{"id":68731,"date":"2018-12-24T11:03:24","date_gmt":"2018-12-24T18:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=68731"},"modified":"2018-12-24T11:03:24","modified_gmt":"2018-12-24T18:03:24","slug":"a-note-on-the-survival-of-christmas-after-the-protestant-reformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/12\/a-note-on-the-survival-of-christmas-after-the-protestant-reformation.html","title":{"rendered":"A note on the survival of Christmas after the Protestant Reformation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Holy<\/a>
Lukas Cranach the Elder, \u201cRuhe auf der Flucht nach Aegypten\u201d (Rest on the Flight into Egypt)
Wikimedia Commons public domain image
It would appear that the Holy Family fled from Palestine into Egypt by way of the Canadian Rockies.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bill Hamblin and I published the following article in the Deseret News<\/em> on 22 December 2017:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The English word \u201cChristmas\u201d \u2014 \u201cChrist\u2019s mass\u201d \u2014 reveals the holiday\u2019s Catholic origin. With the coming of the Protestant Reformation, though, many Catholic practices and traditions were rejected or at least abandoned.<\/span><\/p>\n

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How did Christmas survive the Protestant purge? In some places, it nearly didn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

At first, it faced relatively few challenges in England. When the Anglican Church split with Rome over Henry VIII\u2019s marital issues (see \u201cThe Anglican Church, England\u2019s unique Reformation<\/a>\u201d published Oct. 27 on\u00a0deseretnews.com<\/a>), it remained relatively Catholic \u2014 retaining not only priests, bishops, archbishops and cathedrals but choral music and feast days. Consequently, many of our Christmas traditions and much of our Christmas music today is English.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the European continent, though, the survival of Christmas was more precarious.<\/span><\/p>\n

In John Calvin\u2019s Geneva and Ulrich Zwingli\u2019s Zurich, only Sundays were observed as days of worship; the other feast days and saints\u2019 days ordained by Rome were abolished. And Calvin\u2019s disciple John Knox, who founded the Presbyterian movement in Scotland, followed the same path (see \u201cJohn Knox and the Scottish Reformation\u201d published June 25, 2016, on\u00a0deseretnews.com<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

When he launched his series of scripture-centered sermons in Zurich\u2019s Grossmunster church in 1519, Zwingli \u2014 arguably the most radical of the three great Reformers \u2014 simply began with Matthew and preached through the whole book, ignoring the Catholic liturgical calendar and its festivals and holidays (see \u201cThe third man of the Reformation<\/a>,\u201d published Oct. 13,\u00a0deseretnews.com<\/a>).<\/span><\/p>\n

Calvin\u2019s approach was slightly more moderate (see \u201cThe Protestant Reformation\u2019s other great writer\u201d published Sept. 15, 2017, on\u00a0deseretnews.com)<\/a>. In a sermon delivered on Christmas Day 1551, Calvin noticed more people than usual in his congregation, so he warned them that, by elevating Christmas above other days for worship, they risked turning it into an idol. Still, he himself may have observed Christmas privately, at home.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1647, the English Parliament, dominated by Puritans, went beyond Calvin and altogether banned the festival. William Prynne (d. 1669), for example, taught that \u201call pious Christians\u201d should \u201ceternally abominate\u201d observance of the holiday. According to the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith, \u201cThe acceptable way of worshiping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshiped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Similar issues played out in America. While, for example, Christmas was celebrated in colonies where Anglicanism was the established church, the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony banned any outdoor celebration of Christmas in early 1620s Massachusetts. Violators \u2014 in some cases, even those caught observing the holiday in secret \u2014 could be heavily fined.<\/span><\/p>\n

While the Swiss Reformers Zwingli and Calvin insisted that Christians should worship God only in ways mentioned in the Bible \u2014 which says nothing of Christmas \u2014 Martin Luther held to the more expansive view that Christians are permitted to worship God in any way that the Bible doesn\u2019t expressly forbid.<\/span><\/p>\n

And Luther loved Christmas, advocating feasts, gift-giving and special church services. He wrote Christmas carols and delivered dozens of Christmas-related sermons. It may be significant that, while Luther\u2019s Protestant Germany and the largely Catholic Bavaria and Austria have greatly enriched our Christmas musical tradition, few if any famous Christmas carols come from Switzerland, which is directly adjacent to them. In fact, \u201cMessiah,\u201d written in just 24 days by the devoutly Lutheran 18th-century German composer George Frederick Handel, can be viewed as an expression of Luther\u2019s musical legacy.<\/span><\/p>\n

A former Catholic monk, Luther married the former nun Katharina von Bora in June 1525 and, with \u201cKatie,\u201d established a happy marriage that became a model for subsequent Protestant homes and families. Effectively, together, they \u201cinvented\u201d the Protestant parsonage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sixteenth-century German Protestants seem to have begun the tradition of erecting decorated \u201cChristmas trees\u201d in their homes, and some claim that Luther himself originated the idea of placing lights \u2014 candles, in his day \u2014 on the tree. (Queen Victoria\u2019s German-born consort, Prince Albert, helped to make Christmas trees popular in England when he put one up in Windsor Castle.)<\/span><\/p>\n

One- or two-day winter markets, where farmers sold their produce, had long been traditional in Germanic Europe. After the Reformation, however, the \u201cChristkindlmarkt\u201d (\u201cLittle Christ Child Market\u201d) became a holiday bazaar lasting throughout Advent. Perhaps originating in Bavaria, these German Christmas markets featured choirs, food, toys, carvings and other gifts for the birth of the Christ Child.<\/span><\/p>\n

For many today, Christmas has become a largely secular holiday, with little or no connection to Jesus. In part, ironically, this may derive from the objections of some very devout Christians, whose compromise solution to the problem of Christmas allowed them to celebrate it while downplaying its religious significance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reposted from Alexandria, Egypt<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 Bill Hamblin and I published the following article in the Deseret News on 22 December 2017: \u00a0 The English word \u201cChristmas\u201d \u2014 \u201cChrist\u2019s mass\u201d \u2014 reveals the holiday\u2019s Catholic origin. With the coming of the Protestant Reformation, though, many Catholic practices and traditions were rejected or at least abandoned. How did Christmas survive […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA note on the survival of Christmas after the Protestant Reformation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    Bill Hamblin and I published the following article in the Deseret News on 22 December 2017:   The English word \u201cChristmas\u201d \u2014 \u201cChrist\u2019s\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2018\/12\/a-note-on-the-survival-of-christmas-after-the-protestant-reformation.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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