Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/21/when-christmas-was-despised-an.html
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Ye Olde Conflagration Upon The Yultide
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Adam Who Ruins Things was talking about this recently. He suggests the change is due to immigrants bringing their traditions with them.
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Speaking as someone whose family has been in Massachusetts since the Mayflower: we’re fucking nuts.
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Once a masshole, always a masshole. - sincerely your friendly neighbor directly south. 
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Huh. An actual War on Christmas. Don’t tell Fox News about these Puritans.
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I have 250 years of Massholery behind me, I couldn’t escape it if I tried.
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I don’t celebrate Christmas myself, but if you put it that way it actually sounds pretty appealing.
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Remember - that was just the Puritans in New England - not all of Colonial America.
Philly had Mummers parades - 40 course meals - and lots of drink.
http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/mummers-santa-christmas-america/
Throughout the colonies, Christmas and New Year celebrations tended to hark back to older, more secular traditions, whose roots can be traced to Saturnalia of Roman times. These traditions included general revelry or, more specifically, “mummering.” In the season after the harvest, which included the slaughter of livestock, the brewing of beer, and the vinting of wine, bands of mummers would roam the streets in celebration, demanding the brewed punch called “wassail.” (Since those early days of the nation, wassailing has nearly become a lost tradition. Even the most enthusiastic carolers of today frequently are unaware of the meaning behind “Here We Come A-Wassailing.” We see the remnants of wassailing and mummering today on Halloween, when costumed children demand treats, and on New Year’s Day in Philadelphia, where extravagantly dressed mummers parade up and down the streets.) Mummery, which included both men and women, was a socially acceptable way to step outside convention: mummers of colonial times and the early days of the new nation often donned the clothing of the opposite gender, and the poor of the community, dressed as mummers, could demand food and brew from the wealthy in return for a song.
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Banned just at the end of the Interregnum. Fun times!
Having missed most of Halloween due to being out of the country, I’ve been drinking the eggnog (symbolically and literally) this month to do Christmas right. Even went to Santa’s Village in New Hampshire, which is about as Christmassy as it gets.
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I got a recipe for wassail from a friend. No booze; cider and other fruit juices plus spices. Whoda’ thunk?
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Came here to brag about the drunken revelry that goes on during Portland’s Santacon. Turns out plenty of cities do this. Puritans be damned!
If I could work my will, every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart. He should!
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For lazy people like myself, the pre-made wassail at Trader Joes is pretty good. Juice & cider & spices. Very nice hot by itself or with a tot of bourbon.
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Office Christmas parties used to be notoriously adult until recent decades. The Puritans are back!
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I miss the annual flood of questions to advice columnists about how to recover from career-ending Christmas party activities, embarrassing shenanigans, or some combination of the two.
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The Boston and Plymouth Puritans did have some fun neighbors for a bit, though:
Scotland remained largely Calvinist, with only the despised Catholic underclass celebrating xmas even after the Puritans vanished from England. Indeed even into the 20th Century New Year was the major winter celebration - an even today, Scotland sees two days of official public holidays on the 1st and 2nd of January while England gets only the 1st off.
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