Clement Arthur Miles Quotes
Evergreen decorations were put up throughout the City of London, and the Lord Mayor and the City Marshall had to ride about setting fire to them.
Christmas was not celebrated in England universally until relatively modern times as in the United States. However for much of the history of England it was outlawed to celebrate Christmas. Generally, Catholics celebrated Christmas and Protestants opposed it. See {629839}, {629840}, {629847}, {629848}, {76420}.
Clement Arthur Miles, 1881-1918, English Historian, Writer & Translator, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, 1912
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Throughout the United Kingdom, there have been major traditional forces prohibiting the celebration of Christmas as a holy day or holiday. This carried over to America where Christmas was never a commonly celebrated day until modern times. The reason that this is important is when there were many legal battles of public schools and municipalities celebrating Christmas and exhibiting crèches and Christmas trees, several of the proponents argued the doctrine of originalism—namely that we should not declare unconstitutional anything that was common and accepted at the time of the Constitution’s writing, debating, and ratification. They argued that the First Amendment was not intended to cover celebrations of Christmas as the founding fathers would not have made unconstitutional that which was common. While the principle of originalism has advocates and critics, the originalism theory does not hold regarding Christmas because Christmas was not commonly celebrated in early America. In no state was Christmas a holiday, and there were jurisdictions that had actually outlawed the celebration of Christmas which was associated with Catholics and not all of them. See {629845}, {629843}, {629842}, {629844}, and {629845}.
In the case of Christmas celebrations, in addition to the huge commercial consequences, there is tradition and religion involved which brings out non-monetary vested interests as well. This is true in England as well as America.
Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan Parliament was opposed to the celebration of Christmas on religious grounds. See {629849} for more on the Puritans and Christmas. Generally, it was the Catholics who celebrated Christmas and typically they had a Christmas Mass. The anti-Catholic bias was so great that the Pope was often accused of being the Anti-Christ - a terrible insult.
