‘Tis the season … for a little Christmas history

It is that time of year when children get excited, parents get stressed and many poor retail seasons are righted ― it is Christmas.

            Lest you think Christmas controversies are just a product of modern times, let’s look at the evolution of the holiday in America. It’s always been cause for a little carpet to be torn up.

            It started with the Puritans, that crowd that ended up coming over on the Mayflower to start America. They were against Christmas, and even considered it a heathen holiday, quoting the scriptures about only the Lord’s Day should be considered holy. After the American Revolution, most colonists had no interest in Christmas, as they considered it “too English.” As a matter of fact, Congress was in session on Christmas Day the first year after the Revolution, and if you remember, General Washington attacked the Hessians at the Battle of Trenton on Christmas Day. Christmas was a much bigger deal in Germany than in America, at that time.

            Things would begin to change with the publication of a collection of short stories by Washington Irving, called “The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon” in 1819. In it, Irving wrote of fictionalized Christmas traditions, but many readers adopted the “traditions” and made them part of the holiday.

            In 1850, the first Christmas trees were sold commercially in the United States. Two years earlier, the English had published images of the royal family with their trees, celebrating the holiday that been reinstated in the late 17th century, after years of suppression by the Puritans.

            Christmas did not become a Federal holiday until 1870, and then it only applied to workers in the D.C. Area. In 1885, the recognition was expanded to include all Federal employees.

            Some folks have tried to get Christmas banned as a violation of separation of church and state, but the Supreme Court struck that down in 1999 in Ganulin v. United States because “the establishment of Christmas Day as a legal public holiday does not violate the Establishment Clause because it has a valid secular purpose.”

            In the 15th century, halls were “decked” with greenery such as ivy and holly, to represent the coming of Jesus; the holly was seen as protection against pagans, and the thorns and berries represented the crown of Jesus at the crucifixion.

            Gift giving was banned in the Middle Ages by the Catholic Church as some sort of pagan ritual; it was repealed later by the church with the rationalization of the gifts of the wise men, and it associated St. Nicholas with Christmas.

            Santa Claus first burst onto the scene in 1810 dressed in bishop’s robes, but the drawings of Thomas Nast led to the Santa Claus we know today, and in the 1920s, that image was standardized.

            Old Christmas came about as the result of a calendar dispute in Europe. The Julian calendar had been put into use, and while more accurate than previous calendars, it still had a flaw ― by the late 1500s, the calendar was already 10 days off. Pope Gregory instituted a calendar to correct for this, but Protestant Europe refused to follow the Pope and celebrated Christmas on what amounted to January 6. When the calendars were reconciled in England in 1752, the day after September 2 became September 14.  Riots broke out as many people felt the government had robbed them of 11 days. Many folks still refer to January 6 as Old Christmas.