New England celebrates Chrismastide with right good will, nowadays—but it has not always done so.
The General Court of Massachusetts in 1695 enacted a law that “anybody who is found observing, by abstinence from labor, feasting or any other way, any such day as Christmas Day, shall pay for every offense five shillings.”
As early as 1621, Governor Bradford recorded that he administered rebuke to “certain lusty yonge men,” who “on ye day called Christmas Day, ye Gov-r called them out to worke excused themselves and said it was against their consciences to worke on ye day.” As a result of the rebuke, Brandford says:
“Since which time nothing has been attempted that way, at least openly.”
The ordinance prohibiting Christmas observance was repealed in Massachusetts in 1681.
From the front page of The Fayetteville Observer, Dec. 24, 1922.
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