{"id":8272,"date":"2021-12-22T14:06:00","date_gmt":"2021-12-22T13:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=12909"},"modified":"2021-12-22T14:20:14","modified_gmt":"2021-12-22T13:20:14","slug":"did-oliver-cromwell-ban-christmas-the-puritan-assault-on-christmas-during-the-1640s-and-1650s","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/did-oliver-cromwell-ban-christmas-the-puritan-assault-on-christmas-during-the-1640s-and-1650s\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Oliver Cromwell ban Christmas? The Puritan assault on Christmas during the 1640s and 1650s"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Emma Mason\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 22 December 2021 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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As the year 1645 limped towards its weary close, a war-torn England shivered beneath a thick blanket of snow. A few months earlier, parliament\u2019s New Model Army, led by Sir Thomas Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell<\/a>, had routed the forces of Charles\u00a0I at the battle of Naseby<\/a>. Although that defeat had struck the king\u2019s cause a mortal blow, the royalists still refused to surrender, and the bloody Civil War<\/a> which had divided the country ever since 1642 continued to rage.<\/p>\n

Under constant pressure from the armies of both sides to supply them with money, clothing and food, few Englishmen and women can have been anticipating a particularly merry Christmas<\/a>. Yet, for those who lived in the extensive territories which were controlled by the king\u2019s enemies, there was to be no Christmas this year at all \u2013 because the traditional festivities had been abolished by order of the two Houses of Parliament sitting at Westminster.<\/p>\n

From Charles\u2019s beleaguered wartime capital in Oxford, the royalist satirist John Taylor \u2013 by now in his mid-60s, but nevertheless one of the king\u2019s most indefatigable literary champions \u2013 issued a cry of anguish at this assault on England\u2019s time-honoured customs. All of the \u201charmless sports\u201d with which people had long celebrated Christ\u2019s nativity \u201care now extinct and put out of use\u2026 as if they had never been,\u201d Taylor lamented in his pamphlet The Complaint of Christmas<\/em>, and \u201cthus are the merry lords of misrule suppressed by the mad lords of bad rule at Westminster\u201d.<\/p>\n

\""Portrait\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
Did Oliver Cromwell really ban Christmas? (Photo by Universal History Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Cromwell and Christmas: BBC History Revealed<\/em> shares a brief guide to the \u2018ban\u2019<\/h4>\n

On June 1647 Parliament passed an Ordinance that abolished Christmas Day as a feast day and holiday.\u00a0While Cromwell certainly supported the move, and subsequent laws imposing penalties for those who continued to enjoy Christmas, he does not seem to have played much of a role in leading the campaign.<\/p>\n

Throughout the medieval period, Christmas Day had been marked by special church services, and by magnificent feasts accompanied by heavy drinking. The subsequent 12 Days of Christmas saw more special services along with sports, games and more eating and drinking.<\/p>\n

By the early 17th Century Puritans and other firm Protestants were seeing the Christmas jollifications as unwelcome survivors of Catholicism as well as excuses for all manner of sins.<\/p>\n

There was a widespread, though minority view, that Christmas should be a fast day devoted to sober religious contemplation. The defeat of King Charles I in the Civil War put the more extreme Protestants into power and so Parliament passed a series of measures to enforce this campaign on others.<\/p>\n

The legislation was deeply unpopular and was enforced only sporadically. When King Charles II returned to power in 1660 one of his first acts was to repeal all the anti-Christmas legislation, helping foster his image as the \u201cMerry Monarch\u201d.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why did parliamentarians wage war on Christmas?<\/h2>\n

So why had the parliamentarians decided to wage war on Christmas \u2013 and how did those, like Taylor, who were determined to defend the traditional celebrations, fight back?<\/p>\n

The attack on the feast of Christmas had deep roots. Long before the Civil War began, many zealous Protestants, or \u2018Puritans\u2019, had been troubled both by the boisterous nature of the festivities which took place at Christmas and by the perceived association of those festivities with the old Catholic faith. During the early 1600s, most English Puritans had been prepared to tolerate Christmas. Following the rebellion of the Presbyterian Scots against Charles I in 1637, however, all this was to change.<\/p>\n

Long before the Civil War began, many zealous Protestants, or \u2018Puritans\u2019, had been troubled both by the boisterous nature of the festivities which took place at Christmas <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>

The Scottish Kirk, which was itself fiercely Protestant, had abolished Christmas as long ago as the 1560s and, although James I had managed tentatively to restore the feast in his northern kingdom in 1617, it was banned there once again after his son\u2019s defeat by the Scots in 1640.<\/p>\n

From this time onwards, attitudes towards Christmas among English Puritans began to harden. And as political tensions between Charles I and his opponents in parliament rose during 1641 so a handful of Puritan extremists took it upon themselves to abandon the celebration of Christmas.<\/p>\n

Following the outbreak of full-scale Civil War between king and parliament in 1642, John Taylor became one of the first to allude in print to the radicals\u2019 decision to dump Christmas. In a satirical pamphlet published in January 1643 \u2013 a pamphlet which was clearly intended to appeal to a wide popular audience \u2013 Taylor provided his readers with the text of A Tub Lecture<\/em>, which, he claimed, had been preached by a godly joiner to a group of Puritans at Watford \u201con the 25 of December last, being Christmas day\u201d.<\/p>\n

In this fictitious address, the \u2018lecturer\u2019 is shown assuring his audience that they should not \u201cconceive of me to be so superstitious, as to make any conscience of\u2026 this day, because the Church hath ordained [it]\u201d to be a holy feast. \u201cNo, God forbid I should be so profane,\u201d the \u2018lecturer\u2019 goes on, \u201crather it is a detestation of their blindness that have brought me hither this day, to enlighten you\u2026 [and] I give you to understand that the very name of Christmas is idolatrous and profane, and so, verily, are the whole 12 days [of Christmas] wherein the wicked make daily\u2026 sacrifices to riot and sensuality\u201d.<\/p>\n

Here, Taylor was hinting to his readers that the godly parliamentarians posed a potential threat to Christmas itself. Eight months later, that threat was to become all too real.<\/p>\n

Listen: Mark Stoyle\u00a0responds to listener queries and popular search enquiries about the conflict between Royalists and Parliamentarians that wracked the British Isles in the middle of the 17th century, on this episode of the HistoryExtra<\/em> podcast<\/a>:<\/strong><\/p>\n