Taking Christmas off could once cost you five shillings in Boston. In 1659, the Massachusetts Bay Colony made observing the holiday a punishable offense. Feasting was specifically mentioned. So was refusing to work.
The Christmas ban lasted until 1681. It was passed by the colonial government, so its reach extended beyond Boston. And the people behind it were committed Christians who believed celebrating Christmas was the wrong way to practice their faith. The holiday had both a religious problem and a reputation for disorder, neither of which helped its case with the Puritans.
What the Christmas ban actually said
The Massachusetts Trial Court Law Libraries preserve the wording of the 1659 law. It targeted observance through taking time away from work, feasting or other forms of celebration, and imposed a five-shilling fine for each offense.
Its stated concerns were public disorder, religious dishonor and offense to others. That wording matters: the authorities were legislating how people spent the day, rather than simply declining to make it an official holiday. A Christmas dinner or a day off could put someone on the wrong side of the rule.
The title attached to the law, “Penalty for Keeping Christmas,” is unusually direct. You did not have to puzzle through much legal language to work out the government’s position. December 25 was supposed to look like a working day.
Why religious leaders objected to a religious holiday
As church historian David Holland explains in Harvard Divinity School’s account of the ban, Puritans wanted worship grounded in scripture. They found no biblical instruction to observe Christmas, and they associated its traditions with Catholicism and older non-Christian practices.
Believing in the birth of Jesus did not, in their view, justify creating an annual festival around it. Their objections made sense within their own strict interpretation of religious practice, however strange a Christmas ban sounds to a modern reader.
They also opposed the behavior that came with the season. Christmas celebrations could involve drinking, public revelry and reversals of the ordinary social order. The familiar image of children opening presents at home is a poor guide to what colonial authorities thought they were stopping. They were picturing something considerably less manageable.
The ban did not empty every cup
Passing a law did not make Christmas disappear. Mass Humanities describes a 1679 incident in Salem in which four men entered John Rowden’s house, sang and demanded pear wine. After being refused, they demanded money, harassed the household and stole apples.
The account gives some substance to those complaints about disorder. These were unwanted visitors expecting a prosperous household to feed them, following the tradition of wassailing. It also supplies a useful correction to the idea that everyone obediently abandoned the holiday while the ban was in force.
Enforcement is another question. Historian Stephen Nissenbaum told HISTORY that his research had found no records of prosecutions under the 1659 law. That finding does not erase the ban. It does make a story about authorities routinely rounding up Christmas celebrants harder to support.
Christmas became legal long before it became a day off
Massachusetts repealed the prohibition in 1681 under pressure from England. Legal permission did not immediately produce widespread enthusiasm. Hostility toward the holiday continued, and businesses and schools could still treat December 25 as an ordinary day.
Christmas traditions changed over the following generations. Mass Humanities describes an increasing emphasis on home, children and gifts in the nineteenth century, along with merchants advertising presents for family members. The unruly public celebration that worried colonial officials was giving way to a different kind of holiday.
Massachusetts finally made Christmas a public holiday in 1856, alongside Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July. The five-shilling penalty had been gone for 175 years before the state officially gave the day that recognition.