Page:Our American Holidays - Christmas.djvu/20



With the rise of Puritanism the very existence of Christmas was threatened. Even the harmless good cheer of that season was looked upon as pagan, or, what was worse, Popish. ' Into what a stupendous height of more than pagan impiety,' cried Prynne (. . .) 'have we not now degenerated! ' Prynne's rhetoric, it will be seen, is not without an unconscious charm of humor. He complained that the England of his day could not celebrate Christmas or any other festival ' without drinking, roaring, healthing, dicing, carding, dancing, masques and stage-plays. . . . which Turkes and Infidels would abhor to practise.'

Puritanism brought over with it in the Mayflower the anti-Christmas feeling to New England. So early as 1621 Governor Bradford was called upon to administer a rebuke to ' certain lusty yonge men' who had just come