Christmas: Christmas before the 1840s

English, Dutch, and German colonists approached the December holidays differently. Even among the English expatriates, attitudes toward Christmas varied according to religious sect. William Bradford, the Puritan governor of Plymouth Colony, in 1621 chastised non-Puritans for their revelries on “the day they call Christmasday.” Because nothing in the Bible identified December 25 as Christ’s birthday, Puritans viewed that date as simply another workday. There were no special foods, church services, or commemorations, an attitude shared by many Protestant denominations well into the nineteenth century. Puritans railed against mincemeat pie as “idolatrie in a crust.” The spices in the pie were believed to signify the luxuriously exotic gifts of the magi and to evoke popery. From 1659 to 1681, it was illegal to celebrate Christmas in Massachusetts, there being a five-shilling penalty for doing so. Analogous penalties were threatened against Dutch colonists who celebrated Saint Nicholas Day on December 6. In the seventeenth century, the Reformation government in Amsterdam tried to squelch the perceived disorder that arose from people congregating in public with “any kind of candy, eatables or other merchandise.” Most of the early Dutch settlers in America celebrated nonreligious New Year’s Day open houses, but there were only pockets of private Saint Nicholas observances.