The Puritans didn’t like Christmas

In 1659, the Puritan government of the Massachusetts Bay Colony actually banned Christmas.

The Congregationalists, Methodists and Quakers at various times also tried to de-emphasize or eliminate the observance of Christmas, says David Forbes in his book Christmas—A Candid History.

Presbyterian minister Samuel Davies denounced the holiday as a day of “sinning, sexuality, luxury and various forms of extravagance, as though men were not celebrating the birth of the holy Jesus, but of Venus, or Bacchus, whose most sacred rites were mysteries of iniquity and debauchery.”

We read about the history of Christmas in an article in The Dallas Morning News earlier this month.