UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS AND CHRISTMAS IN NEW ENGLAND
Introduction to the Christmas Service,
December 19, 2004
Noreen Kimball

So here we are, a bunch of Unitarian Universalists, and we’re about to celebrate Christmas. Now that might seem a little curious to you because most of us aren’t Christians, and some of us are about as far from being Christian as you can get. So, why Christmas? Well, there are lots of fine reasons. But a very good one is that it was the Unitarians, and even some Universalists, who actually rescued Christmas, and brought it to New England.

What do I mean by rescue? Well, Christmas got lost. In 17th century England, right about the time the Pilgrims started coming here to the New World, it was against the law to celebrate Christmas. The Puritans decided that since the Gospels didn’t actually did tell us the date of Jesus’ birthday, it was wrong to celebrate it. They figured if God wanted us to celebrate, he would have left us a hint about the date. So they put a stop to Christmas and the Puritans in New England did the same. As a matter of fact, in 1776, Washington’s army crossed the Delaware river on Christmas night and won a battle because the Hessian troops didn’t realize we’d be just fine about fighting during Christmas.

Now, not all the Pilgrims who came to America were Puritans. South of New England in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and the Carolinas, there were people who celebrated Christmas by drinking hard cider, playing cards, shooting off their guns, and going to cockfights and horse races. But around Boston, people went to work on Christmas just as they did any other day.

Then, in the early 1800’s, a few Unitarian ministers in the cities began to talk about Christmas in their churches. King’s Chapel in Boston actually held a Christmas celebration. The popular Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing celebrated Christmas and his friend, Charles Follen, a Unitarian minister and Harvard professor, introduced the Christmas tree from his native Germany to his congregation in Lexington. Out in the country churches, the Universalists were also beginning to celebrate Christmas. Now this wasn't the gun-shooting, card playing, drinking, Christmas, but a different, softer Christmas of singing carols, visiting families, and giving gifts. The son of a Unitarian minister, James Pierpont, wrote “Jingle Bells.” A Universalist political cartoonist, Thomas Nast, drew the first picture of the modern Santa Claus. The minister of the Unitarian Church in Wayland wrote “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Lots more Unitarians and Universalists contributed to restoring Christmas, including Charles Dickens who caught Unitarianism after a visit to New England. But the point, Richard Gilbert says, is that once a year we Unitarian Universalists “…do not take for literal what we should take for joy; we create a religion that not only makes sense, but also makes merry; we [continue] to insist upon thinking, but also think our way deep into the soul; and we take this season not so much as a time of the head, but as a time of the heart.”