The New Englanders who gave America the traditions of Thanksgiving Day, Thanksgiving Day proclamations, the Mayflower Compact, John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill,” and election day sermons criminalized the celebration of Christmas. In 1659, in an atmosphere of tension over Anglicanism, other heresies, new trade, and general disarray, the Massachusetts Bay General Court banned the keeping of Christmas by ‘forbearing of labour, feasting, or any other way.’ The law aimed to prevent the recurrence of further, unspecified ‘disorders’ which had apparently arisen in ‘seurer observing such Festiualls,’ and provided that ‘whosoeuer shall be found observing any such Thus, devout English-speaking conservative Christian Protestants were the first and most vociferous warriors against Christmas and banned its celebration because it had so far departed from their version of the true Christian message. From 1659 to 1681, showcasing one’s holiday spirit in Boston could cost you a fine of as much as five shillings. That’s right Christmas was illegal. Christmas was so inconsequential in early America that after the Revolutionary War, Congress didn’t even bother taking the day off to celebrate the holiday, deciding instead to hold its first session on Christmas Day, 1789. It took nearly a century for Congress to proclaim it a federal holiday. The Massachusetts and English Puritans ultimately retracted their total ban on Christmas celebrations. A century later, by the last quarter of the 18th century, some Protestant denominations, including Baptists, slowly began to incorporate Christmas into their religious services. While it was not an official holiday, and while government institutions continued to take no note of it, it became an increasingly popular annual event, albeit for a minority of Americans. Many prominent figures, including the man who was perhaps the 19th century’s most famous preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, continued to keep the holiday at arm’s length. Thus, in the hundred years after the Revolution, Americans had still not integrated Christmas celebrations into their lives.