Forget the Grinch, Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans really stole Christmas – and abolished it for 16 joyless years. It didn’t go well…
Imagine if Christmas were banned. No carols, no holly, no ivy – and certainly no pantos.
Plus the threat of arrest and jail if you start a Christmas party. Yet that is exactly what happened when King Charles I lost his throne in the 17th century.
The Catholic Charles’s attitude towards his politicians, who had the divine right to rule, had fueled the rise of republicanism and led to the outbreak of civil war in 1642.
In 1647, Oliver Cromwell had won and Charles was imprisoned in Hampton Court.
King Charles I in a portrait from around 1636. The Catholic Charles was dethroned by Puritans who found Christmas abhorrent
An illustration of the trial of King Charles I of England in 1649. He was beheaded that same year
Oliver Cromwell preaches to a Puritan congregation
Front cover of a 17th century satirical pamphlet, published during the interregnum, when Christmas festivities were banned by the Puritans
Cromwell and his Puritan followers called themselves the Lord Protector and set out on a mission to cleanse the nation of what they saw as its most decadent excesses.
And at the top of the list was Christmas with all its festive trappings.
Since the Middle Ages, Christmas has been celebrated in much the same way as it is today: December 25 was the holy day commemorating the birth of Christ, followed by a longer period of merriment, lasting until Twelfth Night on January 5.
Churches held special services, businesses respectfully kept shorter opening hours and people decorated their homes with holly, ivy and mistletoe, just as they do today.
Actors perform comic plays – the forerunners of the modern pantomime – and taverns and tap houses are packed with revelers.
Families and friends gathered to enjoy seasonal food and drink including turkey, mince pies, plum porridge and specially brewed Christmas beer. And communal singing about the holidays was all the rage.
However, for Cromwell and his fellow Puritans, this kind of behavior was not only abhorrent but also sinful.
Nowhere, they argued, had God called man to celebrate the birth of Christ in such a way.
And so an Act of Parliament in 1644 effectively banned the festival, followed in June 1647 by the Long Parliament passing an ordinance confirming the abolition of Christmas.
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell. His attempt to abolish Christmas did not go well
Richard Harris, right, as Oliver Cromwell in 1970. The suppression of Christmas sparked riots across the country
A Puritan town crier is sent to tell the citizens that Christmas celebrations are forbidden
A woman pays the penalty for celebrating Christmas too vigorously (by baking plum puddings!) in defiance of the decree of Parliament in Puritan-controlled Oxford during England’s civil war of the late 1840s, and is the court for her ‘crime’. ‘
It didn’t go well. Within days, rebellion broke out across the country. While some activities took the form of timidly hanging holly in the window, others took more direct action.
In Norwich, the mayor was presented with a petition demanding that Christmas should return.
Fearing for his life, he refused, but turned a blind eye to the celebrations that went ahead anyway. Later there were riots in Norwich in which many people died.
The annual Christmas football match was played defiantly in Canterbury, and festive holly bushes were prominently displayed outside people’s homes.
During the twelve days of Christmas the celebrations spread throughout Kent and armed force had to be used to break up the fun.
The streets of London were similarly decorated with holly and ivy and shops were closed against Cromwell’s orders to remain open.
The churchwardens of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, insisted that the Christmas services should go ahead in the church and were arrested for their insolence.
London’s mayor was attacked as he tried to tear down Christmas decorations with the help of the militia, but was powerless to stop young men armed with clubs as they patrolled the streets and convinced shopkeepers to stay closed.
It was a no-win situation for Cromwell.
Christmas celebrations suddenly became an act of rebellion against the po-faced Roundheads, and King Charles’s supporters secretly encouraged people to eat, drink and be merry – and make a nuisance of themselves.
At Christmas 1647 and again in 1648 the parties rioted and the riots led to an armed uprising, which in turn sparked the Second Civil War that summer.
Fed up with his incarceration and the joyless Christmases forced upon his subjects, King Charles had escaped from Hampton Court, only to be arrested again on the Isle of Wight.
Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, soldier, statesman and head of the newly proclaimed Commonwealth
Richard Harris, in costume, helmet in hand, and on horseback for the film ‘Cromwell’, 1970.
The Restoration of King Charles II – and Christmas – in 1660.
He was brought to trial and sentenced to death as “a tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy of the good people of this nation,” the citation said.
Under pressure from a rising wave of Protestantism, his downfall had been the belief that a monarch had the divine right to rule absolutely – he did not believe in power-sharing with parliamentarians – and failed to move with the times.
He spent his last Christmas under lock and key at Windsor Castle, and in January 1649, when the monarchy was officially abolished by Cromwell, he was executed in Whitehall.
The nation had to wait eleven long years until King Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660 before they got their Christmas holidays back.
But may they continue for a long time, under King Charles III!