The Real War on Christmas was waged by Christians

Ho! Ho! Ho! It's that jolly time of year again! That hilarious time in the USA when FOX News, Republicans, and rightwing Evangelicals profess outrage at the "War on Christmas." A fake outrage, of course, trotted out at years' end for political and cultural reasons, like keeping the poor in their place working for peanuts. Not to mention keeping up donations to TV evangelists with huge mansions. 

Today's War on Christmas is a Phony War. But a real war on Christmas once took place. It was several centuries ago in the UK, with spillovers into Puritan America. And guess what? It was waged by Christians. They were called Presbyterians in Scotland and Puritans in England and New England. 

In England, the Puritans were on the winning side of of the Civil War between Parliament and Charles I in the 1640s. They famously closed the London theaters as dens of immorality. They also abolished the celebration of Christmas as a "pagan celebration." They ordered that it be kept as a day of "fasting and humiliation." No singing, no dancing, no merriment at all. Try that today. 

In New England, transplanted Puritans did the same. They kept the ban in place until the 1850s. The war ended for good after President Ulysses S. Grant declared Christmas a federal holiday in the 1870s.

It may seem odd for Christians to ban Christmas, but the Puritans found no biblical justification for celebrating the birth of Christ. Nobody knew when he was born anyway (we still don't). The Puritans also associated Christmas revels with sinful, ungodly pagan rites and behavior, not to mention Papists (Catholics). 

A wit once defined a Puritan as a person who was angry because somewhere, somebody was having a good time. That is a bit simplistic and unfair to Puritans as a whole, but the accusation fit some of them.

The Scots had preceded the English in the War on Christmas, as in so many aspects of British life. After the Presbyterian Church of Scotland came to dominate Scottish religious life in the late 16th century, they abolished the celebration of Christmas. John Knox, the Calvinist preacher who led the Scottish Reformation, was a dour sort who darkened Scottish culture for centuries. 

Scotland's Christmas ceased to be a holiday of feasting, fun, and folly (if it ever was). It became just another dark, dank, and dreary winter day -- like a Scottish Sunday until recently. 

During the Civil War, Scots Presbyterians allied with like-minded English Puritans. They also made common cause in the war on Christmas. 

[Image: Parliamentary soldiers enforcing the ban on celebrating Christmas, c. 1640s, William Barns Wollen, 1900] 

In England, the Restoration of the Monarchy under Charles II ("The Merry Monarch") in 1660 also led to a restoration of traditional Christmas celebrations. They were still light years away from the materialistic orgies of today. That required the influence of grasping, greedy American capitalism.  

In Scotland, the restoration of Christmas took much longer than in England. Presbyterian leaders continued to stifle enthusiasm for Christmas enjoyment for a couple of centuries. The difference shows in the holiday hierarchy of Scotland, compared to England, and most other civilized countries.

In Scotland, Christmas comes in a distant second to Hogmanay (New Years' Eve) as a real blowout. Think about it. The canny Scots simply transferred their serious celebrating from a sacred day to a secular one. Touché, Puritans! Freud would have understood. 

If you want to witness Scots letting their hair down these days, go to Edinburgh during Hogmanay! Or, just visit any Scots pub on a Saturday night. 

Scotland's elevation of New Year spread to the rest of the globe by the 20th century. For what do we sing at midnight on 1 January? "Auld Lang Syne" by Scotland's national poet, Robert (Rabbie) Burns, of course!

PS. If you go to the USA these days, be careful not to say "Happy Holidays!" or "Seasons Greetings!" And do not write "Merry Xmas" on your cards or gifts either. You may be accused of making war on Christmas, or even of Satanism. Or, even worse, of being a liberal. 

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History is Messy: Memo to FOX news

History is messy. It is often unpleasant. It is seldom as simple as we would like it to be. Historical myth is the opposite: neat, generally pleasing -- at least to our prejudices --, and comfortably black and white. 

The myths are essentially "alternative facts" or "fake history." Not surprisingly, myths tend to dominate if not obliterate actual history in the popular consciousness. FOX news could not survive if this were not the case, and Donald Trump would long ago have been relegated to the dustbin of history.

By "actual history" I do not mean the "truth" but the result of painstaking historical research, writing, and interpretation. Often the result is only an approximation of the truth. In that sense, history resembles science, although science is a more exact business. 

Scientists can use repeated experiments to confirm their hypotheses. Historians do not have that tool. They cannot repeat history, and in general they would not wish to!

Historian Sir Lewis Namier wrote that the writing of history "is not a visit of condolence." He might have added that the same is true of reading it. Learning our history is often troubling and confusing. If it never is, we are reading the wrong stuff. 

Some people avoid all the trouble by ignoring history. The inventor and businessman Henry Ford is supposed to have said, "history is bunk." He didn't say exactly that, but he did reject the past as dead and meaningless, not worth thinking about. 

Abraham Lincoln would have disagreed. In his Second Inaugural Address he declared, "My Fellow Americans, we cannot escape history." He understood that the terrible war that was nearing its end was the direct result of the country's failure to abolish slavery. * 

Novelist William Faulkner held a similar view: "The past isn't dead. It is not even past." His characters are prisoners of their history, in this case the history of the Deep South. 

Karl Marx wrote in a similar vein in one of his lesser-known works, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852): "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living."

Marx prefaced that statement with "Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past."

You don't have to be a Marxist to agree with that viewpoint. Like it or not, our history, like our biology, constrains us. And that is not necessarily bad. It is a cliche by now, but an awareness of evils past can help us to repeat the same mistakes. True, we seem to keep repeating many of them anyway, but things could be far worse if we lacked any awareness of the past. 

People do learn lessons from history: some good, some bad, some irrelevant. The difficulty is to learn the proper lessons, the ones that will improve life on this planet -- and not just for humans. 

History often resembles a chaotic scene, like this 19th century Christmas cartoon by George Cruikshank, "At Home in the Nursery." But the party goes on and tomorrow it will have a history.

   

*Comparing Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address to that of Donald Trump in 2017 provides a good measurement of how far the Republican Party has fallen since the days of the first Republican president. 

The Plague Village: Eyam, Derbyshire

In the summer of 1665, the last and one of the worst plague epidemics struck London. In all, the Great Plague of London killed around 100,000 people, almost one fourth of the population. Those who could, especially royalty, the aristocracy and the wealthy, fled to the countryside in hopes of escaping infection. Others continued their usual businesses, which often involved traveling around the country. 

Those who left the city risked spreading the disease, and sometimes they did. Other cities and towns, including Colchester, Norwich, Lincoln, and Peterborough, had major epidemics in 1665-66. So did a small, isolated Derbyshire village. 

Tucked away in the rural beauty of the Peak District, Eyam (pronounced "Eem") must have seemed as safe a place as one could be. 

Indeed, none of the surrounding villages or towns was visited by the dreaded disease on this occasion. 

One can imagine then Eyam's shock when George Viccars, a visitor who had come to help the local tailor, died of plague on 7 September. The source of his infection seems to have lurked in a flea-infested bale of cloth that had arrived from London the previous week. The story goes that Viccars had opened the bale and hung it in front of the fireplace to dry, thus unwittingly exposing himself to aroused and hungry fleas. (Below: The Tailor's House)

The role of fleas in spreading plague was then unknown, and would not become accepted until more than 200 years later. Today, epidemiologists have determined that plague can also be spread by human to human contact, through coughing and sneezing. This explains how the disease could sometimes spread with great rapidity.

Five more people died before the end of September, but the epidemic had barely begun. By the end of the year the death toll was 42, and it got worse. Before it ended 14 months later, the village's population had been reduced by hundreds of souls. 

The exact number of deaths is uncertain, as is the population of Eyam at the time. The parish register lists 260 plague deaths, but some deaths may have gone unrecorded. Population estimates for Eyam in 1665 range from 350 to 800, with the latter figure including people who lived in nearby hamlets and farms.

Some families lost nearly all their members. Twelve people named Frith died, thirteen named Talbot. Elizabeth Hancock lost her husband and six of her children within eight days in August 1666. She buried them herself, while people from a nearby village looked on, fearing to become infected if they helped. The gravesite is now protected by the National Trust. 

What singles out Eyam, however, is not its death toll or remoteness. It is the courageous decision the villagers made early in 1666: they agreed to quarantine themselves from the outside world. Many of them had been thinking about fleeing, but in the end only a handful of people left, among them the local aristocratic family.
   
The idea of remaining and isolating themselves came from the parish rector, William Mompesson. Urging people to stay and risk death to save lives elsewhere would have been difficult for anyone, but Mompesson had a special handicap. Most of the villagers didn't like or trust him. (Image: William Mompesson)

Mompesson was a newcomer, having arrived in Eyam only the year before. Worse, he had replaced a popular rector, Thomas Stanley. During the Civil War (1642-49) and the Republic or Commonwealth (1649-1660), Stanley had supported the Puritans and Oliver Cromwell. So had most of Eyam's people. 

After the restoration of the monarchy under Charles II in 1660, Parliament passed an act that required the use of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer in the churches. The Puritan Stanley refused to to conform and was ejected from his position and house. When the plague broke out he was living as a recluse on the edge of the village. 

As the death toll from plague mounted, Mompesson reached out to the man he had replaced. Stanley agreed to promote the quarantine plan among the villagers. Most accepted it, however grudgingly, but the wealthiest family in the village left. 

The Earl of Devonshire, who lived at nearby Chatsworth, agreed to supply Eyam with food and other necessities during the period of isolation, as did others in the surrounding villages. 

Various markers, often large stones, were placed around the perimeter of the village to mark a boundary which no one from outside should enter and no one from Eyam should pass. The stone below is today called the Boundary Stone. The holes were drilled to hold coins. Eyam's villagers would put coins into them to pay for things people from other villages brought to them. They poured vinegar in the holes as well, believing it would disinfect the coins. (Image: Boundary Stone)

Mompesson's Well (below) as it is known today, was another place where villagers left coins to pay for food and medicines.   

Eyam's St. Lawrence's Church was closed for the duration of the plague. Religious services were held in a natural amphitheatre called Cucklett Delf. There, the residents could stand far apart from one another in hopes of stemming the infection.  

Cucklett Delf.

The precaution was reasonable, but the deaths continued to mount. August 1666 was the deadliest month, with 78 deaths, among them  Mompesson's wife Catherine, aged 27. She is buried in the village churchyard. Mompesson had the memorial below built for her.  

The disease finally receded in the autumn of 1666. It had probably burned itself out, having infected nearly everybody. The last victim died on November 1. 

The courageous decision to quarantine the village probably increased the death toll in Eyam, but it prevented the plague spreading to surrounding areas and killing far more. 

Stanley and Mompesson survived the ordeal. Stanley remained in Eyam until his death in 1670. Mompesson moved to another parish in 1669, where he was ostracised for a time by the residents, who had heard about the plague in Eyam and feared he might infect them. 


Further reading: Geraldine Brooks, Year of Wonders (2001). Novel about the plague in Eyam. Names have been changed and some incidents invented, but the novel provides a good sense of what the Eyam plague must have been like from the villagers' perspective.

Moonlight, Magnolias, and Madness

The incredible story of the treatment of the mentally ill in a Deep South state, which produced one of the first state mental hospitals in the US and also the Civil War. A state which one of its brightest men, James Louis Petigru, said was "too small to be a republic and too big to be a lunatic asylum."