For the first 200 years after the founding of the United States, most Americans did not celebrate Christmas. In some regions it was even illegal to celebrate Christmas (for example, in Massachusetts from 1659 to 1681 you were fined five shillings).

In the archives of that time, the story of a local resident is quoted as saying that around 1835, “the courts were full, the markets were open, and, unless it was Sunday, there were no services.

In 1952, the writer recalled that mill workers in the area risked losing their jobs if they were late for work on December 25, and that sometimes “factory owners would change the starting time on Christmas Day to five in the morning precisely so that the workers who wanted to take participation in the religious service, had to refuse. If they came to work and were late for work, they were fired immediately.

In 1659, the Massachusetts Supreme Court made celebrating Christmas a crime. What explains this strange hostility?

The Puritans had a clear reason: there is no biblical or historical justification for assigning the birth of Jesus to December 25.

That is how the Gospel of Luke tells how shepherds lived with their flocks on the plains of Judea. One night an angel appeared to them and said: “Today a Savior was born to you, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David.” But nowhere in this account is there any indication as to the exact date or even the season in which this day fell.

The Puritans liked to say that if God had intended to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord’s birth, He would surely have given some indication as to when that anniversary was to take place. (In other words, they argued that the weather in Judea in late December was too cold for the shepherds to stay outside with their flocks.)

Only in the IV century did the Church officially decide to celebrate Christmas on December 25.

This date was not chosen for religious reasons, but simply because it marked the winter solstice, an event that was celebrated long before the advent of Christianity

In agricultural societies, December meant a serious break in the cycle of earthly labor. The harvest was already collected in the barns, the wine was brewed, and the slaughtered cattle were better stored in the winter. Animals could not be slaughtered until the weather was cold enough to ensure that the meat would not spoil; and any meat kept before the end of the year would have to be preserved (and made less palatable) by salting.

In modern Europe between 1500 and 1800, the Christmas season was a time when the world went wild. For most of us, good food is available in sufficient quantities throughout the year. But Europe at that time was a world of scarcity. And when the world began to riot, a scandal broke out.

Christmas was a season of “bad behavior,” a time when normal behavioral restrictions could be violated without fear of punishment. Christmas was a carnival world. (The term carnival originates from the Latin words carne and vale – “farewell to the flesh”. And “meat” here refers not only to meat, but also to sex – both carnal and carnivorous). It was not by chance that Incris Mather wrote that “December was called Mensis Genialis, Lustful Month.”

People blackened their faces or disguised themselves as animals or something else, thus operating under the protective cloak of anonymity

The late 19th-century historian John Ashton recounts an episode in Lincolnshire in 1637 in which a man elected “Lord of Iniquity” by a mob of revelers was publicly given a “wife” in a ceremony to have carnal relations with. This was conduct most dishonorable to the name of Christ.

Another historian (Bourne) admits that the Christmas season was merely “an occasion for drunkenness, riots, and carnal revelry.” And most of the English decided to celebrate much longer than the official twelve-day period (Romanians celebrate Christmas that much). Bourne also talks about two particularly dangerous practices: the cross-dressing of men and women and the singing of carols at the most inopportune moments of debauchery.

Another Anglican, Bishop Hugh Latimer, formulated the problem most succinctly: “People dishonor Christ more in the twelve days of Christmas than in all the twelve months before it.

Over time, this state of affairs has changed. Cities expanded in the early 19th century to absorb the growing number of factory workers. Steven Nissenbaum credits a group of patrician writers in America with rebranding Christmas as a family event. They changed European traditions, including the tradition of Christmas trees and the custom of the rich giving gifts to servants and the poor.

In 1819, writer Washington Irving wrote “The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, gent.” — a series of stories about the celebration of Christmas in an estate run by English nobles.

In the prose, there is a nobleman who invites peasants to his house for Christmas. In Irving’s book, Christmas should be a quiet, warm holiday that unites groups of people regardless of their social status. The highlight is that this instruction could be attributed to fiction, since nothing written there actually happened. Thus, Irving’s “invention” crossed out the Christmas tradition.

Another poem that caused a sensation: Clement Clarke Moore – “Santa’s Visit”, first published in 1823. The poem depicts a jolly Santa Claus descending on a sleigh pulled by reindeer to give children presents on Christmas Eve.

Mass media also played their role. “Let us avoid taverns and bars for a few days,” advised the New York Herald in 1839. It is better to focus on “family, wife and children, with smiles and cheerfulness in the soul.” It was a triumph of middle-class values ​​and a blow to the shantytowns.

Romanians of the 18th century live in the time of the Church, marked by great religious holidays and great fasts.

When asked to give forty or pinpoint the course of an event, peasants and slum dwellers speak of Câşlegi, Ascension, Annunciation, Palm Sunday, Ignat, Postul cel Mare, Lăsata Secului. Saints’ days, “on the day of St. Elijah”, “Tuesday after St. Nicholas”, etc., are also important landmarks in the placement of facts.

Mr. Alexander Ypsilanti’s reform provides for a permanent schedule of days of the week when boyar judges must judge people’s cases. Ypsilanti also specifies a period during which the courts do not take place, namely: “during the plowing season, that is, during the whole of April, nor during the whole month of July, nor during the harvest from the 15th of September to the 15th of October. To these are added holidays, for example: ” 12 days of Christmas” The only exception to the rule are robbers, who can be brought to court on any day of the year.

The custom of the service on Christmas Eve took place “according to the Constantinople rite”: bells were rung, and people entered the royal church early in the morning and left only after dinner. While in Bucharest in 1707, the Russian monk Ippolit Vasenskyi describes the celebration of Christmas Eve, emphasizing the luxury of clothes: “The nobility is dressed all in gold, and the voivode in azure sable. The clothes of the saints were made of gold with precious stones and pearls.

From the Condica de ceremonii logofatu Gheorgachi (1762) we know that very early in the morning the lord left the “inner houses” in the direction of the Spinka (“Throne Room”), where he sat down in a chair and received from the back the insignia of rule (the mace, the imperial sword, hook), received from the Sultan on the occasion of his investiture.

The lord then passed through the Little and Great Divans, two rooms where the guilds of courtiers and servants waited on either side. From there he arrived at the chapel of the royal court (in Iasi, “Biserica de la Poartă”), where he was awaited by the metropolitan, bishops and great governors of the country. After that, he worshiped the icon of the Savior Jesus Christ and the icon of Purgatory and sat down in the royal bench. Then he was anointed, and at the end of the liturgy he received anointing from the hand of the metropolitan.

Sources: Mather, Testimony, 25. For views of the carnival world, Peter Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), 199–203; Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1968); Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (London: Methuen, 1986), 171–190, Bourne, Antiquitates Vulgares, x (“scandal”), 153–154, 156 (40 days of Christmas drinking), 147–149 ( mumming), 139–141 (caroling), Paul of Aleppo, in Foreign Travels, VI, p.109, Stephen Nissenbaum – The Battle for Christmas (1997)