Two, Two, Two Holidays in One

One of the underlying themes of my Church-State studies has been my identification of two traditions of American history, remembered differently by evangelical and the more secular leaning people in American society. Both point to accurate facts (and some misremembered things too) but they both have virtually no knowledge of the other tradition.

Enter Christmas. It two has two traditions, though most Americans straddle both, there is some conflict, again, between the most religious and the least religious Americans regarding Christmas. The problem of the two traditions comes from the fact that no one remembers what Christmas was like prior to the Reformation. Picture a winter Mardi Gras, a Christmas Carnival. It was a holiday celebrated in the community, it was raucous and sometimes bawdy. Early Portestants tried to reform Christmas, purging it of its Carnival flavor and pushing it back into a celebration of the birth of Jesus. The net effect of this was to ban what many people regarded as Christmas, the goose, the food and drink, the 12 days of Christmas feating and festival, the decorations, the communal holiday, and so forth. As a consequence two Christmas traditions took root, one the birth of Christ, the second the party. Skip to early 19th century America, where most Churches had no particular Christmas celebration. The Carnival Christmas was present, but rejected by many Americans. Part of the Carnival Christmas, as evidenced by some carols (bring us some figgy pudding, we won't go until we get some) was the tradition of the well off in the community providing gifts of food and drink to a merry crowd that went on a progress through the community. As a community tradition, it was bounded by the relationships that existed the rest of the year. If someone got out of hand, there would be consequences, because everyone knew who was who. Now imagine New York in the 1820's, a much more anonymous society than the English village, and the demands for the well off to give gifts to the poor took on the class consciouness of a newly industrializing society. The old progress tradition held that a well off person who refused any gifts was owed some mischief, but as I said, too much mischief would be a problem, because in the English village, you had to live with your neighbors. Halloween, another progress holiday, retains the "trick or treat" tradition, though the days of its progress are numbered, again because people don't know their neighbors. In the context of class hostility, poor workers had additional grievances against wealthy capitalists and in the anonymous city, where the religious and social leaders were put off by the Carnival Christmas, such displays were taken to be mobbish violence. I suspect there is some truth to it, but how much is hard to say. Either way, Christmas was re-invented on moral grounds, whereby one's gifts were not owed because you were poor, but because you were deserving. In The Night Before Christmas, the new popular Christmas was laid out, focused on neither the Christ child, nor on the raucous community party, but on Santa Claus. In keeping with the Cult of Domesticity, the locus of Christmas was not the community, but the family. So this new Christmas was one that took place within the family and emphasized right behavior for which rewards would follow. Its also no accident that these virtuous Protestants would attach the new Christmas to commerce, which was the source of their prosperity. And, New York being full of Dutch Calvinists, drew on the Dutch St Nicholas for this new American Christmas.

The new American Christmas was not opposed to a religious Christmas, but drew on broad cultural principles, rather than religious ones, because the Christmas that was being replaced, the Carnival Christmas was detached from religion, yet still thrived. And so, you find Santa Claus no where near a Church, but in places of commerce. Seperatly, the Christ is central to the Church Christmas, which is hardly surprising. Two Christmases. One cultural, and one religious. Most Americans celebrate them both and have some trouble telling where one ends and the other begins, or even that there are two of them. Some very religious people prefer only the religious Christmas and reject the cultural Christmas with its many pagan elements (tree, holly, mistletoe, wreath, yule log, elves, &c, &c) and its embrace of commerce. Some very secular people reject both Christmases, because any Christmas is too religious for them. One clearly could celebrate either, or both Christmases, and most Americans celebrate and happily enjoy both. But knowing the history of the two traditions of Christmas may explain some of the contraversy that arises this time of year about the so-called real meaning of Christmas, which often is an attempt to exclude the cultural Christmas, or the inclusiveness of Christmas, which strikes me as odd, since the cultural Christmas has only incidental religous overtones, and is pretty well secular (which is what provokes the highly religious).