When Massachusetts Banned Christmas

Christopher Klein

Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch had nothing on the 17th-century Puritans, who actually banned the public celebration of Christmas in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for an entire generation.

The pious Puritans who sailed from England in 1630 to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony brought with them something that might seem surprising for a group of devout Christians—contempt for Christmas.

In a reversal of modern practices, the Puritans kept their shops and schools open and churches closed on Christmas, a holiday that some disparaged as “Foolstide.”

A Puritan governor disrupting Christmas celebrations.

After the Puritans in England overthrew King Charles I in 1647, among their first items of business after chopping off the monarch’s head was to ban Christmas. Parliament decreed that December 25 should instead be a day of “fasting and humiliation” for Englishmen to account for their sins.

The Puritans of New England eventually followed the lead of those in old England, and in 1659 the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony made it a criminal offense to publicly celebrate the holiday and declared that “whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way” was subject to a 5-shilling fine.

Why did the Puritans loathe Christmas? Stephen Nissenbaum, author of “The Battle for Christmas,” says it was partly because of theology and partly because of the rowdy celebrations that marked the holiday in the 1600s.

In their strict interpretation of the Bible, the Puritans noted that there was no scriptural basis for commemorating Christmas.

“The Puritans tried to run a society in which legislation would not violate anything that the Bible said, and nowhere in the Bible is there a mention of celebrating the Nativity,” Nissenbaum says. The Puritans noted that scriptures did not mention a season, let alone a single day, that marked the birth of Jesus.

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