Christmas celebrations

In the 17th century Christmas was a popular religious festival and holiday period. Like today, it was marked with the exchanging of gifts, feasting, carol singing, eating mince pies and general merriment. Also in common with today, this often led to over-indulgence and sometimes drunkenness.

Such excess was strongly contradictory to the sober Puritan values that dominated Parliament during the British Civil Wars (1642-51). Those who celebrated and enjoyed themselves were sinfully ‘giving liberty to carnal and sensual delights’. Instead, Parliament stressed that 25 December should be kept as a time of fasting and humiliation.

Puritans also objected to the Roman Catholic associations of Christmas; even to the word itself, as it suggested a form of mass.