The Pilgrims and Christmas

The Pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock in November, 1620.

Can you imagine moving to a “New World”?

Can you imagine moving anywhere for that matter right before the rush of the Christmas season?

I can’t.

Maybe it’s just a woman thing, but I know what would have been on my mind had I been on the Mayflower. I would be thinking.......Here it is nearly the first of December, I have no home, and Christmas is just around the corner. I have shopping to do, the decorations need to be up (hope I remembered where I packed them), and then I have all the cooking to do. How am I going to fit 30 various parties, dinners, and gatherings into four weeks? When are the greeting cards going to get addressed? And.....how does one ship gifts back home from the “New World”?

By December, 1620 many of the Pilgrims were sick with scurvy and many more were suffering from wild coughing fits   They hardly felt like celebrating, but the fact of the matter is any Pilgrims well enough spent their first December 25th in the New World by sending out scouting parties, building their first structures, and all of the other necessary tasks to build “New Plymouth”

The Pilgrims didn’t ignore Christmas because they had bigger fish to fry like securing shelter and gathering food. It was much more than that.

They didn’t celebrate Christmas….

…..at all.

Not a Christmas carol, a Christmas tree, or a Christmas meal. Nothing. Not even Santa.

The Grinch would have loved New Plymouth.

The Pilgrims were a very no nonsense, no frills type of people. If the Bible didn’t direct it, they didn’t do it. This means they didn’t buy into any additions made to Christianity especially church traditions.

Since Christmas was not mentioned in the Bible the Pilgrims ignored the holiday. They disapproved of the way their fellow Englishmen celebrated the day with parties, feasting, drinking, and bawdy behavior in some instances.

One year after the Pilgrims arrived in the New World on December 25, 1621, Governor William Bradford discovered a few recent arrivals to New Plymouth didn’t want to work on what the Pilgrims considered just another day. He made a notation in Of Plymouth Plantation:

“On the day called Christmas Day, the Governor called [the settlers] out to work as was usual. However, the most of this new company excused themselves and said it went against their consciences to work on that day. So the Governor told them that if they made it [a] matter of conscience he would spare them till they were better informed; so he led away the rest and left them.”

When the working party returned they found the men who had a conscience decided not only to refrain from working in recognition of the day they also decided to play games and shockingly they were having ……..FUN. The governor ordered them to stop making an exhibition in the streets for all to see. The men were told if they wanted to act like that to go to the privacy of their homes.

The Puritans who differed from the Pilgrims  regarding the Anglican Church merely wanted to change certain practices of the church while the Pilgrims totally separated themselves from it, however they were on the same page regarding celebrating Christmas. They knew there was absolutely no Biblical proof regarding December as the birth month for Christ, and they knew history. They realized Christmas had roots in the pagan winter solstice festivals like the Roman Saturnalia. The argued the early Roman Catholic Church had taken a pagan holiday and merged it with Christian beliefs.

In the book The Battle for Christmas, Stephen Nissenbaum sums it up this way:

“The Puritan knew what subsequent generations would forget; that when the Church, more than a millennium earlier, had placed Christmas Day in late December, the decision was part of what amounted to a compromise, and a compromise for which the church paid a high price. Late-December festivities were deeply rooted in popular culture, both in observance of the winter solstice and in celebration of the one brief period period of leisure and plenty in the agricultural year. In return for ensuring massive observance of the anniversary of the Savior’s birth by assigning it to this resonant date, the Church for its part tacitly agreed to allow the holiday to be celebrated more or less the way it had always been. From the beginning, the Church’s hold over Christmas was (and remains still) rather tenuous. There were always.people for whom Christmas was a time of pious devotion rather than carnival, but such people were always in the minority. It may not be going too far to say that Christmas has always been an extremely difficult day to Christianize. Little wonder that the Puritans were willing to save themselves the trouble.”

For sure – the Puritans didn’t trouble themselves. They just outlawed the holiday.

In fact, by Christmas, 1659 the Five-Shilling Anti-Christmas Law was enacted by the General Court of Massachusetts. The law stated:

Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas, or the like, either by forebearing labor, feasting, or any other way upon such account as aforesaid, every such person so offending shall pay for each offense five shillings as a fine to the country.


Boston actually outlawed the celebration of Christmas from 1659 to 1681.

Even after the law was set aside in 1681, New Englanders were slow to accept Christmas. The customs of gift giving and parties and even decorations were considered to be pagan customs. My research indicates even as late as 1870 Boston schools held classes on Christmas Day.

It’s interesting to note that today we still have the Christmas tug-of-war. The church is still fighing the masses over the Christmas issue. Christians fuss and fume because it seems everyone celebrates the holiday even if they don’t actually believe in the reason for the season. Folks are in it for the parties, the drinking, the gifts, the decorations, the food, the general falderal whether they believe in the divinity of Christ or not.

Heck, even Christians enjoy the falderal. I do.

I’m just glad I can celebrate how I wish, believe what I want to, and I don’t have to pay fine while doing it.

Jamestown Had a Sister?!?!?

When I teach the English colonies I tend to follow the same format teachers do all across the United States. Before discussing the original 13 colonies we hit on major firsts for all the heavy-hitting players—Spain’s first settlements, the first settlements for France, and then we begin discussing Roanoke and Jamestown.

What I don’t normally share with students is information regarding Jamestown’s little sister….Popham.

In 1607, thirteen years prior to the Pilgrims landing at Plymouth, Englishmen on behalf of the Virginia Company formed a colony on the shores of New England at the mouth of the Kennebec River. At that time, the mouth of the Kennebec River, near Phippsburg, was not in the state of Maine as it is today but in territory the English identified as Northern Virginia. The colony was short-lived….a little over a year passed before it was abandoned in the fall of 1608.

So why don’t we remember the Popham Colony today?

When studets learn that the Pilgrims founded the FIRST New England colony in 1620, are we merely foisting a lie onto our students?

Hardly.

The reason why the Popham Colony faded in our historical memory has to do with the success, or in this case the lack of success of the colony.

Several important lessons regarding the process of colonization can be learned from the Popham experience, however. The colony did not fail because of massive starvation, sickness, or even Native American troubles though there were those problems to some degree. The Popham Colony failed mainly due to family changes within the ranks of the colony’s leadership.

On May 31, 1607, 100 to 120 colonists left Plymouth in two ships. Their mission was to trade items—precious metals, spices, and furs—and to show that they could build English ships from the natural resources in the area. The expedition leader, George Popham sailed on the ship Gift of God. Good old George received the honor of being the leader of the colony because his uncle was a Virginia Company financial backer, Sir John Popham, who just happened to be Lord Chief Justice of England. George Popham’s second in command, Gilbert Raleigh, was the half nephew of Sir Walter Raleigh. The remaining colonists were mainly soldiers, artisans, farmers, and traders.

Much of what we know about the Popham Colony today resides in a primary document—a diary authored by Robert Davis—the captain of the second ship, the Mary and John, to make the voyage.

Immediately upon landing the colonists built a settlement they named Fort Saint George. We know how the fort was designed because one of the colonists, John Hunt, drew a map. It showed a star-shaped fort with ditches and ramparts. The grounds included a storehouse and chapel plus fifteen additional structures. The fort also had nine guns. The map has a notable history in and of itself as it ended up in the Spanish archives where it was located in 1888. Espionage was hot and heavy during the race to see who could colonize North America first. The map had been passed to King Philip III of Spain in 1608 by the Spanish ambassador, Pedro de Zuniga.

By now you are probably wondering what caused the Popham Colony to fail…..Well, it’s true—the Maine winters were a little too much for them. Any support system the colonists had developed with Native Americans eventually deteriorated which led to the realization that any profitable trade the colonists and financial backers hoped for never materialized.

Half of the colonists returned to England in December, 1607.

George Popham died in 1608 leaving Raleigh Gilbert in command. Apparently Gilbert didn’t have what it took to lead a fledgling colony plus he soon learned he had inherited his family’s estate, so he returned to England. The remaining colonists would not stay without Gilbert and made plans to leave with him.

…and what about the dream to construct ships from the Maine forests? In this the Popham Colony was somewhat successful. Led by their shipwright, Digby, they constructed a 30-ton pinnace they christened Virginia---the first English ship built in Maine and probably in all of North America.

Some of the colonists returned to England along with Raleigh Gilbert on the Mary and John while others sailed aboard the pinnace, Virginia.

So, the Pilgrims weren’t the first New Englanders….they were merely the first New Englanders who stayed.

.....and anyway...Popham Beach doesn’t have the same ring to it as Plymouth Rock, does it?

This website explains how people today are attempting to recreate the Virginia.

The exact site of the Popham Colony was lost until its rediscovery in 1994. Much of this historical location is now part of Maine's Popham Beach State Park.

Here are some interesting links regarding Popham Colony: This site discusses the archeology at the Popham site, the Archaeology Channel shares some information, and there is an informative article here.

Wordless: Why Is This Significant?

Yes, I know….you are probably thinking that this isn’t a very good Wednesday image…..You might be wondering what the significance is. I'm certain if I popped this image up on the screen in my classroom someone in the room would tell me, "Well, it's just a page in a book."

Now really....would I put something here that isn’t significant? Would I share something with students that isn't significant?

We are looking at the first source where the term “New England” was first used.

Significant? I think so.

For the next few weeks I’m going to be spotlighting images obtained from the Images of American Politics site, a really great source. You can access it here.

Today is Wordless Wednesday. You can find other bloggers participating by clicking here