Fighting for the Right to Party at Christmas via JStor Daily [Shared]

Fighting for the Right to Party at Christmas via JStor Daily 

In the United States today, Christmas is mostly a family holiday dedicated to gift-giving and feasting. But for Catholics in early modern Europe, Yule, like a lot of other holidays, was a time for serious partying. That didn’t sit well with the growing Protestant Church, according to historian Margo Todd.

Todd examines festivities in Scotland, where Parliament officially adopted Protestantism in 1560. In the decades that followed this Reformation, she writes, the Reformed Kirk (Church) of Scotland “waged a stern and unremitting campaign against the celebration of Yule, Easter, May Day, Midsummer, and saints’ days; against feasting, whether at marriages or wakes; against Sunday sports and dancing and guising.” From the kirk’s perspective, these were all part of a popish culture and antithetical to the focus on Biblical study and prayer required by the nation’s new faith.

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