"War on Christmas" Charge Echoes Past Debates, Expert Says

John Roach
for National Geographic News

December 23, 2005

Is political correctness killing the Christmas spirit? Some say yes.
Others disagree.

Whatever you believe, Vaughn Bryant, an anthropologist at Texas A&M University in College Station, says the current debate deserves historical context.

"It seems like we are reverting back to the days when Christians were trying to abolish Christmas," Bryant said.

Illegal Christmas

Yup, you read that right. When Oliver Cromwell, a Puritan, rose to power in England in the 17th century, he passed a law in 1647 that severely punished anyone caught celebrating Christmas.

The Puritans believed that only the Sabbath (Sunday) should be celebrated as a holy day and considered Christmas a decadent celebration with pagan roots.

"If Christmas landed on the Sabbath that'd be OK," Bryant said. "But any other day of the week, Christmas was essentially just celebrating—frivolity and having too much of a good time, which in Puritan times wasn't any good."

In December of that year riots against the anti-Christmas law in London, Oxford, Ipswich, and Canterbury were put down with brutal, and sometimes deadly, force.

In 1652 a new law imposed even stiffer penalties and heavier fines on anyone who participated in a festivity before, during, or immediately after Christmas. The law also forbade stores from closing that day and banned church services unless Christmas fell on the Sabbath.

When England's monarchy was restored in 1660 one of the first acts was a declaration that Christmas could once again be made merry.

Meanwhile, battles over celebrating Christmas were being fought in the New World as well.

The Puritans, who settled the New England region of the American Colonies before Cromwell's reign, had brought their anti-Christmas sentiments with them. From 1659 to 1681, Christmas was outlawed in Boston. The ban was repealed after complaints over the law's severity.

Still, Christmas wasn't considered a civil holiday until Louisiana passed the first such law in 1831. In 1856 the city of Boston allowed employers to give workers the day off. And the city's public schools still held classes if December 25 fell on a school day until 1871.

Too Inclusive?

Today some religious conservatives charge that a "war on Christmas" is underway.

Secular individuals, conservatives say, are degrading Christmas by calling this season of parties and gift exchanges "the holidays," arguring that the term blends the religious side of Christmas with its commercial aspects, along with other religious holidays and secular traditions, such as Hanukkah and Kwanza.

The debate gained a decibel or two this year following the publication of Fox News host John Gibson's book The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought.

In it Gibson argues that as more people use the phrase "the holidays" to avoid offending non-Christians, the meaning of Christmas—a mass to honor Christ's birth—is lost.

Gibson holds up as evidence several recent state rulings that remove references to Christmas in public settings, such as bans on carols in schools and punishments for saying "Merry Christmas" in the office.

At the same time some conservative groups are applying pressure on retailers to keep the religious ideals of Christmas in the public eye.

For example, the American Family Association staged a boycott against mega-store Target for avoiding the word "Christmas" in its advertising.

On December 9 the association pulled the boycott, citing as victory a Target statement that "our advertising, marketing, and merchandising will become more specific to the holiday that is approaching."

Pagan Holiday

Bryant, for his part, believes the current campaign by some religious conservatives is similar to the Puritan's push to impose their beliefs on the masses.

The Puritans argued that Christmas came from pagan rituals co-opted by the Catholic Church in Rome, Bryant says.

"[The Puritans] were trying to get away from the Catholics, and the Catholics made a big deal of Christmas," he said.

In fact, Christmas coincides with historical pagan festivals in Rome tied to celebrating the winter solstice.

When the Roman Emperor Constantine converted his entire empire to Christianity in A.D. 337, nobody wanted to give up the solstice celebrations, Bryant says.

"So they came up with idea, Well, why don't we celebrate Christ's birthday?" he said.

Believers say that certain biblical evidence can be quoted to suggest that December 25 really is Christ's birthday.

But Bryant says other sections of the Bible can serve as evidence for the dubious nature of Christ being born in late December. In the Gospel of Luke, for instance, shepherds are watching over their sheep the night of the birth.

"Anybody who knows anything having to do with sheep knows the shepherds are not out there in the middle of winter," Bryant said.

"They'd be out there in lambing season, and lambing season is in March."

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