No ‘War on Christmas’ Here

No matter how many years I’ve been in Australia, I still can’t get used to southern hemisphere Christmas.

Growing up in North Carolina, Christmas was about falling snow, pumpkin pie, and roasting a big Christmas turkey. Here in Australia, snow is out of the question, pumpkin is out of season in December, and roasting anything for five hours in a tiny kitchen in 40 degree heat is a recipe for heatstroke.

Christmas is a season for sharing, so let me share some American Christmas traditions with you. The first one dates back to the Puritan fathers who came over to New England in the seventeenth century. The Puritan way of celebrating Christmas was to … ban all form of celebration. Christmas was prohibited by law in Massachusetts until 1681, and anyone found celebrating it would be forced to pay a five shilling fine. Even into the eighteenth century, the prevailing attitude in New England was: Our Lord does not need you to throw him a birthday party.

Here is a story from all the way back in 1622, which is only about a year after the Mayflower landed Plymouth Rock. It comes from the journal of William Bradford, governor of Plymouth Colony at the time. He refers to himself in the third person:

On the day called Christmasday, the Governor called them out to work, as was the custom, but most of this new company excused themselves and said it went against their consciences to work on that day. The Governor told them that if they made it a matter of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed.

But when they came home at noon from their work, he found them in the street at play, openly; some pitching the bar and some at stool-ball and such like sports. So he took away their implements, and told them that it went against his conscience that they should play while others work.

Thankfully not all Puritans were as uptight as Governor Bradford. His successor John Winthrop, for example, thought that it was permissible to mark Christmas as a special day—through extra fasting and prayer.

Over the centuries, this Puritan legacy has not faded, but it has been transformed. The altercation that took place between Governor Bradford and the punk kids playing ‘stool ball’ is exactly the same fight that now goes by the name ‘the War on Christmas.’

If you’re not familiar with the War on Christmas, it’s the annual festival of recrimination that Americans celebrate by vehemently taking sides in every fight between a Midwestern bank manager who wants to put a Christmas tree in the lobby and the head office that says Christmas trees are against its inclusiveness policy.

Fox News does a lot of War on Christmas coverage, and MSNBC and the New York Times do a lot of coverage about how the War on Christmas is a myth. It’s true that things aren’t as bad as they used to be—the War on Christmas could probably be downgraded to the ‘Christmas Low-Intensity Conflict’—but even today you still see stories about grade schools having to change the program of its winter choir concert because Handel’s Messiah has too much God in it.

Just like the old Puritan war on Christmas, you’ve got some people saying we should celebrate one way, and other people saying that the first people are a bunch of uptight fanatics trying to take the fun out of everything. And just like the Puritans, the fundamental problem is that both sides are trying to make this a ‘matter of conscience.’

How about here in Australia? To my great delight as an immigrant, there is no ‘War on Christmas’ in Australia. There was a poll done a few weeks ago that asked Australians: ‘To what extent should religious traditions and symbols of Christmas (such as nativity scenes, angels, Christmas carols, etc.) be allowed to have a public presence in Christmas celebrations?’ The options were:

Ninety-two percent ticked the first two boxes. Australians are the best peacekeepers in the world, right? You should deploy to the US. The war on Christmas would be over in a week.

Christmas is a stressful time. Schedules are hectic, you have to agonize over what gifts to get people, you have to hang out with your in-laws while they judge your cooking. The last thing people need is one more reason to stress out. In a civilized country—or should I say in an enlightened country, in the sense of the Enlightenment—it shouldn’t matter whether you celebrate Christmas with extravagant decorations, or by singing hymns, or by going to the beach, or by playing stool-ball. There ought to be an armistice in the ‘War on Christmas’ – and if any country can show America how to do it, it’s Australia.

Helen Andrews is a Policy Analyst at the Centre for Independent Studies