How Christmas Became Just One Day

Christmas comes but once a year, and every year, I remind family and friends that when it does, it’s not just for one day. Christmas is a season that begins by commemorating the nativity of Christ and ends by marking the visit of the Magi on January 5. This season, known as Christmastide, was once a procession of feasts, religious services, and communal gatherings. But alas, no more.

Folks forget this, yet they already know it’s true — and it’s easy enough to remind them simply by singing the opening line of a classic song, “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me….” Or by citing Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” the title of which refers to the last day of Christmas. So how did we go from such a wealth of holiday cheer to a single day?

To some degree, the decline of Christmastide can be blamed on the original war on Christmas — a shift in religious practice owing to Protestants and their renowned work ethic. Hoping to get back to work, they chose to emphasize December 25 as the focal point of Christmas, reducing the significance of the following days, as recounted in Margaret Spufford’s The Great Reclothing of Rural England: Petty Chapmen and Their Wares in the Seventeenth Century.

Indeed, during the mid-17th century, Puritans in England, led by figures such as Oliver Cromwell, actively suppressed Christmas celebrations. In 1647, the Puritan-controlled English Parliament banned Christmas, condemning its extravagant celebrations as unbiblical and frivolous. They viewed the feast days, including Christmastide, as rooted in paganism and Catholic excess. Thus feasting, games, and wassailing (a winter tradition that involves singing, dancing, drinking, and merrymaking to ensure a good harvest) were replaced with fasting and sober worship to be more in line with the Puritan emphasis on simplicity and moral discipline.

These practices continued in colonial New England, where Puritan influence was strong and Christmas celebrations were minimal or outright discouraged. The Massachusetts Bay Colony banned the celebration of Christmas in 1659, with fines imposed for those caught feasting or celebrating the holiday. This law was repealed in 1681, but Christmas remained unpopular in the region for much of the colonial period. Cotton Mather, a prominent Puritan minister, wrote against Christmas celebrations, emphasizing their perceived lack of scriptural basis and their connection to Catholic traditions. In one sermon, delivered on December 25, 1712, he claimed, “That Men dishonour Christ more in the Twelve Days of Christmas, than in all the twelve Months of the Year besides.”

Industrialization has also played a pivotal role in condensing this joyful time of the year. In agrarian societies, winter offered a break from the cycles of planting and harvesting. But the rise of industrialization brought with it modern work schedules, rigid timetables, and reduced leisure time — resulting in less time off to celebrate. In The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain, Ronald Hutton relates accounts from the 16th and 17th centuries describing lords and landowners hosting large feasts for their tenants during this time of year, reflecting the communal nature of Christmastide in agrarian societies. But another thing industrialization did was to shrink our communities down nearly to the size of the individual.

Moreover, as the modern world has moved away from religious frameworks, Christmas has evolved into a largely secular holiday, and therefore been forced to fit the pattern of other holidays. This process has been accelerated by the commercialization of Christmas, as businesses have focused sales campaigns on that one big day of gift-giving. The remaining days of the season cannot be used to drive consumerism, so businesses never promoted them. Instead, they promoted the days leading up to Christmas as the ideal time to shop for loved ones, and so the “Christmas season” went from being the 12 days when people celebrate the holiday to the weeks and even months before Christmas when people do their shopping.

Finally, in addition to persecution, commercialization, and industrialization, we have simplification and secularization. Modern media has played a significant role in reshaping the narrative of Christmas. Movies, television specials, and advertisements overwhelmingly depict Christmas as a single day. This simplification reinforces the idea that Christmas ends on December 25 while the full season is rarely portrayed. Another factor is New Year’s Eve and the cultural emphasis on New Year’s resolutions, parties, and festivities, which have competed with the religious observances of Christmastide, and because Christmastide celebrations can be a bit dry, New Year’s parties have predictably won out.

But this does not depress me. It was the great Christian author C.S. Lewis who, in the essay “Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus,” humorously contrasted the religious celebration of Christmas with the commercialized celebration of Xmas. (But don’t make the mistake of thinking, as many Christians do, that “Xmas” is taking Christ out of Christmas — in Greek, Christ is written Xristos.) And though Lewis lamented this loss of meaning, I believe that despite the materialist corruption of this sacred holiday, Christmas is kept in the heart, and if we so wish, sustained there through the season.

In my home, we open stockings on Christmas Eve, presents on Christmas Day, and box presents for the needy on Boxing Day, which is a holiday in British Commonwealth nations like the Bahamas, where my mother’s family is from and where I grew up as a child. After this, decorations stay up, Christmas music stays on, and each night is a feast until the season is over. Those are traditional ways to celebrate. But as the holiday begins, the rest of what we do is a bit of a tailored cut, although I’m happy to share in case any of you are inspired to bring back the season and are looking for more modern ways to celebrate.

For the Feast of Saint John on December 27, it’s tradition to honor John the apostle with blessings of wine, but we instead talk about his life over a fine bottle. The next day, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, commemorates the infants killed by King Herod in his attempt to eliminate the infant Jesus. This is traditionally a day on which children receive blessings, so we simply try to do something fun and exciting for the kids in the family. Skipping ahead to Twelfth Night, we like to have a feast and perform a scene from the play or watch it in full. But however you celebrate, if you celebrate Christmas, then I hope you have a very merry one indeed.