Gerry Bowler - Christmas in the Crosshairs: Two Thousand Years of Denouncing and Defending the World’s Most Celebrated Holiday

Gerry Bowler

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Bowler, G. Q., 1948 author.

Title: Christmas in the crosshairs : two thousand years of denouncing and defending the worlds most celebrated holiday / Gerry Bowler.

Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2016. |

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016005102 (print) | LCCN 2016031263 (ebook) |

ISBN 9780190499006 (hardback : alk. paper) |

ISBN 9780190499013 (updf) |

ISBN 9780190499020 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: ChristmasHistory.

Classification: LCC BV45 .B684 2016 (print) | LCC BV45 (ebook) | DDC

263/.91509dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016005102

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

i would like to thank the staffs of the libraries of the University of Manitoba and Duke Divinity School for their assistance in providing the raw materials for this book. Thanks also to the students of my University of Manitoba Social History of Christmas class for their lively feedback. I am most grateful, however, for the wonderful teachers I have had in my life. This book is humbly and happily dedicated to Mrs. V. Hogg, Miss C. Kortes, Mr. W. Clark, Miss Robinson, Mr. K. Sauer, Mr. R. Rashley, and Professors M. Hayden, J. Fry, R. Grogin, L. Kitzan, G. Porter, and H. G. Koenigsberger. My gratitude comes too late on this mortal path for some of these worthies, but I hope to thank them personally in the Great Library beyond. Thanks also to Cynthia Read and Gina Chung, of Oxford University Press for their encouragement and deft editing, and to Martha Ramsey for her copyediting.

is there a war on Christmas? Of course there is. Bill OReilly says so, and John Gibson agrees. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights says so, and the American Family Association does too. It is a calculated and pernicious attack not only on the holiday but on Christianity itself.

Is there a war on Christmas? Of course not. Michelle Goldberg at Salon says it is a canard, and the New Yorker agrees. Jon Stewart mocks the notion, and the Guardian calls it nonsense. To claim there is such a war is an example of Christonormativity, a right-wing plot to bolster the ratings of Fox News and disguise the drive for Christian theocracy.

Is there a war on Christmas? Yes, indeed. In fact, there is a history of almost two thousand years of opposing, controlling, reforming, criticizing, suppressing, resurrecting, reshaping, appropriating, debating, replacing, and abolishing the worlds most popular festival. It continues to this very day, and that is what this book is about.

Christmas in the Crosshairs

Figure 1. Some historians believe that the dating of Christmas on December 25 was related to the Roman holiday of the Feast of the Unconquered Sun on that day. This coin minted in Gaul in 313 a.d. shows the first Christian emperor, Constantine, in front of a figure of Sol Invictus, who wears a radiant crown.

Figure 2. This representation of the month of December is from the Philocalian Calendar, the earliest document to record December 25 as the date of the Nativity. The calendar, also known as the Chronograph of 354 a.d ., was a manuscript prepared for Vitellius, a rich Roman Christian. Note the accessories for the celebration of Saturnalia: the dice and the festival mask. From Codex Vaticanus Barberini latinus 2154.

Figure 3. John Chrystostom, patriarch of Constantinople, struggled for years to get the Christian cities of the eastern Roman Empire to accept December 25 as the date of the Nativity of Jesus. From a mosaic in Hagia Sophia Cathedral, Istanbul.

Figure 4. The medieval custom of the boy bishop was one of the Christmas practices associated with misrule that governments attempted to suppress in the sixteenth century. This is a drawing of an effigy of a boy bishop in Salisbury Cathedral.

Figure 5. One of the fiercest Puritan opponents of Christmas was William Prynne. For his seditious writings he was condemned by the government of Charles I to imprisonment, branding on the face, and the cutting off of the ears. This portrait dates from 1640, after he had been freed from prison by Parliament. Engraving by Wenceslas Holler (16071677), date unknown, Wenceslar Hollar Digital Collection, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto.

Figure 6. The English government abolished Christmas celebrations from 1645 to 1660. The book The Examination and Trial of Old Father Christmas (London: 1658; reprinted 1678) defended the holiday as a boon to the poor and an expression of genuine religious sentiment. This page from the book shows Father Christmas in a fur-trimmed cap and robe that would be the basis of his costume, as imagined by artists, for centuries.