The Original War on Christmas

The latest podcast by Jake Sconyers and Nikki Stewart at HUB History, The Original War on Christmas, is a well-researched story that prominently features the sermons of Increase and Cotton Mather. Definitely a must-listen this holiday season for history buffs.

Celebrating Christmas was against the law for decades, and it was against cultural norms for a century or more. What were the Puritans’ theological misgivings about Christmas? (The Original War on Christmas)

Puritan Minister Increase Mather (1639-1723) is my 8th great paternal grandfather and his son, Cotton, would be my 7th great-uncle. (My post about Increase Mather’s role in the Salem Witch Trials and his service as president of Harvard College – In Cases of Conscience, Increase Mather)

Quotes from Increase Mather expressing his beliefs about Christmas:

Christmas occurred on December 25 not because “Christ was born in that month, but because the heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those pagan holidays metamorphosed into Christian [ones].”’
He referred to December as Mensis Genialis, ‘the Voluptuous Month.’

Grace Defended, A Censure on the Ungodliness

A Sermon Preached on the Twenty-Fifth Day of December 1712, by Cotton Mather:

“Can you in your Conscience think, that our Holy Savior is honoured,” he lectured, “by Mad Mirth, by long Eating, by hard Drinking, by lewd Gaming, by rude Revelling; by a Mass fit for none but a Saturn, or a Bacchus, or the Night of a Mahometan Ramadam?” “You cannot possibly think so!“

Comments and suggestions appreciated.

Ho Ho No? Christmas in New England