Investigations of a Dog

From the Journal of the House of Lords, 19 December 1644:

Whereas some Doubts have been raised, whether the next Fast shall be celebrated, because it falleth on the Day which heretofore was usually called The Feast of the Nativity of our Saviour: The Lords and Commons in Parliament assembled do Order and Ordain, That Public Notice be given, that the Fast appointed to be kept on the last Wednesday in every Month ought to be observed, until it be otherwise Ordered by both Houses of Parliament; and that this Day particularly is to be kept with the more solemn Humiliation, because it may call to Remembrance our Sins, and the Sins of our Forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the Memory of Christ, into an extreme Forgetfulness of Him, by giving Liberty to carnal and sensual Delights, being contrary to the Life which Christ Himself led here upon Earth, and to the spiritual Life of Christ in our Souls; for the sanctifying and saving whereof, Christ was pleased both to take a human Life, and to lay it down again.

And from an affidavit given to Parliament on 7 January 1647:

That, in Pursuance of the Directory and the National Covenant, your Petitioner acquainted his People, the Lord’s-day before, that they should not observe Christmas-day, because a Penalty is laid on those Ministers who do not observe the Directory, and by it Holidays are not to be continued;

Meanwhile, the Church of Scotland had no official Christmas or Easter celebrations for nearly 400 years from 1560 to 1958 (Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, p. 179).

So there was a time when Christmas was banned in Britain, but it was done by British Christians who didn’t think the traditional festivities were Christian enough. It wasn’t changed to Winterval because of political correctness.

1. Andrew Ayton and Sir Philip Preston, The Battle of Crécy, 1346, New Ed. (Boydell Press, 2007).
2. Stephen Badsey, Doctrine and Reform in the British Cavalry 1880-1918 (Ashgate Publishing Limited, 2008).
3. Mildred Campbell, The English Yeoman: Under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts, New ed. (London: Merlin, 1960).
4. Ian Gadd, John Stow (1525-1605) and the Making of the English Past, illustrated edition. (British Library Publishing Division, 2004).
5. Paul Griffiths and Mark S. R. Jenner, eds., Londinopolis : essays in the social and cultural history of early modern London (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000).
6. Julia F. Merritt, ed., Imagining early modern London: perceptions and portrayals of the city from Stow to Strype, 1598-1720 (Cambridge: CUP, 2001). 
   

Believe it or not, these are all somehow related to an essay about cavalry, horses and social status that I’m writing for an edited collection. Overambitious? Moi?