A Christmas Cornucopia: The Hidden Stories Behind Our Yuletide Traditions

by Mark Forsyth

But if you can’t find truth in both these stories, you may be looking for the Wrong Sort of Truth.

America was founded on the principle that Christmas doesn’t exist. You may hear other theories about religious freedom or colonial idealism or liberty or exploration, or other airy-fairy codswallop. But these fail to look at the cold, hard facts of the cold, hard Pilgrim Fathers who landed at Plymouth Rock. They were Puritans and Puritans hated Christmas.

Those Scrooges who are sickened when Christmas trees go up early, when Mariah Carey is singing in every shop and all around are cheerful children and angry adults, would have loved the early nineteenth century. In twenty out of the forty-five years from 1790 to 1835, The Times newspaper didn’t mention Christmas at all. Nothing. Nil.