Christmas or Bah Humbug?

In Puritans at Play (1995), Bruce Colin Daniels writes "Christmas occupied a special place in the ideological religious warfare of Reformation Europe." Most Anabaptists, Quakers, Congregational and Presbyterian Puritans, he observes, regarded the day as an abomination while Anglicans, Lutherans, the Dutch Reformed and other denominations celebrated the day as did Roman Catholics. When the Church of England promoted the Feast of the Nativity as a major religious holiday, the Puritans attacked it as "residual Papist idolatry".<sup>[1]

William Bradford's life was one sad event after another.  It is no wonder that he out did Scrooge in his observance of Christmas.  When the Mayflower, after 64 days at sea, anchored in present-day Province-town Harbor, Bradford volunteered to explore a suitable site for settlement. His getting caught in a deer trap made by Native Americans, nearly hauled him upside down. When he got back to the ship with the exploration group, he discovered that his wife had flung herself overboard the Mayflower and drowned.  By December 23, 1620 the group began building the colony's first house. Of the 150 Pilgrims, 100 of them died in an epidemic of sickness. 

Perhaps we enlightened folks have commercialized Christmas to the point that I can see the reason that Bradford frowned on Christmas.  I don't think we have to go to war among ourselves over it. Saint Paul agonized over the Corinthians;  he no doubt would have gotten on Facebook today to set the people straight.  (All I know I read on Wikipedia</sup>