In the 4th Century, Western Civilization operated under the calendar promulgated by Julius Casesar (the Julian Calendar).  The first day of the year was March 25 and December, as indicated by its name, was the tenth month.  A nine-month period of human gestation from New Year’s Day (March 25) onward would culminate with a birth on December 25.  By the 7th century the Roman Catholic Church had designated March 25 as the Feast of the Annunciation, the day on which the Virgin Mary was told she would conceive a son to be called Jesus.

Ironically, Pope Gregory in 1582 proclaimed the modern calendar (the Gregorian Calendar) under which we now operate.  Catholic countries accepted it readily, but Protestant England deferred adoption until 1752.  This explains the confusion in dating American colonial events that occurred between January 1 and March 24.

Here in colonial New England, the Puritans and their Pilgrim neighbors in Plymouth rejected what they called the “Romish,” non-Biblical, arbitrary date of Christmas.  These English settlers also had other reasons for their campaign against Christmas.  In England, the day had become secularized and was often marked by drunkenness, gambling, and sexual promiscuity, so its ban prevented such societal disorder. 

The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston believed that the December date for Christmas was selected because it coincided with the pagan feast of Saturnalia, which the early Christians tried to transform into a celebration of their own religion.  Rhode Island’s Baptists and Quakers shared these beliefs.

So much for the traditional New England Christmas.  Fortunately, the Puritans and other local Protestant sects failed to perpetuate their views.  A brief commentary such as this cannot detail the evolution of Christmas in New England, but several Rhode Islanders played a role in that evolution.  In the early 1720s printers James and Ann Franklin published almanacs in Boston which boldly identified December 25 as Christmas Day.  By this and other acts of disrespect for civil and ecclesiastical authority in the pages of his newspaper, the New England Courant, James, the older brother of Benjamin, was jailed briefly for his opinions.  Like other Massachusetts dissenters, he and Ann came to Newport in 1726 to exercise their freedom of the press by printing the colony’s first newspaper, the Rhode Island Gazette.

In the 19th century two other Rhode Islanders helped shape the modern observance of Christmas in more significant ways than mere defiance.  Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863), son of a New York, Episcopalian minister and a professor of Greek and Hebrew at Columbia University, penned a Christmas poem for his children called “A Visit from St. Nicholas” which he published in 1844, around the time he retired to live permanently in Newport at 25 Catherine Street. 

Shortly after Moore’s death, German-American cartoonist Thomas Nast popularized the appearance of the St. Nicholas as described by Moore in his famous verses.  Thus, Moore and Nast combined their talents to produce America’s present image of Santa Claus as it first appeared in the widely read Harper’s Weekly Magazine, then edited by Providence-born George William Curtis (1824-1892), an author, orator, and civil service reformer called by his eulogist a “leader of the public conscience.”  Curtis was the grandson of U.S. Senator James Burrill, for whom our Rhode Island town is named.

European and Canadian immigration to New England added a strong religious dimension to our local Christmas observance augmenting the secular icon called Santa Claus.  Irish and German arrivals, followed by French-Canadian, Swedish, Portuguese, Polish, and Italian immigrants, made the holiday more Christ-centered, as it was in their homelands.  This condition prevailed for most of the 20th century.

But just as the moral zeal of the New England Puritans became a ghost of Christmas Past, so also has religious devotion decreased in the present day.  Consumers now compete with Christianity in the celebration of Christmas Present.  We have moved from the “bah humbug” of the Puritans to the bar code of the marketer.