Arthur Schaper: X-Mas, The C-Word in Massachusetts

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Arthur Christopher Schaper, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Bay State leaders are like Scrooge, refusing to celebrate the season with the word "Christmas."

“Mister Governor” Deval Patrick has been playing the secular Santa Claus this Christmas season, taxing and taking his way through office giving gifts (i.e. handouts), along with the Bah Humbug Democratic Beacon Street dominance. Despite the promises of his 2012 speech to the Massachusetts Democratic Party Delegation (protect the middle class, getting them to live from more than one paycheck to the next), his policies have overseen abuse of public benefits, spiraling welfare costs, a migration of talent and skills from the Bay State, taxes on everything from candy to computer anything to a gas tax which never runs out of gas (unless Republicans have their way and repeal the forever part next year).

Patrick’s attacks on the health and wealth of the Commonwealth do not stop there.

Like many liberals, Patrick avoids the C-word, as in Christmas , and despite his merriest efforts, the local press pounced on his attempt to opt out from using the word. PC is all the rage these days, and “Happy Holidays” has taken away any reason for the season. In New England, Patrick is not alone in promoting a secular, inclusive holiday season. Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee tried to remove the holy moniker from the statehouse Christmas tree, but the backlash locally and nationally finally pushed “Governor Grinch" to put the holy back in holiday.

Ironically enough for Massachusetts, the war on Christmas has a longer, more staggered history, and opponents of the holiday, as well as its champions, display celebrated reasons either enjoining or enjoying the season’s festivities.

William Bradford , the first Governor of Massachusetts, disapproved of the holiday, yet on the first colonial Christmas, he showed mercy to a group of incoming settlers, for whom the 25th of December deserved a recognition of some rest and respite. Bradford had to be nice, since so few of the original colonial migration survived the first winter. The next year, following the first Thanksgiving, the Puritan settlers outlawed Christmas.

Why did the Puritan colonists discourage celebrating Christmas? From a factual standpoint, the birth of baby Jesus could not have occurred on December 25th. Furthermore, they protested that the holiday was too popish and decorated with unholy pomp and flash. While Puritans were adverse to Yuletide cheer, no one should assume that these religious dissenters were insufferable Pharisees year round. They drank beer, sponsored operas, and in one municipal record city leaders openly discussed the intimate affairs of one member and his wife. They also killed women suspected of witchcraft and kicked the uber-tolerant Roger Williams out of Massachusetts, but let’s not forget the holiday spirit, shall we?

Most of all, because of the noisy, unseemly merry-making which broke out during the Christmas season, the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony outlawed the celebration of Christmas. Anyone caught resting from work or partying would have to pay a five shilling fine to the colony. Imagine having to pay a fine for having fun!

The last bastion of Puritan purity in the face of population growth and decline in hard-line adherence to Calvinist doctrine, Harvard President and well-versed proselyte Increase Mather shared his increasing hostility with the holiday, citing the un-Christlike character of the populace, indicting their unseemly conduct during the winter festival: card-playing, drunkenness, and other displays of unholy behavior.

Twenty-two years following the injunction against Noel, the Royal-appointed Governor Sir Edmond Andros repealed the ban, yet Boston residents resisted reveling on Christmas Day, and even the few visitors and passers-by who wanted to wassail discovered little interest, and even lesser support, to join in the fun. Having lamented the error and decline of Massachusetts Bay Puritan communities, Mather would have rejoiced to learn that Bay State locals eschewed Christmas long after the dereliction and fall of the Puritan political hierarchy in Boston. Strangely enough, “Mister Governor” Patrick would have fit right in, after all.

The hostility turned neglect against the C-word changed in the 1830’s , with the help of the abolitionist movement and other social reformers. Seeking a welcome means for raising awareness and money to end slavery and cruelty to women and children, Massachusetts civic activists sponsored Christmas fairs in Boston. William Lloyd Garrison, one of the most passionate of ante-Bellum anti-slavery activists, helped engage and expand the effectiveness of these affairs. Using the background of God’s gift to humanity, His Son Jesus born in a manger, abolitionists denounced the crimes of slavery and cruelty to humanity. Did they not deserve the gift of liberty and respect bestowed on all mankind? The custom of gift-giving, especially to children, also emerged during Boston's growing approval of Christmas celebrations. Evergreen shrubs decorated Christmas fairs, and the German immigrant who then brought in the larger evergreen trees, Harvard Professor Charles Follen, established the tradition well-known today of “O Tannenbaum” in our homes and public squares.

Speaking of Christmas trees, check out the history of the Holiday Pine in Boston Commons, and these wonderful, diverse pictures of Christmas in Worcester.

How will Christmas fare in Massachusetts’ future? With “Mister Governor” Patrick, the C-word may give way to Beacon Hill as secular Santa: Ho Ho Ho!

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