Attempts to ban Christmas festivities have been with us for centuries, says ted vallance |
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Arecent survey has claimed (on rather shaky evidence) that three in four bosses are banning Christmas decorations. Cue panto-season boos and hisses. Yet the reputed actions of these latter-day Scrooges are nothing compared to the efforts of Oliver Cromwell's Parliaments.
On Christmas Day 1656, Parliament met to consider further measures against what one MP called "this foolish day's solemnities". Puritans argued Christmas was a Catholic relic which, they not unreasonably suggested, simply provided an excuse for drunkenness and gluttony.
In 1646 Parliament's new form of public worship had explicitly outlawed the festival, and in 1647 the Commons had passed a law suppressing the feast, an ordinance that was re-issued throughout the 1650s.
These laws were, however, honoured more in the breach than the observance. There |
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Puritans argued Christmas was a Catholic relic, simply providing an excuse for drunkenness
and gluttony |
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were pro-Christmas riots in 1646 and 1647, shops and businesses were reportedly closed on Christmas Day in 1650, 1652 and 1656, and pubs did a roaring trade. In December 1652, one newspaper happily informed its readers that, with taverns full, Bacchus was "bearing the bell amongst the people".
In the same year, the Royalist highwayman and soldier, John Hind, wrote of a "Christmas lark" in which Hind, dressed as a woman, robbed a lecherous lawyer in a Chancery Lane brothel. One of the MPs attending the debate on December 25, 1656, complained that he "could get not rest all night" due to Londoners' raucous Christmas celebrations.
Those prone to getting in a lather about the supposed PC campaign to cancel Christmas should take encouragement from the ultimate failure of this earlier attempt. As soon as the monarchy was restored in 1660, the winter festivities were vigorously revived. Cromwell, the English Republic and the New Model Army had proved no match for Father Christmas, minced pies and plum pudding. 
FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 21, 2006
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