There isn't actually a war on Christmas in the west, despite what you might have heard from talk radio and American right-wing news networks. If someone says "Happy holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas," it is not part of a secular-socialist conspiracy. The most common reason for using "festive season" and "holidays" in the broader news media is that we need more synonyms at this time of year, since writing Christmas, Christmas, Christmas, over and over again gets dull.
There have been wars on Christmas in the past, and even full bans in various places. But a surprising number of them have been launched by Christians.
During the early 1600s in England, the power of Puritans was rising, a process that would end with Charles I being shortened with an axe. At this period, wars of religion were raging in continental Europe, with Protestants and Catholics slaughtering one another with gusto. The hyper-Protestant Puritans and their allies wanted nothing to do with anything that smacked of Catholicism, and for a time they referred to the Dec. 25 holiday as Christtide, to remove the Catholic connotation of "mass."
The other side of their reason for ignoring, minimizing, re-naming or outright banning some Christmas celebrations was the nature of the celebrations.
For some, Christmas/ Christ-tide was for fasting and prayer. And for others, it was for eating, drinking, eating some more, going to plays, dancing, eating, drinking, throwing up, and maybe ice skating.
All of these (maybe excepting the ice skating) were seen as deeply immoral, and the 12 days of Christmas (which started on Dec. 25 and continued through into January, were seen as sinful.
In 1645, the Parliament under Oliver Cromwell outright banned all "holy days," eliminating all feasts and celebrations around Christmas and Easter. (Take that, freaky egg-laying bunny!) To the surprise of no one, many people ignored them, and kept up both their traditional religious and social customs.
The Puritan fury against Christmas fun also crossed the Atlantic Ocean, and early colonists around Boston again banned Christmas in the late 1600s. This ban stuck better, and through much of colonial history, Christmas was a relatively low-key affair, not being properly revived until the 1800s.
In the Soviet Union, with its official policy of trying to stamp out religion, Christmas fared about as well as any other religious festival.
Notably, the Soviets tried to control the Russian mythical gift-giving figure of Father Frost. This Santa-like old man is the embodiment of winter, and gives out his presents in person at New Year's celebrations.
However, he didn't turn up much between the Russian Revolution and 1937, when he was grudgingly allowed to return, as long as he didn't look too much like that capitalist monster, Santa Claus.
In more recent times, the attacks on Christmas have been about the way it's celebrated, much like the original Puritan complaints. Both secular and religious fans of the season complain that it is over commercialized, and that it's just turned into a season of shopping, not one for either faith or family.
That's undoubtedly true, but I suspect any attempts to get people to stop giving gifts and stressing about shopping would fare worse now than they would have in the 1600s. Cromwell may have been able to take on the royalist forces of Charles I, but how would he fare against the combined might of shopping mall Santas, Boxing Day sales, and the mighty Amazon. com? Matthew Claxton is a reporter for the Langley Advance.
