Harvard Divinity School

Did you know that Christmas was illegal in Massachusetts from 1659 to 1681, and anyone caught celebrating the holiday would be subject to a fine of 5 shillings? And who was responsible for canceling Christmas? Was it pagans, or liberal policymakers, or the anti-religious? Nope, it was one of the most pious groups of people at the time: the Puritans. "Puritans abided by what's sometimes been called the regulative principle of Biblicism, which is that not only do you need to do what the Bible enjoins you to do, but you should avoid establishing, as practices of spiritual significance, things that the Bible does not expressly endorse," says HDS Professor David F. Holland. “And so the absence of Christmas in scripture was the primary source of the kind of Puritan concern about it and condemnation of it.” But there was also another big reason for the ban, namely that Christmas had a tradition of being a time of social disorder, similar to Carnival. And that disorder, drunkenness, irreverence, and often sexual l