November 2, 2023 • 28 mins
Nowadays Christmas is a globally-recognized holiday celebrated by millions of people, but in the past this wasn't the case. In fact, some groups of Christians detested the holiday, going so far as to ban it completely. So what led Puritans to ban one of the most prominent celebrations in the Christian faith? In today's classic episode, the gang revisits the breakaway Christians that genuinely found Christmas un-Christian.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Noel, Oh my gosh, we're doing the classic episode. How
could we the audacity, the.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Audacity indeed, yeah, got some trips happening and holidays and
all of that good stuff. So we just wanted to
not leave you without your Ridiculous History fixed for today,
and so we're going to bring you a holiday classic already,
a classic about when the Puritans decided to maybe cancel Christmas?
What does that sound like to you? True?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Well, that's the thing. If you were to ask us,
if you were to say, Ben nol Max, Hello, what
holiday will you cancel? We would never say Christmas. But
the Puritans did.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, something to do with no scriptural basis for it.
But we'll get right into it in this classic episode
coming at you now.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. I know it's
(01:18):
so corny and and please just humor me for a second,
Super producer, Casey, can we have a little bit of
Christmas music?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Humbug? There? We are welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Folks. My name's Ben.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I don't like Christmas.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
You don't like Christmas?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
No, I'm the Grinch? What stole Christmas? And then ransomed
it back to the Little Who's of hoovel.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
The Grinch was very anti Christmas, at least at the
offset of the story. Did you see the Halloween special? Oh,
that one's that freaked me out when I was a kid.
Halloween is Grinch Night.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yes, it's a good one. It's a good one. It's
very psychedelic when he lets out all the spooks and
the ghosts and stuff and the hacking sacks or Holland
we're not talking about Halloween today. We're talking about Christmas.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Right, Christmas those for it and against it. If you
have in your life someone who is not a fan
of the holidays in general or this particular holiday, Christmas, right,
then you may enjoy this episode. Because when we think
of Christmas here in the West, we think of some
(02:31):
basic iconic things. The eulog, yeah, the yule log, Christmas tree,
cocoa Nativity scene right, rampant commercialism right right, the Coca cola, Santa.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Claus, and the Polar Bears, sometimes all in the same picture.
Sometimes it's the Santa Claus riding the Polar Bears. At
least that it's in my nightmares.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Right, And this is the age of the meme, So
we could just go ahead and throw in you know,
Jeff Goldbloom or Christopher Walkin, just.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Like in the mix.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Why not? It's a party all the time in ridiculous history,
and Christmas in the US, by a number of different metrics,
is a hugely important event, a hugely important annual event. Economically,
it's very important to both businesses and to governments right. Spiritually,
(03:21):
it's very important to people who practice Christianity, and even
for people who don't really consider themselves spiritually aligned with
the celebration of Christmas, they might still participate because a
lot of the traditions are fun. You know, you got
the stockings and the stuff in the stockings, You've got
(03:43):
Christmas presence. They're a huge thing. I personally, I don't
know about you know, but I personally remember growing up
with people who did not consider themselves Christian but celebrated
Christmas because they loved you know, the parties, and they
loved the gifts in the making marry.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
The gifts, Christmas gifts, both.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
With the tea and without.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, well, you know, it's hard to imagine a time
where this wasn't the case, where you know, the Santa
Claus riding polar bears on a sleigh of death was
not confronting you at every turn. But as it turns out,
Christmas did not used to be nearly as big a
deal as it is today.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Right, absolutely, And to explore this further, we are going
to take a trip back in time. Let's go to
let's go to what will later be called Cape Cod Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Should we time travel? I've done that in a one.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, let's go, all right, cool, here we are Noel.
It's sixteen twenty European colonists disembark from a ship called
the Mayflower with the aim of establishing a colony and
a new, better way of life in the new and
they wanted to leave a lot of things behind. One
(05:03):
of the things they wanted to leave behind was the
celebration of Christmas.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Not only just Christmas, but like everything associated with Christmas,
because to the Puritans it represented debauchery, frivolity, decadence, and
ultimately sinfulness.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Right m hmm, yeah, so quick and dirty. Background on
Puritans and Puritanism. It was a reform movement that arose
in the Church of England in the late sixteenth century,
and the Church didn't like it. The Crown didn't like it.
And this you know in many ways provided the motivation
for these colonists to leave and seek a different life
(05:48):
in the new world. And without going too far into it,
I do want to note this, this is pretty interesting.
The word Puritan was actually used as a pejorative. The
word came from the enemies of Puritanism. They were also
sometimes called precisionist. And boy howdy did they have a
(06:11):
bone to pick or a beef to stew with Christmas?
They didn't understand it. They said, the harvester are done,
the cattle or slaughtered. They want to be fed in winter.
This means there's fresh meat and fresh wine as well
as a lot of time off in abundance, right. And
one of their primary issues with this decadence, aside, was
(06:32):
that the Bible, they said, no specific date for the
birth of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah. It's really interesting too, because there were non Puritans
in these camps. In fact, a man named William Bradford,
in his journal called of Plymouth Plantation, made a note
of a disagreement that arose between him and some newly
arrived non Puritans on Christmas of six teen twenty one,
(07:01):
and it goes like this. One the day called Christmas Day,
the governor called them out to work, but most of
this new company excused themselves and said it went against
their conscience to work on that day. So the governor
told them that if they made it matter of conscience,
he would spare them till they were better informed. Later
he found them in the street at play openly, some
(07:24):
pitching the bar and some at stool ball and such
like sports. So he went to them and took away
their implements and told them that was against his conscience
that they should play and others work. If they made
the keeping of it matter of devotion, let them keep
their houses, but there should be no gaming or reveling
(07:45):
in the streets since which time nothing hath been attempted
that way, at least openly. It was like, you know, hey,
if you gotta play at stoolball and frolic, do it
behind closed doors. Man, No one wants to see that.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Keep it, yeah, bit under wraps, keep it in the house.
That was a great read, and noll And it's true
the governor in this case Bradford is not being a
unique pill all on his own. The puritance thought that
what was going on in England was not just a
sign of debauchery for Christmas time and for the English.
(08:22):
But it was a sign of the decline of civilization
and a decline of all the things that had any
value whatsoever. This comes from a history professor named Penn
Ristad who wrote a pretty fascinating book called Christmas in America,
a History. So they thought they weren't just being fuddy duddies.
They thought they were saving Western civilization and the good
(08:46):
things of English society. And at first it sounds like
he's kind of tolerant, where he says, you know, until
you know better, it's okay, do what you want. But man,
he just couldn't take him playing out in the streets.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
That didn't last long, though, Ben, because in sixteen fifty nine,
on May eleventh, be precise, the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature
passed an official ban on Christmas, and anyone found celebrating
it would be fined five shillings. But we're getting ahead
of ourselves just slightly. This goes back farther to a
(09:23):
man named Oliver Cromwell.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yes, yeah, so there was a similar Christmas ban in
England during the rule of Oliver Cromwell, when Parliament was
controlled by a Puritan majority the Puritan Parliament decided to
make Christmas time a period of fasting and humiliation in
prayer and prayer, yes, for all the sins of previous Christmases.
(09:49):
And let's just point out this, Oliver Cromwell was no joke.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
He was one of the signers of King Charles the
First's death warrant which led to this admittedly brief English
Commonwealth and the ban that he imposed lasted nearly twenty years.
So for nearly two decades, Christmas carols were banned. Any
(10:15):
kind of open celebration of Christmas was banned, and yet
people held on to these traditions and had to kind
of take it underground. Right, But why did they hate Christmas? Ben?
I thought this was a celebration of the birth of
baby Jesus.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Well, again, they said, there's no specific date assigned to
it in the Bible, in their Holy text, so there's
nothing to celebrate in their opinion, and they saw it
as just, you know, everybody using the holidays and the
excuse to create their own Las Vegas.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, but what's the origins of Christmas? Ben? We know
that it was accused of being too aligned with pagan traditions,
but where where does all that come from? And how
did December twenty fifth become a thing? Oh?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Oh man, okay, this is this is a twisted tale.
You can actually hear an interesting take on this from
our other show stuff. They don't want you to know.
We have a piece about the strange origins of Christmas,
and Noel, you are absolutely correct. A lot of the
things considered Christmas traditions today arose independently hundreds of years
(11:28):
after the era of Jesus Christ, and they come from
pre existing religions or folk beliefs.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Right, Yeah, I was playing a little koy. I actually
found this great paper called How December twenty fifth Became
Christmas by Andrew McGowan, which originally appeared in The Bible
Review in December of two thousand and two, and he
says that celebrations of Jesus' birth and the Nativity and
all that are not mentioned anywhere in the Gospels or acts,
(11:59):
and that one of the only references to a timing
a time frame for Jesus birth was this notion of
shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the
news of Jesus birth, which is from Luke to eight
and that suggested actually that this took place during the
spring lambing season. But McGowan says, most scholars say it's
(12:24):
sort of a mistake to try to pull a specific
date out of this kind of circumstantial evidence, right, And
I mean it's very vague.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Christmas itself, the celebration as we would understand it, and
the customs that a lot of Puritans would have been
familiar with, it's all the result of this agglomeration of
different preexisting festivals, pagan festivals in many cases that were
later co opted in some way by the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, there was one particular called Saturnalia that took place
in late December and aligned with the winter solstice, and
the Roman emperor Eurolian actually established this other feast of
the birth of Saul Invictus, or the Unconquered Sun, and
that was on December twenty fifth. So mcgallan argues that
(13:27):
it was a spin off from these pagan solar festivals.
Christmas was in fact the spinoff. And there are two
theories of how Christmas became the Christmas that we know today,
one of which is more popular than the other, and
that is that early Christians chose these dates to coincide
(13:48):
with these pre existing they would refer to as barbarian
kind of holidays Roman holidays, so that they could kind
of encourage Christianity to spread because they'd be like, well,
it's the same, it happens around the same time. I
might as well just do this new Christmas thing instead
of you know, the old ways. But it was a
little easier to swallow. But then he goes on to
(14:10):
say that there are problems with this that doesn't appear
in any early Christian writings, and that to this day
it's not one hundred percent sure why December twenty fifth
became the day we celebrate Christmas, but it is.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Pretty compelling to note that there were, you know, in
these pre existing sun worship based you know, religions or
sets of beliefs like Mithraism, the Roman religions. James Fraser
had this pretty conclusive take on it, at least in
his opinion. He said, the largest pagan religious cult that
(14:43):
fostered the celebration of December twenty fifth as a holiday
was the pagan sun worship Mythraism, and their winter festival
was called the Nativity of the Sun. And if they
like other civilizations or other belief systems. We're keeping the
twenty fifth of December as a sacred day. To them
was the birthday of the sun. Essentially, then this idea
(15:06):
of co opting makes perfect sense. It's easier to say
yes to that, and it's a practice that's common. It's
called religious syncretism. So, for instance, when let's say you
have a pre existing religion, right, and you want to proselytize,
you want to travel and spread the good news, and
(15:27):
you go to a land where no one has ever
heard of your religion, but they have their own religion.
Then you start saying, oh, that God you worship is actually,
you know, Saint Jiminy Crickets whatever, I'm making up a religion.
And you say, the whole time you've been practicing this religion,
let me just show you what to call it.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Absolutely, it seems like a potentially successful.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Ruse, right, or you know, is it even a ruse?
To the Puritans, it was, and they thought they were
not going to be fooled. But if we returned to
the colonies in the New World at this time, we
find that people were divided. The Puritans were playing fun police.
They kept a stranglehold on fun in New England, but
(16:13):
not all of what would become America was against the idea.
Settlers in the southern parts like Jamestown, Virginia had no
problem celebrating Christmas, and the ban that the Puritans attempted
was ultimately well, obviously spoiler alert for anyone listening to
this in twenty seventeen, it didn't work. People still celebrate
Christmas in the United States. But the ban itself, while
(16:35):
it was enforced, was also never completely successful, which is
something we see happen a lot with any sort of prohibition.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, and back to that ban that they instituted in
Boston in sixteen fifty nine, and like I said, it
was just if you were found celebrating Christmas, you'd be
fined five shillings. Shillings, Yeah, five shillings. And then here
is the language of that for preventing disorders arising in
several places within the jurisdiction by reason of some still
(17:02):
observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries.
To the great dishonor of God and offense of others,
is therefore ordered that whosoever shall be found observing any
such day as Christmas or the like, either by four
bearing of labor, feasting, or any other way. Upon such account,
as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for
(17:26):
every such offense five shillings as fine to the county, beautiful,
very grinch like in him.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yes, And they were attaching a financial incentive there, so
that the law actually had.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Teeth, you know. And that band actually remained in place
for twenty two years and then was abolished in sixteen
eighty one. And that's because there was this influx of
European immigrants that really insisted upon Christmas.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Right, and the society was changing at a different pace
in different parts.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Of the world.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So it was changing at a slower rate in New
England and more rapidly in the Middle colonies. In the south,
there was a need for pluralism and social harmony, so
people began coming together culturally to celebrate Christmas. Yet the
status of the holiday it was still haphazard, and there
wasn't a huge amount of harmony in the specific traditions
(18:25):
that they practiced.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, and even after this coming together that you're talking about,
it still took a while before Christmas became entrenched the
way it is today as far as like a national holiday.
Congress was in session on Christmas of seventeen eighty nine,
and that was the year after the Constitution was ratified.
The Senate worked on Christmas of seventeen ninety seven. The
House met on Christmas of eighteen oh two, so this
(18:48):
was not a big deal yet.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, it wasn't until later in the nineteenth century that
Christmas began to shape up into something that the average
person in twenty seventeen would recognize. Different religions and denominations
emerged in America and they held Christmas both as a
holy day and a day of celebration. The Puritans took notice.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, and our author friend Penn Rostad of Christmas in America,
a History, said this, the Puritans are sort of being
introduced to varieties of religious experiences that can't help but
start to kind of wear away one's commitment to a
single way of thinking. So, in other words, you know,
different religions formed in local governments, and there was this
(19:34):
kind of give and take between different networks that helped
kind of calm down some of these animosities and biases
between these different groups. And then in eighteen seventy two,
hundred and fifty years after Plymouth Rock, the US declared
Christmas and national holiday.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
And it happened. This declaration happened because of compelling economics,
the emergence of a middle class. The idea of giving
and receiving Christmas give took hold when people had the
ability to afford such exchanges, right, and then there was
this symphasis on hanging at home and hanging with your family.
(20:12):
So no more stool ball in the street, no more
frolicking in the street.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
And you know, Christmas today still involves a fair amount
of gluttony and boozing, you know, depending on your if.
I don't know about your family, but it certainly doesn't mind.
But I guess we found kind of a middle ground.
So it's not like we're going door to door. I
meant to mention this earlier, but in the early days
of Christmas in England, begging wash sailing they called it.
(20:38):
It involved going door to door to wealthy people's houses,
begging for food and at times if they refused you
you would like barge into their homes and like clockwork
or in style and start like trashing the place. You know.
So we've come a long way.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
We have come a long way. We were looking off
air into some other unique and interesting Christmas traditions from
outside of the United States. Of course, honorable mention to
Crampis and Crampis's spot kind of got blown up a
(21:17):
few years ago here.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
In the US. Everybody knew about it.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
There are multiple films. There's the poop log, a Catalan
custom in Spain where they hollow out this log, they
add legs in a face and you have to feed
it every day here check this out. You have to
feed him every day leading up to Christmas, starting on
December eighth, And then you sing a song while you're
(21:43):
feeding him. And the song is like poop log, poop log,
hazel nuts and cottage cheese. If you don't poop, well,
I'll hit you with a stick poop log true story.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, you put the
poop log in the fireplace and beat him with sticks
until he poops out small candies, fruits and nuts that
you've been feeding them.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, that does. Stuff does kind of stick around in
your poop. Where how do we get here?
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Weird Christmas traditions?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Do you know about bell Schnickel? Tell me about bell Schnickel,
for there's different versions of bellsnickel that appear in different culture.
Is like it was preserved even in the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition.
But I think you would put out a pair of shoes,
and he would put candy in streets and small gifts,
and I think it was his job to let Santa
know if you'd been behaving or not.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Oh okay, he was a kind of a lieutenant and informer.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
He definitely is pictured as this. It looks kind of
like a trapper, like a fur trapper, you know, and
he's carrying around this bundle of sticks. And I'm having
a hard time finding precise mention of this, but that
was the Dwight thing in the office where he's whipping
people with these sticks. So, you know, a patently unpleasant
depiction of jolly old Saint Nick.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
That's that's interesting. I want to learn more about that,
and thank you for interesting you see it? To me,
my favorite weird Christmas tradition for years running now has
been KFC in Japan.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
You know about this, right, Well, didn't we me and
you and Matt from our other show stuff. I don't
want you to know we had fried chicken on Christmas.
That's right, we did.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I'm told you that.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Let's hear about it.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
So the celebration of Christmas in Asia often has often
involves imported Western traditions, but in Japan, a lot of
those traditions were shaped by commercial interests. So the holiday
in Japan has an emphasis on romantic love and it's
a day you spend with your sweetie. You know, bakery
sell Christmas cakes, but the big thing is Kentucky Fried Chicken.
(23:42):
People order special holiday Kentucky Fried Chicken meals. It's a tradition.
It's like the busiest time of year for KFC in Japan.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Where does this come from? Ben?
Speaker 1 (23:52):
That's my question, And it might have to be another episode,
But I hope somebody will write in and let us
know where ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com, let us know
about your experience with KFC in Japan, and if you
live in Japan, well, I'm really curious. Is it the
same kind of KFC that we have here in the
States or is it inherently better?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I don't know. I don't know either, but we do
know this.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Although the ban on Christmas never was entirely successful, there
are still groups out there today who consider themselves Christian,
and because they are Christian, they believe they should not
celebrate Christmas. They also think that, you know, everything about
it is ultimately a pagan tradition, bringing in the tree, right,
(24:40):
that's not a biblical thing.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Also, things like Holly and Ivy. We were talking with
Casey superproducer Casey Pegrim before we started recording about how
I didn't It didn't until recently occur to me how
kind of pagany those lyrics are. It's like the rising
of the sun and the running of the deer. You know,
it's this very has this kind of mystical you know,
(25:03):
almost Sylvan Woodland kind of vibe to it, you know exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And the concerns here are valid and they're real. For
people who feel like it is an appropriation of their
actual religion, then the logic internally is clear. You wouldn't
celebrate Christmas if that's what you believe.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, and what if you're like a modern day pagan,
I mean that is a thing. People still hold those
old traditions and take them very seriously, and Solstice rituals
and the like, And there's probably a sense there that
a lot of that's been kind of co opted, and
they are made to feel like what they're doing is
in some way wicked.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Right, And you know, one thing that I can stand
behind is freedom of holidays. People should be allowed to
celebrate whatever they want. I just think it's a wrong
move to ban somebody from a celebration if they're not
hurting anyone.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Well, as we know from this story. I mean, you
can ban it all day long. People are still gonna
do it. Frolic they might, they might just trip have
to frolic in secret. The devil seschet. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
I don't know why I keep using that phrase, but
for now, this is going to conclude I guess our
very first holiday episode.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, so you know, merry melodies to all.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Happy holidays to you and yours.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yes, indeed. Yeah, what's this war on Christmas? I keep
hearing about. How's that going? Ah?
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, that's when they write an x Mas instead of Christmas.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
That is sad, shame.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, it's a It's a real issue for a lot
of people. I'd be interested to hear what you think,
friends and neighbors. Do you believe that there's a war
on Christmas? I'm candidly I'm a little more interested in
hearing any weird Christmas traditions that your family celebrates. Did
you ever hear this Christmas pig thing? No, it's going
(26:57):
to introduce me to it. They take like a pig
and they put it in this sack. It's like a
little pig made out of candy, pink pig, and then
they break it with a little hammer. I was at
a friend's house for Christmas and I still haven't found
anybody else who's heard of that.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Sounds made up. No, they did it.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
They had the pig.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
That's the thing about traditions, though they can be made up,
many of them, they're all made up. It's just like,
what do you do what works for you? Please let
us know ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also
drop us a note on Facebook or Instagram, leave us
a comment. We're gonna start getting into that Instagram ourselves
a little more. We've been kind of just posting previews
to episodes. Let us know what kind of stuff you
(27:37):
want to see. If if there's you know, you want
some candid shots of Ben and I writing roller coasters
together on the weekend, we do it.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
It's been known to happen all true, all true, And
if you have a tradition that you think your fellow
listeners would enjoy celebrating.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Let us know, and most importantly, come on back and
join us for the next episode of Ridiculous History, and
you know, have a nice time off. We'll see you
next time. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Noel, Oh my gosh, we're doing the classic episode. How
could we the audacity, the.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Audacity indeed, yeah, got some trips happening and holidays and
all of that good stuff. So we just wanted to
not leave you without your Ridiculous History fixed for today,
and so we're going to bring you a holiday classic already,
a classic about when the Puritans decided to maybe cancel Christmas?
What does that sound like to you? True?
Speaker 1 (00:28):
Well, that's the thing. If you were to ask us,
if you were to say, Ben nol Max, Hello, what
holiday will you cancel? We would never say Christmas. But
the Puritans did.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Yeah, something to do with no scriptural basis for it.
But we'll get right into it in this classic episode
coming at you now.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. I know it's
(01:18):
so corny and and please just humor me for a second,
Super producer, Casey, can we have a little bit of
Christmas music?
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Humbug? There? We are welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Folks. My name's Ben.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
I don't like Christmas.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
You don't like Christmas?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
No, I'm the Grinch? What stole Christmas? And then ransomed
it back to the Little Who's of hoovel.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
The Grinch was very anti Christmas, at least at the
offset of the story. Did you see the Halloween special? Oh,
that one's that freaked me out when I was a kid.
Halloween is Grinch Night.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
Yes, it's a good one. It's a good one. It's
very psychedelic when he lets out all the spooks and
the ghosts and stuff and the hacking sacks or Holland
we're not talking about Halloween today. We're talking about Christmas.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
Right, Christmas those for it and against it. If you
have in your life someone who is not a fan
of the holidays in general or this particular holiday, Christmas, right,
then you may enjoy this episode. Because when we think
of Christmas here in the West, we think of some
(02:31):
basic iconic things. The eulog, yeah, the yule log, Christmas tree,
cocoa Nativity scene right, rampant commercialism right right, the Coca cola, Santa.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Claus, and the Polar Bears, sometimes all in the same picture.
Sometimes it's the Santa Claus riding the Polar Bears. At
least that it's in my nightmares.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Right, And this is the age of the meme, So
we could just go ahead and throw in you know,
Jeff Goldbloom or Christopher Walkin, just.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Like in the mix.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Why not? It's a party all the time in ridiculous history,
and Christmas in the US, by a number of different metrics,
is a hugely important event, a hugely important annual event. Economically,
it's very important to both businesses and to governments right. Spiritually,
(03:21):
it's very important to people who practice Christianity, and even
for people who don't really consider themselves spiritually aligned with
the celebration of Christmas, they might still participate because a
lot of the traditions are fun. You know, you got
the stockings and the stuff in the stockings, You've got
(03:43):
Christmas presence. They're a huge thing. I personally, I don't
know about you know, but I personally remember growing up
with people who did not consider themselves Christian but celebrated
Christmas because they loved you know, the parties, and they
loved the gifts in the making marry.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
The gifts, Christmas gifts, both.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
With the tea and without.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, well, you know, it's hard to imagine a time
where this wasn't the case, where you know, the Santa
Claus riding polar bears on a sleigh of death was
not confronting you at every turn. But as it turns out,
Christmas did not used to be nearly as big a
deal as it is today.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Right, absolutely, And to explore this further, we are going
to take a trip back in time. Let's go to
let's go to what will later be called Cape Cod Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
Should we time travel? I've done that in a one.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Yeah, let's go, all right, cool, here we are Noel.
It's sixteen twenty European colonists disembark from a ship called
the Mayflower with the aim of establishing a colony and
a new, better way of life in the new and
they wanted to leave a lot of things behind. One
(05:03):
of the things they wanted to leave behind was the
celebration of Christmas.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Not only just Christmas, but like everything associated with Christmas,
because to the Puritans it represented debauchery, frivolity, decadence, and
ultimately sinfulness.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Right m hmm, yeah, so quick and dirty. Background on
Puritans and Puritanism. It was a reform movement that arose
in the Church of England in the late sixteenth century,
and the Church didn't like it. The Crown didn't like it.
And this you know in many ways provided the motivation
for these colonists to leave and seek a different life
(05:48):
in the new world. And without going too far into it,
I do want to note this, this is pretty interesting.
The word Puritan was actually used as a pejorative. The
word came from the enemies of Puritanism. They were also
sometimes called precisionist. And boy howdy did they have a
(06:11):
bone to pick or a beef to stew with Christmas?
They didn't understand it. They said, the harvester are done,
the cattle or slaughtered. They want to be fed in winter.
This means there's fresh meat and fresh wine as well
as a lot of time off in abundance, right. And
one of their primary issues with this decadence, aside, was
(06:32):
that the Bible, they said, no specific date for the
birth of Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Yeah. It's really interesting too, because there were non Puritans
in these camps. In fact, a man named William Bradford,
in his journal called of Plymouth Plantation, made a note
of a disagreement that arose between him and some newly
arrived non Puritans on Christmas of six teen twenty one,
(07:01):
and it goes like this. One the day called Christmas Day,
the governor called them out to work, but most of
this new company excused themselves and said it went against
their conscience to work on that day. So the governor
told them that if they made it matter of conscience,
he would spare them till they were better informed. Later
he found them in the street at play openly, some
(07:24):
pitching the bar and some at stool ball and such
like sports. So he went to them and took away
their implements and told them that was against his conscience
that they should play and others work. If they made
the keeping of it matter of devotion, let them keep
their houses, but there should be no gaming or reveling
(07:45):
in the streets since which time nothing hath been attempted
that way, at least openly. It was like, you know, hey,
if you gotta play at stoolball and frolic, do it
behind closed doors. Man, No one wants to see that.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Keep it, yeah, bit under wraps, keep it in the house.
That was a great read, and noll And it's true
the governor in this case Bradford is not being a
unique pill all on his own. The puritance thought that
what was going on in England was not just a
sign of debauchery for Christmas time and for the English.
(08:22):
But it was a sign of the decline of civilization
and a decline of all the things that had any
value whatsoever. This comes from a history professor named Penn
Ristad who wrote a pretty fascinating book called Christmas in America,
a History. So they thought they weren't just being fuddy duddies.
They thought they were saving Western civilization and the good
(08:46):
things of English society. And at first it sounds like
he's kind of tolerant, where he says, you know, until
you know better, it's okay, do what you want. But man,
he just couldn't take him playing out in the streets.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
That didn't last long, though, Ben, because in sixteen fifty nine,
on May eleventh, be precise, the Massachusetts Bay Colony legislature
passed an official ban on Christmas, and anyone found celebrating
it would be fined five shillings. But we're getting ahead
of ourselves just slightly. This goes back farther to a
(09:23):
man named Oliver Cromwell.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
Yes, yeah, so there was a similar Christmas ban in
England during the rule of Oliver Cromwell, when Parliament was
controlled by a Puritan majority the Puritan Parliament decided to
make Christmas time a period of fasting and humiliation in
prayer and prayer, yes, for all the sins of previous Christmases.
(09:49):
And let's just point out this, Oliver Cromwell was no joke.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
He was one of the signers of King Charles the
First's death warrant which led to this admittedly brief English
Commonwealth and the ban that he imposed lasted nearly twenty years.
So for nearly two decades, Christmas carols were banned. Any
(10:15):
kind of open celebration of Christmas was banned, and yet
people held on to these traditions and had to kind
of take it underground. Right, But why did they hate Christmas? Ben?
I thought this was a celebration of the birth of
baby Jesus.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
Well, again, they said, there's no specific date assigned to
it in the Bible, in their Holy text, so there's
nothing to celebrate in their opinion, and they saw it
as just, you know, everybody using the holidays and the
excuse to create their own Las Vegas.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, but what's the origins of Christmas? Ben? We know
that it was accused of being too aligned with pagan traditions,
but where where does all that come from? And how
did December twenty fifth become a thing? Oh?
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Oh man, okay, this is this is a twisted tale.
You can actually hear an interesting take on this from
our other show stuff. They don't want you to know.
We have a piece about the strange origins of Christmas,
and Noel, you are absolutely correct. A lot of the
things considered Christmas traditions today arose independently hundreds of years
(11:28):
after the era of Jesus Christ, and they come from
pre existing religions or folk beliefs.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
Right, Yeah, I was playing a little koy. I actually
found this great paper called How December twenty fifth Became
Christmas by Andrew McGowan, which originally appeared in The Bible
Review in December of two thousand and two, and he
says that celebrations of Jesus' birth and the Nativity and
all that are not mentioned anywhere in the Gospels or acts,
(11:59):
and that one of the only references to a timing
a time frame for Jesus birth was this notion of
shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the
news of Jesus birth, which is from Luke to eight
and that suggested actually that this took place during the
spring lambing season. But McGowan says, most scholars say it's
(12:24):
sort of a mistake to try to pull a specific
date out of this kind of circumstantial evidence, right, And
I mean it's very vague.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Christmas itself, the celebration as we would understand it, and
the customs that a lot of Puritans would have been
familiar with, it's all the result of this agglomeration of
different preexisting festivals, pagan festivals in many cases that were
later co opted in some way by the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Yeah, there was one particular called Saturnalia that took place
in late December and aligned with the winter solstice, and
the Roman emperor Eurolian actually established this other feast of
the birth of Saul Invictus, or the Unconquered Sun, and
that was on December twenty fifth. So mcgallan argues that
(13:27):
it was a spin off from these pagan solar festivals.
Christmas was in fact the spinoff. And there are two
theories of how Christmas became the Christmas that we know today,
one of which is more popular than the other, and
that is that early Christians chose these dates to coincide
(13:48):
with these pre existing they would refer to as barbarian
kind of holidays Roman holidays, so that they could kind
of encourage Christianity to spread because they'd be like, well,
it's the same, it happens around the same time. I
might as well just do this new Christmas thing instead
of you know, the old ways. But it was a
little easier to swallow. But then he goes on to
(14:10):
say that there are problems with this that doesn't appear
in any early Christian writings, and that to this day
it's not one hundred percent sure why December twenty fifth
became the day we celebrate Christmas, but it is.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Pretty compelling to note that there were, you know, in
these pre existing sun worship based you know, religions or
sets of beliefs like Mithraism, the Roman religions. James Fraser
had this pretty conclusive take on it, at least in
his opinion. He said, the largest pagan religious cult that
(14:43):
fostered the celebration of December twenty fifth as a holiday
was the pagan sun worship Mythraism, and their winter festival
was called the Nativity of the Sun. And if they
like other civilizations or other belief systems. We're keeping the
twenty fifth of December as a sacred day. To them
was the birthday of the sun. Essentially, then this idea
(15:06):
of co opting makes perfect sense. It's easier to say
yes to that, and it's a practice that's common. It's
called religious syncretism. So, for instance, when let's say you
have a pre existing religion, right, and you want to proselytize,
you want to travel and spread the good news, and
(15:27):
you go to a land where no one has ever
heard of your religion, but they have their own religion.
Then you start saying, oh, that God you worship is actually,
you know, Saint Jiminy Crickets whatever, I'm making up a religion.
And you say, the whole time you've been practicing this religion,
let me just show you what to call it.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
Absolutely, it seems like a potentially successful.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Ruse, right, or you know, is it even a ruse?
To the Puritans, it was, and they thought they were
not going to be fooled. But if we returned to
the colonies in the New World at this time, we
find that people were divided. The Puritans were playing fun police.
They kept a stranglehold on fun in New England, but
(16:13):
not all of what would become America was against the idea.
Settlers in the southern parts like Jamestown, Virginia had no
problem celebrating Christmas, and the ban that the Puritans attempted
was ultimately well, obviously spoiler alert for anyone listening to
this in twenty seventeen, it didn't work. People still celebrate
Christmas in the United States. But the ban itself, while
(16:35):
it was enforced, was also never completely successful, which is
something we see happen a lot with any sort of prohibition.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, and back to that ban that they instituted in
Boston in sixteen fifty nine, and like I said, it
was just if you were found celebrating Christmas, you'd be
fined five shillings. Shillings, Yeah, five shillings. And then here
is the language of that for preventing disorders arising in
several places within the jurisdiction by reason of some still
(17:02):
observing such festivals as were superstitiously kept in other countries.
To the great dishonor of God and offense of others,
is therefore ordered that whosoever shall be found observing any
such day as Christmas or the like, either by four
bearing of labor, feasting, or any other way. Upon such account,
as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for
(17:26):
every such offense five shillings as fine to the county, beautiful,
very grinch like in him.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yes, And they were attaching a financial incentive there, so
that the law actually had.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Teeth, you know. And that band actually remained in place
for twenty two years and then was abolished in sixteen
eighty one. And that's because there was this influx of
European immigrants that really insisted upon Christmas.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
Right, and the society was changing at a different pace
in different parts.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Of the world.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
So it was changing at a slower rate in New
England and more rapidly in the Middle colonies. In the south,
there was a need for pluralism and social harmony, so
people began coming together culturally to celebrate Christmas. Yet the
status of the holiday it was still haphazard, and there
wasn't a huge amount of harmony in the specific traditions
(18:25):
that they practiced.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
Yeah, and even after this coming together that you're talking about,
it still took a while before Christmas became entrenched the
way it is today as far as like a national holiday.
Congress was in session on Christmas of seventeen eighty nine,
and that was the year after the Constitution was ratified.
The Senate worked on Christmas of seventeen ninety seven. The
House met on Christmas of eighteen oh two, so this
(18:48):
was not a big deal yet.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, it wasn't until later in the nineteenth century that
Christmas began to shape up into something that the average
person in twenty seventeen would recognize. Different religions and denominations
emerged in America and they held Christmas both as a
holy day and a day of celebration. The Puritans took notice.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
Yeah, and our author friend Penn Rostad of Christmas in America,
a History, said this, the Puritans are sort of being
introduced to varieties of religious experiences that can't help but
start to kind of wear away one's commitment to a
single way of thinking. So, in other words, you know,
different religions formed in local governments, and there was this
(19:34):
kind of give and take between different networks that helped
kind of calm down some of these animosities and biases
between these different groups. And then in eighteen seventy two,
hundred and fifty years after Plymouth Rock, the US declared
Christmas and national holiday.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
And it happened. This declaration happened because of compelling economics,
the emergence of a middle class. The idea of giving
and receiving Christmas give took hold when people had the
ability to afford such exchanges, right, and then there was
this symphasis on hanging at home and hanging with your family.
(20:12):
So no more stool ball in the street, no more
frolicking in the street.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
And you know, Christmas today still involves a fair amount
of gluttony and boozing, you know, depending on your if.
I don't know about your family, but it certainly doesn't mind.
But I guess we found kind of a middle ground.
So it's not like we're going door to door. I
meant to mention this earlier, but in the early days
of Christmas in England, begging wash sailing they called it.
(20:38):
It involved going door to door to wealthy people's houses,
begging for food and at times if they refused you
you would like barge into their homes and like clockwork
or in style and start like trashing the place. You know.
So we've come a long way.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
We have come a long way. We were looking off
air into some other unique and interesting Christmas traditions from
outside of the United States. Of course, honorable mention to
Crampis and Crampis's spot kind of got blown up a
(21:17):
few years ago here.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
In the US. Everybody knew about it.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
There are multiple films. There's the poop log, a Catalan
custom in Spain where they hollow out this log, they
add legs in a face and you have to feed
it every day here check this out. You have to
feed him every day leading up to Christmas, starting on
December eighth, And then you sing a song while you're
(21:43):
feeding him. And the song is like poop log, poop log,
hazel nuts and cottage cheese. If you don't poop, well,
I'll hit you with a stick poop log true story.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Wow. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
And on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day, you put the
poop log in the fireplace and beat him with sticks
until he poops out small candies, fruits and nuts that
you've been feeding them.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, that does. Stuff does kind of stick around in
your poop. Where how do we get here?
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Weird Christmas traditions?
Speaker 2 (22:10):
Do you know about bell Schnickel? Tell me about bell Schnickel,
for there's different versions of bellsnickel that appear in different culture.
Is like it was preserved even in the Pennsylvania Dutch tradition.
But I think you would put out a pair of shoes,
and he would put candy in streets and small gifts,
and I think it was his job to let Santa
know if you'd been behaving or not.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
Oh okay, he was a kind of a lieutenant and informer.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
He definitely is pictured as this. It looks kind of
like a trapper, like a fur trapper, you know, and
he's carrying around this bundle of sticks. And I'm having
a hard time finding precise mention of this, but that
was the Dwight thing in the office where he's whipping
people with these sticks. So, you know, a patently unpleasant
depiction of jolly old Saint Nick.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
That's that's interesting. I want to learn more about that,
and thank you for interesting you see it? To me,
my favorite weird Christmas tradition for years running now has
been KFC in Japan.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
You know about this, right, Well, didn't we me and
you and Matt from our other show stuff. I don't
want you to know we had fried chicken on Christmas.
That's right, we did.
Speaker 1 (23:16):
I'm told you that.
Speaker 2 (23:19):
Let's hear about it.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
So the celebration of Christmas in Asia often has often
involves imported Western traditions, but in Japan, a lot of
those traditions were shaped by commercial interests. So the holiday
in Japan has an emphasis on romantic love and it's
a day you spend with your sweetie. You know, bakery
sell Christmas cakes, but the big thing is Kentucky Fried Chicken.
(23:42):
People order special holiday Kentucky Fried Chicken meals. It's a tradition.
It's like the busiest time of year for KFC in Japan.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Where does this come from? Ben?
Speaker 1 (23:52):
That's my question, And it might have to be another episode,
But I hope somebody will write in and let us
know where ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com, let us know
about your experience with KFC in Japan, and if you
live in Japan, well, I'm really curious. Is it the
same kind of KFC that we have here in the
States or is it inherently better?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
I don't know. I don't know either, but we do
know this.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Although the ban on Christmas never was entirely successful, there
are still groups out there today who consider themselves Christian,
and because they are Christian, they believe they should not
celebrate Christmas. They also think that, you know, everything about
it is ultimately a pagan tradition, bringing in the tree, right,
(24:40):
that's not a biblical thing.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Also, things like Holly and Ivy. We were talking with
Casey superproducer Casey Pegrim before we started recording about how
I didn't It didn't until recently occur to me how
kind of pagany those lyrics are. It's like the rising
of the sun and the running of the deer. You know,
it's this very has this kind of mystical you know,
(25:03):
almost Sylvan Woodland kind of vibe to it, you know exactly.
Speaker 1 (25:07):
And the concerns here are valid and they're real. For
people who feel like it is an appropriation of their
actual religion, then the logic internally is clear. You wouldn't
celebrate Christmas if that's what you believe.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, and what if you're like a modern day pagan,
I mean that is a thing. People still hold those
old traditions and take them very seriously, and Solstice rituals
and the like, And there's probably a sense there that
a lot of that's been kind of co opted, and
they are made to feel like what they're doing is
in some way wicked.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Right, And you know, one thing that I can stand
behind is freedom of holidays. People should be allowed to
celebrate whatever they want. I just think it's a wrong
move to ban somebody from a celebration if they're not
hurting anyone.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Well, as we know from this story. I mean, you
can ban it all day long. People are still gonna
do it. Frolic they might, they might just trip have
to frolic in secret. The devil seschet. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
I don't know why I keep using that phrase, but
for now, this is going to conclude I guess our
very first holiday episode.
Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, so you know, merry melodies to all.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
Happy holidays to you and yours.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
Yes, indeed. Yeah, what's this war on Christmas? I keep
hearing about. How's that going? Ah?
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, that's when they write an x Mas instead of Christmas.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
That is sad, shame.
Speaker 1 (26:37):
Yeah, it's a It's a real issue for a lot
of people. I'd be interested to hear what you think,
friends and neighbors. Do you believe that there's a war
on Christmas? I'm candidly I'm a little more interested in
hearing any weird Christmas traditions that your family celebrates. Did
you ever hear this Christmas pig thing? No, it's going
(26:57):
to introduce me to it. They take like a pig
and they put it in this sack. It's like a
little pig made out of candy, pink pig, and then
they break it with a little hammer. I was at
a friend's house for Christmas and I still haven't found
anybody else who's heard of that.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
Sounds made up. No, they did it.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
They had the pig.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
That's the thing about traditions, though they can be made up,
many of them, they're all made up. It's just like,
what do you do what works for you? Please let
us know ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can also
drop us a note on Facebook or Instagram, leave us
a comment. We're gonna start getting into that Instagram ourselves
a little more. We've been kind of just posting previews
to episodes. Let us know what kind of stuff you
(27:37):
want to see. If if there's you know, you want
some candid shots of Ben and I writing roller coasters
together on the weekend, we do it.
Speaker 1 (27:47):
It's been known to happen all true, all true, And
if you have a tradition that you think your fellow
listeners would enjoy celebrating.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Let us know, and most importantly, come on back and
join us for the next episode of Ridiculous History, and
you know, have a nice time off. We'll see you
next time. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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