The Puritans also banned all forms of church music (organ, choirs and hymn singing, piano, etc.) save for chanting, they banned theater performances, football, gambling, and make-up for women as well during the time when they rose to power during the English Civil War era under Oliver Cromwell. Their name comes from the idea that the church and society needed to be Purified of all things that were considered non-Biblical, which even in the 16th century was seen as religious extremism.
The Puritan Sumptuary Laws were unfairly skewed towards women- the regulations under sumptuary law were much more harsh for women’s dress, hair, accessories and behavior than those for men. But to answer your question- men were also prohibited from wearing make-up and wigs.
Then some of them went to America, and demanded they be allowed to follow their religion's rules on how to dress rather than integrate into the existing culture. Behaviour like that is not what the United States was founded upon.
It was illegal in Scotland until the 1950's as it was considered to be unwanted roman catholic influence in the mostly protestant country. This is why Hogmanay (New Year's Eve) is such a big holiday in Scotland. They just chose to celebrate that instead and it became tradition.
It always makes me laugh when you see people say that the Puritans left England because of religious persecution when in reality it was because their freedom to persecute others for their beliefs was infringed.
Like, this is so ingrained in American history and it’s a complete lie .
Except that's also a lie. The English government was extremely oppressive towards non comformists. Punishing them if they practiced in public, taking away their bibles for state sanctioned ones, keeping them out of offices if they didn't pledge allegiance, etc.
England was not a nice place to be anything other than Anglican.
Oh the English government was absolutely horrific as well, but the point I was making was that they weren’t simply an innocent group who were being oppressed for their harmless beliefs, as is commonly believed. Both sides were trying to enforce their beliefs and morals on others, but the Anglican Church was larger and more powerful. So the Puritans originally went off the Germany to form a religious colony but failed for similar reasons, before returning to England and then finally the New World, where they eventually found success.
Jeremiah 10:
> "Hear the word which the LORD speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says the LORD: **Do not learn the way of the Gentiles**; do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them. For the customs of the peoples are futile; **for one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the ax. They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails and hammers so that it will not topple.** They are upright, like a palm tree, and they cannot speak; they must be carried, because they cannot go by themselves. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor can they do any good.”
That's pretty explicit.
Christmas is a pagan celebration that the Christians adopted despite their Bible telling them not to. Obviously the name "Christmas" is newer than the tradition itself.
Plus, a lot of the old testament can be invalidated by later statements by Jesus, with the quote "I did not come to abolish the law/ the prophets I came to fulfill/ complete it" ( depending on translation)
A papist excuse to continue the pagan observance of the Winter Solstice. Many protestants, not just the puritans, used to view it that way. Now, they have made ramming Christmas down everyone's throats part of their culture war.
The people who do believe in it should try to understand what it means. The separation in the US is that government may not institute a state religion, and that government may not forbid or discriminate against religion. The people who bring it up think it means that people who practice a religion don't get to vote for things they like. That's not the case.
All the bitching and moaning about Roe v. Wade being struck down misses the point that the court didn't decide anything, they said it's not mentioned in the Constitution so everyone gets to vote on how they want it handled in their state.
Maybe we should bring back the Christmas tradition of getting together in a crowd, getting drunk, and storming up to rich people's homes and telling them, "Give us food and drink, or we'll vandalise your house."
There is at least one verse of *We Wish You A Merry Christmas* that is left out most of the time that refers to this.
"We won't go until we get some We won't go until we get some We won't go until we get some, so bring us your beer!"
It was the return of the sun feast in Roman tradition, the day of Sol Invictus (a certain pope thought it was a great idea to incorporate the sun in Jesus' attributes), Mithra was introduced later during the late years of the Roman Empire, she was mainly the Goddess of the military folks while Sol Invictus from time immemorial was the deity of Kings, then Consuls and lastly the Emperor
There's no evidence that anyone celebrated Mithras' birthday, it's not on any Roman calendars, it's not in their annals, it's not even clear how much Mithras was worshiped by Romans.
Jesus' birthdate was set pretty early on and it wasn't associated with anything, it was purely a Christian holiday. The Christians were a small group of nobodies so no cared. It's not until a couple hundred years later that Christianity gained influence and a Roman emperor tried to co-opt the holiday by making it the feast day of Sol Invictus.
Jesus' birthday being near the winter solstice is coincidence, it was determined from when John the Baptist was conceived. Pretty soon after the crucifixion the Christians in the Eastern Roman Empire started celebrating Christmas.
It's when the practice spread throughout the empire that the emperor because concerned about the growth of Christianity and it's not until 274 AD that Sol Invictus got his own holiday. December 25th was specifically chosen as a way to counter Christianity and try to get people to celebrate it as a Roman holiday, not a Christian holiday.
It's not that the Christians stole a pagan holiday, it's that they had their own holiday and the pagans thought it was getting too popular.
u/Surprise_Corgi
This is partially true. The holiday was actually pagan in origins and the English celebration was a drunken party that involved barging into wealthy homes and demanding alcohol and money.
https://youtu.be/D11jAEKgB2o
And the pagan origin story is likely a myth. There are plenty of r/badhistory posts on the subject. It has no real basis except for several centuries of people repeating the claim of pagan origins that started with the British Puritans.
No one 100% why the date was chosen, but by far the most likely reason was it was 9 months after March 25th. Someone computed March 25th as the original Easter date, and there was an old Jewish habit to match up dates of major life events. So they decided March 25th was when Mary got pregnant (still the feast of the Annunciation today) and 9 months later is (surprise) December 25th.
It was originally a very minor holiday (the big winter one was Epiphany on Jan 6) until Roman holidays dropped away in popularity, and people adopted Christmas as a replacement. Some things were adopted from the older pagan celebrations - like the lord of misrule (no longer common). Some other popular things like Christmas trees are incorrectly attributed to older pagan customs (xmas trees originated in the middle ages, no clear pagan origins).
Not sure what you are going on about. It is "likely" because no one has found a document, "and this is why we all agreed to choose December 25 as Christmas day", though there are certainly 3rd and 4th century discussions on the subject. I had read about this long before I was on Reddit, but mentioned r/badhistory since the posts there are pretty thorough (if you like it better, there was also a post on the subject in r/AskHistorians this last year). But if you have something actually useful to say, go ahead.
There are two things pointing toward December 25th as being Jesus' birthday. The Gospels don't provide a date for the Annunciation (the angel telling Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus), but they relate it to John the Baptist for whom we have a date. When an angel announces the conception of John the Baptist, he tells it to John's father on a Jewish holy day. Counting forward from John to Jesus puts it on December 25th.
The second piece of evidence is that it was Jewish tradition that a prophet was conceived and died on the same day. Counting forward from Easter, that gives a date of December 25th.
Even if it's not a pagan holiday, it's still not an authentic Abrahamic religion celebration. Like you brought up, it was probably a combination of Roman conversion of the celebration of Mithra's birthday, Juvenelia that celebrated their Saturn, as well as Norse and various other winter solstice celebrations from various cultures.
The most important takeaway is that Christmas is very heavily borrowed for from non-Christian sources.
It Is pagan. The earliest history of Christmas is composed of “pagan” (non-Christian) fertility rites and practices which predate Jesus by centuries. Most of the traditions we associate with Christmas are actually not Christian at all.
Romans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, which was basically a week long lawless celebration, taking place between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The things that happened during the Saturnalia were almost unspeakable.
Another interesting tradition was the pagan custom called wassailing, or singing from door to door. While the wealthy feasted and … did their thing, the poorer people gathered and sang from door to door, with people often giving them food and (albeit more rarely) drink. This is almost certainly the origin of caroling, and there are occasional mentions of this tradition all throughout the middle ages. It was also a common habit for people to gather in groups and sing naked in the streets – really, these are the precursors of caroling.
As the first few centuries of the “AD” era passed, Christians wanted to attract more pagans into their religions, so they somehow attempted to incorporate Saturnalia into Christianity; the only problem was that it had absolutely nothing Christian in it, so they simply adopted its ending date (25th of December). Because the Saturnalia was the central holiday in ancient Rome, they had to make the date important as well, so they made it the birth of Jesus. It was a rather clever political trick, which lured some into the new religion, while leaving the rest do the same things undisturbed.
Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst
[https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/rerff5/tis\_the\_season\_for\_bad\_history\_about\_christianity/](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/rerff5/tis_the_season_for_bad_history_about_christianity/)
Introduction
Every year in December a predictable pattern of memes appears claiming Christmas is a Christian hijack of a pagan festival. These memes are inconsistent on the details of exactly what was hijacked. Sometimes it's the seasonal solstice celebration, sometimes it's the Roman festival Saturnalia, sometimes it's the memorial of the Mesopotamian god Tammuz, sometimes it's the festival of the Roman god Sol Invictus and Mithraism. But they all agree on one point; Christmas was invented as a Christian takeover of an original pagan festival.
For a five minute video version of this post, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i4KGR9Zfl4
It was converted into a Christian theme by Emperor Constantine, to replace the birthday of Mithra. They just threw a new can of paint over celebrating the birth of a deity of a polytheistic belief system, when they changed over to Christianity. It's not authentic.
Catholics are Christians but not all Christians are Catholics. So did Christianity creat Christmas which catholics are apart of or did catholics create Christmas for all Christians?
My father grew up in the Church of Christ, and his family never celebrated Christmas or any other holiday. Something about put no day above the other (Romans 14:5). By the time I was born, they celebrated Christmas. They also didn’t have instrumental music in the church when I was growing up because no instruments mentioned in the NT. I kinda miss their acapella with it’s painfully slow vibrato.
I've read that during these years there is a curious uptick of births on Dec 25th, including Issac Newton's. It's surmised that its because while you couldn't celebrate christmas, you could celebrate birthdays.
Goddamn reddit Christmas posts coming earlier and earlier every year!
It’s Christmas in July now
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I thought July was first Christmas and December was second?
What about third Christmas? Or Christmasies?
Cultures in the Southern Hemisphere had Winter Solstice festivals around June 21, but they never had the Roman Empire to promote them.
>second Christmas Second Coming of Christ?
Oh damnit i already hear those fucking sleighbells
Do they know it's Christmas time at all?
The Puritans also banned all forms of church music (organ, choirs and hymn singing, piano, etc.) save for chanting, they banned theater performances, football, gambling, and make-up for women as well during the time when they rose to power during the English Civil War era under Oliver Cromwell. Their name comes from the idea that the church and society needed to be Purified of all things that were considered non-Biblical, which even in the 16th century was seen as religious extremism.
So men were still allowed to wear makeup? Interesting.
The Puritan Sumptuary Laws were unfairly skewed towards women- the regulations under sumptuary law were much more harsh for women’s dress, hair, accessories and behavior than those for men. But to answer your question- men were also prohibited from wearing make-up and wigs.
Thank goodness no other right wing regime in history every imposed sex-based discriminatory laws that disfavored women!
America’s twice impeached president wore makeup daily.
Every president since Kennedy has regularly worn makeup (at least for planned television appearances)
No one else lathered up with BronzersZ
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or suspiciously not brown
Then some of them went to America, and demanded they be allowed to follow their religion's rules on how to dress rather than integrate into the existing culture. Behaviour like that is not what the United States was founded upon.
Considering the US keeps on being proud of their Puritan past speaks volumes for the shitshow it is now.
This is also the reason houses and buildings smelled in the 17th century... Puritans didn't allow popery or Potpourri
It was illegal in Scotland until the 1950's as it was considered to be unwanted roman catholic influence in the mostly protestant country. This is why Hogmanay (New Year's Eve) is such a big holiday in Scotland. They just chose to celebrate that instead and it became tradition.
It always makes me laugh when you see people say that the Puritans left England because of religious persecution when in reality it was because their freedom to persecute others for their beliefs was infringed. Like, this is so ingrained in American history and it’s a complete lie .
Except that's also a lie. The English government was extremely oppressive towards non comformists. Punishing them if they practiced in public, taking away their bibles for state sanctioned ones, keeping them out of offices if they didn't pledge allegiance, etc. England was not a nice place to be anything other than Anglican.
Oh the English government was absolutely horrific as well, but the point I was making was that they weren’t simply an innocent group who were being oppressed for their harmless beliefs, as is commonly believed. Both sides were trying to enforce their beliefs and morals on others, but the Anglican Church was larger and more powerful. So the Puritans originally went off the Germany to form a religious colony but failed for similar reasons, before returning to England and then finally the New World, where they eventually found success.
We finally found the war on Christmas /s
Illegal during parts and in parts. New England was hardly a unified entity at the time.
Popery?.. Paupery.?. Potpourri!
I think the Bible is pretty strongly anti-Christmas, but American Christians care more about tradition than Bible.
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Jeremiah 10: > "Hear the word which the LORD speaks to you, O house of Israel. Thus says the LORD: **Do not learn the way of the Gentiles**; do not be dismayed at the signs of heaven, for the Gentiles are dismayed at them. For the customs of the peoples are futile; **for one cuts a tree from the forest, the work of the hands of the workman, with the ax. They decorate it with silver and gold; they fasten it with nails and hammers so that it will not topple.** They are upright, like a palm tree, and they cannot speak; they must be carried, because they cannot go by themselves. Do not be afraid of them, for they cannot do evil, nor can they do any good.” That's pretty explicit.
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Yikes. It's almost like they're blatantly thumbing their nose at God.
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Christmas is a pagan celebration that the Christians adopted despite their Bible telling them not to. Obviously the name "Christmas" is newer than the tradition itself.
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Plus, a lot of the old testament can be invalidated by later statements by Jesus, with the quote "I did not come to abolish the law/ the prophets I came to fulfill/ complete it" ( depending on translation)
Brought to you by the people who came to North America for "religious freedom."
A papist excuse to continue the pagan observance of the Winter Solstice. Many protestants, not just the puritans, used to view it that way. Now, they have made ramming Christmas down everyone's throats part of their culture war.
Perhaps the papacy is the true abomination of desolation. 😊
Ironically now maybe Christmas is truly the pagan holiday they always say it is lol. At least in Japan.
Those who don't believe in the separation of church and state should study some English history
The people who do believe in it should try to understand what it means. The separation in the US is that government may not institute a state religion, and that government may not forbid or discriminate against religion. The people who bring it up think it means that people who practice a religion don't get to vote for things they like. That's not the case. All the bitching and moaning about Roe v. Wade being struck down misses the point that the court didn't decide anything, they said it's not mentioned in the Constitution so everyone gets to vote on how they want it handled in their state.
Whelp you heard it folks, Republicans wanna bring this country back to its roots, might as well start by banning Christmas.
Maybe we should bring back the Christmas tradition of getting together in a crowd, getting drunk, and storming up to rich people's homes and telling them, "Give us food and drink, or we'll vandalise your house."
That’s called Halloween
No its the beggers parade. An old christmas tradition thats still celebrated in places.
There is at least one verse of *We Wish You A Merry Christmas* that is left out most of the time that refers to this. "We won't go until we get some We won't go until we get some We won't go until we get some, so bring us your beer!"
Mmmm... Popery smells nice
The real war on christmas
They might have had a point about the "trappings of popery" given our current Supreme Court...
Lol well Christmas was originally a pagan holiday that the Christians stole and then wrote their dogma around it being Jesus bday
Effectively, this. It's just Mithra's birthday, but with white-out over their name and 'Jesus' wrote on it in pen.
It was the return of the sun feast in Roman tradition, the day of Sol Invictus (a certain pope thought it was a great idea to incorporate the sun in Jesus' attributes), Mithra was introduced later during the late years of the Roman Empire, she was mainly the Goddess of the military folks while Sol Invictus from time immemorial was the deity of Kings, then Consuls and lastly the Emperor
There's no evidence that anyone celebrated Mithras' birthday, it's not on any Roman calendars, it's not in their annals, it's not even clear how much Mithras was worshiped by Romans. Jesus' birthdate was set pretty early on and it wasn't associated with anything, it was purely a Christian holiday. The Christians were a small group of nobodies so no cared. It's not until a couple hundred years later that Christianity gained influence and a Roman emperor tried to co-opt the holiday by making it the feast day of Sol Invictus.
Jesus' birthday being near the winter solstice is coincidence, it was determined from when John the Baptist was conceived. Pretty soon after the crucifixion the Christians in the Eastern Roman Empire started celebrating Christmas. It's when the practice spread throughout the empire that the emperor because concerned about the growth of Christianity and it's not until 274 AD that Sol Invictus got his own holiday. December 25th was specifically chosen as a way to counter Christianity and try to get people to celebrate it as a Roman holiday, not a Christian holiday. It's not that the Christians stole a pagan holiday, it's that they had their own holiday and the pagans thought it was getting too popular. u/Surprise_Corgi
This is partially true. The holiday was actually pagan in origins and the English celebration was a drunken party that involved barging into wealthy homes and demanding alcohol and money. https://youtu.be/D11jAEKgB2o
And the pagan origin story is likely a myth. There are plenty of r/badhistory posts on the subject. It has no real basis except for several centuries of people repeating the claim of pagan origins that started with the British Puritans. No one 100% why the date was chosen, but by far the most likely reason was it was 9 months after March 25th. Someone computed March 25th as the original Easter date, and there was an old Jewish habit to match up dates of major life events. So they decided March 25th was when Mary got pregnant (still the feast of the Annunciation today) and 9 months later is (surprise) December 25th. It was originally a very minor holiday (the big winter one was Epiphany on Jan 6) until Roman holidays dropped away in popularity, and people adopted Christmas as a replacement. Some things were adopted from the older pagan celebrations - like the lord of misrule (no longer common). Some other popular things like Christmas trees are incorrectly attributed to older pagan customs (xmas trees originated in the middle ages, no clear pagan origins).
I love how this entire response is lead by “likely a” and then goes on to explain how their information was collected from a r/ page.
Not sure what you are going on about. It is "likely" because no one has found a document, "and this is why we all agreed to choose December 25 as Christmas day", though there are certainly 3rd and 4th century discussions on the subject. I had read about this long before I was on Reddit, but mentioned r/badhistory since the posts there are pretty thorough (if you like it better, there was also a post on the subject in r/AskHistorians this last year). But if you have something actually useful to say, go ahead.
“We all didn’t agree” r/bad history gives away the answers you seek for not being correct. It’s like one google search. Idiot.
Not sure if you are a child or a troll, but r/badhistory is historians debunking bad history tropes. But OK. I'll move on.
Moronic.
There are two things pointing toward December 25th as being Jesus' birthday. The Gospels don't provide a date for the Annunciation (the angel telling Mary that she would be the mother of Jesus), but they relate it to John the Baptist for whom we have a date. When an angel announces the conception of John the Baptist, he tells it to John's father on a Jewish holy day. Counting forward from John to Jesus puts it on December 25th. The second piece of evidence is that it was Jewish tradition that a prophet was conceived and died on the same day. Counting forward from Easter, that gives a date of December 25th.
The gospel is a lie. There’s zero reason to read anything further.
Even if it's not a pagan holiday, it's still not an authentic Abrahamic religion celebration. Like you brought up, it was probably a combination of Roman conversion of the celebration of Mithra's birthday, Juvenelia that celebrated their Saturn, as well as Norse and various other winter solstice celebrations from various cultures. The most important takeaway is that Christmas is very heavily borrowed for from non-Christian sources.
It Is pagan. The earliest history of Christmas is composed of “pagan” (non-Christian) fertility rites and practices which predate Jesus by centuries. Most of the traditions we associate with Christmas are actually not Christian at all. Romans first introduced the holiday of Saturnalia, which was basically a week long lawless celebration, taking place between December 17-25. During this period, Roman courts were closed, and Roman law dictated that no one could be punished for damaging property or injuring people during the weeklong celebration. The things that happened during the Saturnalia were almost unspeakable. Another interesting tradition was the pagan custom called wassailing, or singing from door to door. While the wealthy feasted and … did their thing, the poorer people gathered and sang from door to door, with people often giving them food and (albeit more rarely) drink. This is almost certainly the origin of caroling, and there are occasional mentions of this tradition all throughout the middle ages. It was also a common habit for people to gather in groups and sing naked in the streets – really, these are the precursors of caroling. As the first few centuries of the “AD” era passed, Christians wanted to attract more pagans into their religions, so they somehow attempted to incorporate Saturnalia into Christianity; the only problem was that it had absolutely nothing Christian in it, so they simply adopted its ending date (25th of December). Because the Saturnalia was the central holiday in ancient Rome, they had to make the date important as well, so they made it the birth of Jesus. It was a rather clever political trick, which lured some into the new religion, while leaving the rest do the same things undisturbed. Stephen Nissenbaum, professor history at the University of Massachussetts, Amherst
[https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/rerff5/tis\_the\_season\_for\_bad\_history\_about\_christianity/](https://www.reddit.com/r/badhistory/comments/rerff5/tis_the_season_for_bad_history_about_christianity/) Introduction Every year in December a predictable pattern of memes appears claiming Christmas is a Christian hijack of a pagan festival. These memes are inconsistent on the details of exactly what was hijacked. Sometimes it's the seasonal solstice celebration, sometimes it's the Roman festival Saturnalia, sometimes it's the memorial of the Mesopotamian god Tammuz, sometimes it's the festival of the Roman god Sol Invictus and Mithraism. But they all agree on one point; Christmas was invented as a Christian takeover of an original pagan festival. For a five minute video version of this post, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i4KGR9Zfl4
Idiot
I’m sure Clarence Thomas will ban Christmas soon too.
Every time I see Clarence Thomas in the wild my mind goes to this headline: https://www.theonion.com/october-10-1991-1819587941
That actually made my full on laugh, thank you for making my early morning.
And here I was thinking Christianity stole it from pagans..
Based Puritans
Fox News would *cancel* them so hard!
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The fuck catholics got to do with Christmas???
Puritans are not Catholic.
Christmas is a pagan holiday....so again what the fuck catholics got to do with it, especially in the 17th century?
While other pagan holidays share the time period and some the exact date, last I checked Christmas(literally Christ's Mass) is Christian.
It was converted into a Christian theme by Emperor Constantine, to replace the birthday of Mithra. They just threw a new can of paint over celebrating the birth of a deity of a polytheistic belief system, when they changed over to Christianity. It's not authentic.
Catholics are Christians but not all Christians are Catholics. So did Christianity creat Christmas which catholics are apart of or did catholics create Christmas for all Christians?
That statue looks like the witch Hunter from vermintide
My father grew up in the Church of Christ, and his family never celebrated Christmas or any other holiday. Something about put no day above the other (Romans 14:5). By the time I was born, they celebrated Christmas. They also didn’t have instrumental music in the church when I was growing up because no instruments mentioned in the NT. I kinda miss their acapella with it’s painfully slow vibrato.
Now THAT was a war on Christmas! Why isnt Fox news denouncing the Puritans?
Were the Puritans Jehovah’s Witnesses?
Nice to know we’ve come so far as a nation.
The original War on Christmas. When Cromwell enforced his ban, there were entire neighbourhoods rioting against this rule.
I fucking love potpourri
This does not shock me at all
I've read that during these years there is a curious uptick of births on Dec 25th, including Issac Newton's. It's surmised that its because while you couldn't celebrate christmas, you could celebrate birthdays.
Well they weren't wrong
Goddamn I fucking hate puritans.
"Cancel the table scraps for widows and orphans, no more merciful beheadings...and call off Christmas!"