Slaughter of the Innocents - Sano di Pietro
Yes poodles, it started way back when - even before the Gospels were written.
Then, as Gospel accounts were in production, the Apostle John had a vision...
Miguel Cabrera, "The Virgin of the Apocalypse"
Yet closer to modern times, rigorous Protestants in England,
consumed by self-opinion and pride,
attempted to do away with Christmas...
You may ask, "But Why?"
Increasingly in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, many people, especially the more Godly, came to frown upon this celebration of Christmas, for two reasons. Firstly, they disliked all the waste, extravagance, disorder, sin and immorality of the Christmas celebrations. Secondly, they saw Christmas (that is, Christ’s mass) as an unwelcome survival of the Roman Catholic faith, as a ceremony particularly encouraged by the Catholic church and by the recusant community in England and Wales, a popish festival with no biblical justification – nowhere had God called upon mankind to celebrate Christ’s nativity in this way, they said. What this group wanted was a much stricter observance of the Lord’s day (Sundays), but the abolition of the popish and often sinful celebration of Christmas, as well as of Easter, Whitsun and assorted other festivals and saints’ days. - The History of Christmas in England.
Therefore, watch out my Godly friends, you who complain that lights and decorations go up much too early, and protest if someone says Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas, lest you shrivel up into sour little prunes in your own dried out Christmas fruitcakes...
To be continued...
Nota bene:
Just remember, though the Soviets
blew up cathedrals and outlawed
religion, they were never able
to destroy Christmas,
nor the faith of
Orthodox Christians.
Don't worry.
