ, and somewhat in NY, > including Lutherans & Mennonites. The Lutherans were quite Christmasy; I > really don't know about Mennonites w.r.t. Christmas, and it's important to > distinguish Amish from the rest of the Mennonites, so maybe someone can > fill us in there. I also don't know how Christmasy the Quakers were. I doubt if most orthodox Lutherans would appreciate the association with Mennonites, which by the way, comprise a significant percentage of Boundary Country, Idaho. Indeed, both groups do. > But the main point that Bill was making is that Christmas was very far from > a universally practiced holiday among Christians in British North America, > and many localities were practically Christmas-free for quite a while I suspect this might be another exercise in mouse milking, since the British, although certainly in control over government as such, did not make up everything that was then British North America! A heavily Roman Catholic French population existed in Quebec, as well as throughout the Louisiana Territory which the French controlled. After independence, there were large segments of Catholic, and a lesser degree in terms of percentage of Lutheran Christians living in America at the time. Some of what I wrote the first time, didn't make it into your reply of course, but that included references to the strong hyper-Calvinist traditions of New England, to which you refer below, as well as some rather unorthodox free-wheeling movements that defy Christian tradition nevertheless. Maybe a better question might be asked concerning whether or not what resulted prior to independence in terms of government control in places such as New England, really could be considered as the overall American population base, specifically since Catholics weren't recognized by the powers that be until probably 1960 (forgive me here, but I know there are certain exceptions to that), and Lutherans really didn't find a way to become Americanized until around the time of the second World War! As I wrote before, I could also add to all of this the 'other' groups of major Christian sects, such as the Dutch Calvinists, who largely until even much later, the early 1960s, didn't really find it necessary to join the ecumenical exercise of unionizing with the mainstream American variant of Christianity. I call it that, because historically there isn't much else to call it than a rather strange variant upon Christian history. Again, as I wrote earlier, most of these groups were largely segmented by nationality, including a healthy investment in parochial education for keeping cultural norms in place opposed to the nationalistic norms of the rising public (government controlled) education system we find today. There was, after independence, a huge immigration of Dutch, German, and Scandinavian groups that come into America and migrated for the most part toward what was then the Northwest, not certainly the 'northwest of America today, but the territories of what is essentially the mid-West of America. A lot of that can be seen in western States as well, primarily Idaho, Montana, and Washington. I haven't even got into this yet, because I less understand it. But there are tremendous blocks in the eastern US upon which the nationalities support the eastern Orthodox variants of Christianity. Certainly, Christmas plays a giant role in the Christian calendar for this segment as well. I'm going to stagger into this one slowly, only because you touched on it so briefly... > especially New England before the revolution, and the southeast for decades > after 1800. What this means, I don't honestly know. I believe the original thread here suggested something on the order of what was acceptable in America insofar as a strong hyper-Calvinism, originated largely from dissatisfaction with British origin migrated to America and established blocks of religious theocratic control. New England was certainly the centre of that, but I doubt anyone can suggest that once British control was established, that was the norm throughout the Colonies. All I am suggesting is that it didn't really go much further than New England. In the meantime, a lot of groups got sucked into this idea that it might be simply better just to do your own thing, such as the Catholics, Lutherans and others that just decided to do their own thing and survive the revolution and go far, far beyond all that that entailed. You'll have to admit, that was largely done on their own dime. Such groups educated their children, believed and passed on such belief systems to their children, and the result of that is largely, historically speaking, part and parcel of what real America is all about even today! At the same time, the official British government, certainly did not despise Christmas, as the Anglican Church put it in the Church calendar, just as the Roman Catholics had done before, as well as the Lutherans that migrated since had imported. Now you're stuck, or so it seems, with defending an idea that Calvinism was REALLY the REAL pre revolution and post revolution fashion of that time. I strongly doubt that that ever was the case. As I wrote above, most people simply did what their cultural orientation assumed that they would do. Nothing like this was ever as I recall historically codified into law. At least until prohibition. Kindest regards, Frank _______________________________________________ Libnw mailing list Libnw@immosys.com List info and subscriber options: http://immosys.com/mailman/listinfo/libnw Archives: http://immosys.com/mailman//pipermail/libnw
