Turkey, Anyone?
The day for families to gather together and enjoy each other in Spain, is Christmas. To be home for Christmas Eve is what Spaniards all over the world dream of. It's the evening to gather together around the table and eat till we get heartburn. It's when grandparents expect grandchildren they haven't seen since summer or the year before. It's when all the supermarkets close early and people have to be routed out of the aisles with last minute forgotten items. It's when brothers living hundreds of kilometers apart get together and remember childhood battles. It's when businesses close early and bars fill in the afternoon with pre-revelry toasts to friendships. It's the day we give thanks for what and whom we have.
But not in the United States. There, the day to get together is Thanksgiving. Yes, thank the Pilgrims. But thank the Pilgrims also for Christmas being in second place. Because the Pilgrims outlawed Christmas. They considered it a "popish" holiday, "having no Warrent in the Word of God," as was described in an English Directory of Public Worship, published as a guide during Cromwell's Puritan theocracy just twenty years after the Pilgrims had arrived at Plimouth Plantation. Granted that just before then, Christmas revelries in England resembled the Roman Saturnalia when the world was turned on its head and licentiousness was the order of the day. Those excesses were so revolting to the stricter-than-thou Puritans, that when they came into power after the defeat of Charles I at the end of the English Civil War, they did their best to outlaw it. The Puritans of the New World followed suit. On their first Christmas at Plimouth, they worked to build the first structure to shelter them against the elements. All Christmas celebrations were forbidden in the incipient Massachusetts colony until 1680. After that it became legal to celebrate it, but it was not a public holiday in Massachusetts until 1870, when it became a federal holiday and thus celebrated all throughout the United States. In 1869 students were still punished if they failed to show up to class in Boston public schools on Christmas Day.
In its stead, a day was set aside for giving thanks and reuniting the family at home. That was Thanksgiving. It is a very Puritan holiday. There used to be days of thanksgiving throughout the year, but they were days for fasting, giving thanks for what one had not truly appreciated, and giving in to God's will. The day or two after the day of fasting was when the colonists would cook large dinners. During colonial times it was common to call for a day of thanksgiving at odd times during the year. George Washington called for one at the end of the Revolutionary War, calling upon the new American nation to give thanks for the end of the war and the ratification of the Consitution. Given its Puritan origins, it was the northern states that generally celebrated days of thanksgiving. Until 1863, when, through the long imploring of writer Sarah Josepha Hale, Abraham Lincoln established the holiday of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. He asked Americans to beg God to "commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife." And so until now.
And so American families gather together at Thanksgiving, older than the Christmas celebration in the U.S., and its substitute in the first colonists' hearts. It's rather ironic to complain about the "war on Christmas" when that's just what American Protestant Christians have been waging for most of history.
But not in the United States. There, the day to get together is Thanksgiving. Yes, thank the Pilgrims. But thank the Pilgrims also for Christmas being in second place. Because the Pilgrims outlawed Christmas. They considered it a "popish" holiday, "having no Warrent in the Word of God," as was described in an English Directory of Public Worship, published as a guide during Cromwell's Puritan theocracy just twenty years after the Pilgrims had arrived at Plimouth Plantation. Granted that just before then, Christmas revelries in England resembled the Roman Saturnalia when the world was turned on its head and licentiousness was the order of the day. Those excesses were so revolting to the stricter-than-thou Puritans, that when they came into power after the defeat of Charles I at the end of the English Civil War, they did their best to outlaw it. The Puritans of the New World followed suit. On their first Christmas at Plimouth, they worked to build the first structure to shelter them against the elements. All Christmas celebrations were forbidden in the incipient Massachusetts colony until 1680. After that it became legal to celebrate it, but it was not a public holiday in Massachusetts until 1870, when it became a federal holiday and thus celebrated all throughout the United States. In 1869 students were still punished if they failed to show up to class in Boston public schools on Christmas Day.
In its stead, a day was set aside for giving thanks and reuniting the family at home. That was Thanksgiving. It is a very Puritan holiday. There used to be days of thanksgiving throughout the year, but they were days for fasting, giving thanks for what one had not truly appreciated, and giving in to God's will. The day or two after the day of fasting was when the colonists would cook large dinners. During colonial times it was common to call for a day of thanksgiving at odd times during the year. George Washington called for one at the end of the Revolutionary War, calling upon the new American nation to give thanks for the end of the war and the ratification of the Consitution. Given its Puritan origins, it was the northern states that generally celebrated days of thanksgiving. Until 1863, when, through the long imploring of writer Sarah Josepha Hale, Abraham Lincoln established the holiday of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November. He asked Americans to beg God to "commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife." And so until now.
And so American families gather together at Thanksgiving, older than the Christmas celebration in the U.S., and its substitute in the first colonists' hearts. It's rather ironic to complain about the "war on Christmas" when that's just what American Protestant Christians have been waging for most of history.
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