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Ghosts of Congregational Christmases Past: A Blog Roundup
by Jules Thomson, Associate Archivist & Social Media Manager
Taking my cue from Dickens's Ghost of Christmas Past, and because I am decidedly not a subject specialist, I want to highlight pieces that some of our former, significantly more knowledgeable, bloggers have written about Christmas in the Congregational tradition.
Did the Puritans celebrate Christmas?
The first "blog of Christmas past" is this 2011 essay by our former Executive Director and historian, Peggy Bendroth, in which she discusses the oft-maligned Puritan "ban" on Christmas. Given the contemporary allegations of a War on Christmas, it's interesting to consider that the Puritans were perhaps its most staunch footsoldiers.
Dr. Bendroth doesn't exactly refute the church fathers' aversion to celebration of the holiday (for an example, see this Cotton Mather sermon with a very long name) but she does attempt to contextualize their scroodgeyness as both an exhortation to spiritual piety, and as a reaction against the remarkable excesses of the Anglican court.
With its prodding of stereotypes, the essay is similar to our recent "myth busting" episodes around the Thanksgiving holiday, the Mayflower Compact, and modern misconceptions about the Puritans (coming soon!).
Congregational Christmas stories of the Gilded Age
Reader, I was floored by this 2015 essay, courtesy of Norman Erlendson and Joanna Albertson-Grove, in which they examine two childrens' Christmas stories published by The Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society in the 1890s.
Excerpts from the two amusing tales demonstrate "how the prevailing Gilded Age values of individual virtue and personal piety were woven into Christian stories for children". This philosophy was a reaction to, and rejection of, the concept of the Social Gospel, in which Christians were considered responsible for the betterment of society.
If A Christmas Carol, published several decades earlier in 1843, falls into this latter category with its implied critique of prisons, workhouses, and unchecked capitalist greed, the Congregational Sunday-School stories are decidedly anti-Dickensian in spirit, emphasizing personal salvation over social reform, charity and trickle-down largesse over systemic change. I can't be the only one who sees some modern relevance to these competing philosophies beyond their legacy within Congregationalism - demonstrating once again the CLA slogan that "History Matters," even history as encapsulated in a whimsical book of childrens' Christmas stories.
