{"id":760,"date":"2020-12-16T10:27:15","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T10:27:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=760"},"modified":"2020-12-16T10:32:21","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T10:32:21","slug":"have-yourself-a-puritan-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/?p=760","title":{"rendered":"Have yourself a puritan Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dr Fiona McCall is a lecturer in early modern history, teaching units on the British Civil Wars, and Crime, Sin and Punishment in early modern Britain, amongst others. Her current research project investigates traditionalist resistance to puritan values in English parish churches during the 1640s and 1650s, and in this blog she discusses\u00a0how Christmas\u00a0was banned during this period.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christmas was officially banned during the late 1640s and 1650s along with the rest of the church calendar.\u00a0 But the interdict was widely ignored.\u00a0 Trawling through various counties\u2019 quarter sessions depositions for the period, I have found frequent references to Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, and various saints days, the witnesses (even those testifying against suspected royalists) usually oblivious to the fact that these festivals are no longer supposed to be celebrated.\u00a0 At Bristol the Mayoral court was even postponed from December to January \u2018because the feast of Christmas comes betweene\u2019.[1]<\/a>\u00a0 Some were clearly mindful that Christmas was a sensitive issue: a 1651 Cheshire case refers to the \u2018tyme Commonly called Christmas\u2019, while a 1655 Northern Circuit assize deposition refers to the twelfth day after Christmas \u2018so commonly Called\u2019 [2]<\/a> \u00a0\u00a0The term \u2018Christide\u2019 was frequently preferred instead, but not by everyone: one Devonshire witness timed the events he reported to \u2018the Feast of the birth of our Lord god last past\u2019. [3]<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Josiah King, The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas <\/em>(1658)<\/p><\/div>\n

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Churches were supposed to be closed on Christmas Day and shops open.\u00a0 That was the theory, anyway. At Norwich in 1647, the Mayor of Norwich apparently gave notice that Christmas Day was to be observed, the market kept the day before instead, and even invited the ejected Bishop of Norwich, Joseph Hall, to preach in the Cathedral. [4]<\/a>\u00a0 The authorities in Canterbury attempted a harder line.\u00a0 On the 22 December 1647, the town crier there proclaimed that a market was to be kept on Christmas day.\u00a0 This \u2018occasioned great discontent among the people\u2019 causing them to \u2018rise in a rebellious way\u2019, throwing shopkeepers\u2019 ware \u2018up and down\u2019 until they shut up shop, and knocking down the mayor when he attempted to quell the \u2018tumult\u2019 with a cudgel.\u00a0 [5]<\/a> \u2018That which we so much desired that day was but a Sermon\u2019, protested Canterbury Prebendary Edward Aldey, \u2018which any other day of the weeke was tollerable by the orders and practise of the two Houses and all their adherents, but that day (because it was Christ\u2019s birth day).\u00a0 [6]<\/a> Elsewhere in Kent, parishioners crowded round the puritan minister Richard Culmer\u2019s reading desk in protest at the lack of a Christmas day service, and assaulted him in the churchyard. [7]<\/a> Gloucestershire minister Mr Tray, unpopular on account of his opposition to the festival, became the target of malicious rumours.\u00a0 Stories were spread that he had sabotaged the Christmas pies of his parishioners, baking in the communal oven, by sending his own unconventional confection to be baked alongside them.\u00a0 Lines of verse were placed under Tray\u2019s cushion in the pulpit:<\/p>\n

Parson tray, on Christmas Day<\/p>\n

To help on reformation<\/p>\n

Instead of the word did bake a t[urd]<\/p>\n

And poyson\u2019d his congregation\u00a0 [8]<\/a><\/p>\n

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The controversy over whether or not to celebrate the festival continued throughout the interregnum. Puritan writers attacked the festival as a \u2018Pagan-Popish Strumpet\u2019, tempting people towards \u2018Antichristian darknesse\u2019. [9]<\/a> But others openly defended it in print as a feast long celebrated to honour Christ. [10]<\/a> Josiah King\u2019s 1658 satire imagined Christmas on trial at the assizes, charged with drunkenness, gluttony, lasciviousness, idleness and other vices, who nevertheless remained beloved \u2018by the Country people, some shrieking and crying for the old man\u2019.[11]<\/a> Churchwardens\u2019 accounts suggest that Christmas was openly celebrated in some churches: at Dinton in Wiltshire in 1653 accounts record payments for bread and wine at Christmas, Palm Sunday and Easter Sunday. [12]<\/a>\u00a0 Christmas communions are recorded at Hartland in Devon in 1647, 1651 and 1656.[13]<\/a>\u00a0 But some parishioners objected vocally when Christmas services were held. At Twerton in Somerset in 1654, a parishioner derogated a Christmas Eve communion there as \u2018three pints of wine and a peny Loaf\u2019.[14]<\/a> In 1658, at Midsomer Norton in the same county, Tobias Gullocke, a blacksmith, interrupted Mr Thurlby\u2019s sermon, later being heard to say that ‘Christ was a bastard’.\u00a0 A \u2018mutiny\u2019 ensued, until Gullocke was frogmarched out. [15]<\/a><\/p>\n

Problems particularly occurred when Christmas day fell on the Sunday, the \u2018Lord\u2019s Day\u2019, which was supposed to be exclusively dedicated to religious worship, bible reading and prayer.\u00a0 At Cirencester, Richard Brittain reportedly took\u00a0 \u2018umbrage\u2019 at the \u2018uncommon large auditory\u2019 he received when his market day sermon happened to fall on Christmas day, telling people how \u2018grieved\u2019 he was to see so many people at church for the wrong reasons. [16]<\/a><\/p>\n

Bringing in preachers from outside was one way to circumvent the ban, placating parishioners who desired to celebrate the festival, while avoiding personal responsibility for what was taking place.\u00a0 William Dell at Yeldon in Bedfordshire, on Christmas Day 1659, his enemies reported, \u2018countenanced\u2019 \u2018one Bunyon of Bedford a Tinker\u2019 \u2018to speake in his Pulpitt to the Congregacion and noe Orthodox Minster did officiate in the Church that day\u2019. [17]<\/a>\u00a0Perhaps even puritans were beginning to recognise that opposing a festival that gave pleasure to many was counter-productive and pointless.<\/p>\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Bristol Record Office, JMAY 1651-3.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Cheshire Record Office, QJF 79\/1 Easter 1651; National Archives, ASSI 45\/5\/2, 1655.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Devon Heritage Centre, QS\/4\/60, Easter 1656.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS D1104, fo. 6b, letter dated 9 October 1647.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Canterbury Christmas <\/em>(London, 1648)<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Edward Aldey, The Declaration of many thousands of the City of Canterbury\u2026.<\/em> (London, 1647), 6; Scott Hendrix, Riot and Resistance in County Norfolk<\/em> 1646-50 (New York), 28.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> R. Culmer, A Parish Looking Glass for persecutors<\/em>, (London, 1657), 15-18.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Bodleian Library, MS J. Walker: C1, fo. 250r.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Mercurius Religiosus<\/em> (London, 1651), 7-8.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> E. Fisher, A Christian Caveat to the Old and New Sabbatarians<\/em> (London, 1650), 29.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> J. King, The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas, at the assizes of Difference, in the County of Discontent <\/em>(London, 1658), 10, 16<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Lambeth Palace MS 3152, fos 87-7.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> I. Gregory (ed.), Hartland Church Accounts, 1597-1706<\/em> (Frome, 1950).<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Somerset Heritage Centre,\u00a0Q\/SR\/90\/35<\/a>, 2 January 1655.<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Somerset Heritage Centre, Q\/SR\/96\/30, 26 December 1658.<\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Bodleian Library, MS J. Walker, C7, fo. 12r.<\/p>\n

[17]<\/a> Presumed to be John Bunyan, the nonconformist author of Pilgrim\u2019s Progress<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr Fiona McCall is a lecturer in early modern history, teaching units on the British Civil Wars, and Crime, Sin and Punishment in early modern Britain, amongst others. Her current research project investigates traditionalist resistance to puritan values in English parish churches during the 1640s and 1650s, and in this blog she discusses\u00a0how Christmas\u00a0was banned during this period. Christmas was officially banned during the late 1640s and 1650s along with the rest of the church calendar.\u00a0 But the interdict was widely ignored.\u00a0 Trawling through various counties\u2019 quarter sessions depositions for the period, I have found frequent references to Christmas, Easter, Whitsun, and various saints days, the witnesses (even those testifying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[26,170,56,177,167,171,175,14,168,561,39,176,178,179,15,166,169,57,172,173,11,174,114],"class_list":["post-760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-in-focus","tag-archives","tag-assize-records","tag-english-civil-war","tag-canterbury","tag-christmas","tag-church-calendar","tag-devonshire","tag-history","tag-interregnum","tag-legal-records","tag-local-history","tag-norwich","tag-parishioners","tag-parliament","tag-primary-sources","tag-puritanism","tag-quarter-sessions-records","tag-religion","tag-satire","tag-shops","tag-slider","tag-somerset","tag-violence"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/history.port.ac.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/Josiah-King-Tryall-of-Old-Father-Christmas-e1513782537822.jpg?fit=620%2C300&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p91PlX-cg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=760"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":771,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions\/771"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/history.port.ac.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}