UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS AND CHRISTMAS IN NEW ENGLAND
Introduction to the Christmas Service
December 18, 2005
Noreen Kimball

Good morning. Christmas among other wonderful things, is definitely a time of song and story, and before we embark on our wonderful service today, I want to tell you just one or two of the many stories about Christmas.

For more than 300 years after Jesus’ birthday, there was no holiday of Christmas. Christians didn’t even know what day Jesus was born—at least, we’ll never know if they did, because in the year AD 303, Diocletian, Emperor of Rome, ordered all Christian writings destroyed. But later in that century when Constantine became emperor, there was a switch. Constantine ruled that all those pagan Romans had to become Christians. His reasons were fairly political and he himself wasn’t baptized until he was on his deathbed, but that’s a much longer story.

Now, it’s worth noting that one thing those Roman Pagans were particularly good at was holiday making. They had a couple of pretty lively holidays right in the middle of the winter. One was Saturnalia, when the masters and slaves changed places for a day and people gave gifts to one another. Actually, from what I’ve read, Saturnalia got pretty rowdy. Right after that came Brumalia, when the Romans celebrated the rebirth of the Sun. When Constantine made everyone turn Christian, folks wanted to keep having some midwinter holiday, so they decided to make one that celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ. And when they birthed that holiday that came to be known as Christmas, why, the holidaymakers borrowed a lot of the traditions, like gift-giving and decorating with evergreens, from the old, Pagan holidays.

But what does all that have to do with us? We’re Unitarian Universalists! What are we doing celebrating Christmas? That’s a legitimate question and actually, there are lots of fine reasons—the story of Jesus’ birth is a wonderful story; Christmas celebrates children, and we’re big on children. It’s a holiday that celebrates both peace and love, and we’re big on those, too. But a very good reason is one that you probably heard before, but it’s another story worth remembering. Because it was we Unitarians and Universalists who actually rescued Christmas, and brought it to New England.

And, I do mean rescue, because, Christmas had gotten lost. In 17th century England, 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, we weren’t supposed to celebrate it. They also knew the story of Constantine, and Saturnalia, and they figured the whole thing was just a lot of pagan nonsense with nothing truly religious about it, so they put a stop to Christmas. Now that was right about the time the Pilgrims started coming here to the New World, and the Puritans in New England made the celebration of Christmas a punishable crime. Around Boston, people went to work on Christmas just as they did any other day. And General Washington, knowing the Hessians would be celebrating Christmas when his troops would not be, choose Christmas night to cross the Delaware and win the battle!

Then, in the early 1800’s, a few Unitarian ministers in the cities began to talk about Christmas in their churches. Unitarian King’s Chapel in Boston actually held a Christmas celebration. Unitarian minister William Ellery Channing celebrated Christmas and his friend, Unitarian minister and Harvard professor Charles Follen, introduced the Christmas tree from his native Germany to his congregation in Lexington—the first public Christmas tree in America was in a Unitarian church. Out in the country churches, the Universalists were also beginning to celebrate Christmas. And it was a Christmas of singing carols, visiting families, and giving gifts.

A Unitarian wrote “Jingle Bells,” a Universalist, Thomas Nast drew the first picture of Santa Claus, New England Unitarian ministers wrote “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear” and “I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.” Lots more Unitarians and Universalists contributed to restoring Christmas, but one of the most important, to my way of thinking, was Charles Dickens. Dickens had “caught” Unitarianism after a visit to New England. That’s when the Industrial Revolution was in full swing and those new industrialists didn’t allow workers much time to celebrate Christmas. Dickens played a major role in reclaiming what is now the merry old English holiday of Christmas in his most famous story, the Christmas Carol. In that Christmas story, the main character, Scrooge, undergoes a complete transformation just in time to celebrate Christmas. Scrooge doesn’t get “born again” but he undergoes a change of heart. He turns from a hard and withholding man, to being to being a man with a warm and generous spirit. Dickens offers us a story that is filled with one of the great Unitarian Universalist virtues—hope. We learn from Scrooge that even with a life gone terribly wrong and cold, we can reclaim love if we will only let it in. Scrooge learned to love the spirit of Christmas, the fun of it, the generosity of it, and most of all the part of Christmas that is about sharing yourself with the people you love. Charles Dickens, it seems to me, was a Unitarian who believed that Unitarians should not only strive for a faith that makes sense, they should also strive for one that makes merry.