A Forbidden Christmas
Christmas was supposedly cancelled by Oliver Cromwell – but in fact it was Parliament, several years before Cromwell became Lord Protector in 1653, who attempted to prohibit the celebration of Christmas, Easter and other religious festivals. In 1645 it replaced the Book of Common Prayer with the Directory for Publique Worship, which ordered that festivals and holy days, having no authority in the Bible, were no longer to be celebrated in church. In 1647 the Long Parliament reiterated this with an ordinance abolishing the celebrations of Christmas, Easter and Whitsun. These restrictions remained in place until the restoration of Charles II in 1660.
It has to be said that this attempt to forbid such festivities was not wholly successful. Throughout the country people continued to celebrate Christmas, and in a period when religion was an important part of life, this included going to church to observe the day, and taking the sacrament of holy communion. Sometimes churches were decorated for the season with holly, rosemary and bay.
We know this happened in Wiltshire from the evidence of surviving churchwardens’ accounts. There was a service of holy communion for Christmas on at least one occasion at St Mary’s Devizes in this period. In Wilton the church was cleaned for Christmas in 1646, and at St Thomas’s in Salisbury the churchwardens paid a shilling for decorating and cleaning the church at Christmas in 1655.
Wiltshire parishes celebrated Palm Sunday, Easter and Whitsun as well as Christmas, and throughout England people were doing just the same, and churchwardens were recording the purchases of bread and wine for the communion in their accounts. If anyone wishes to read more about this it is covered, with particular reference to Wiltshire, Hampshire, Bristol and Somerset, in my chapter, ‘Malignant parties: loyalist religion in southern England’ in the book Church and People in Interregnum Britain, ed. Fiona McCall (University of London Press, 2021). The book is available as a free PDF download here: https://www.sas.ac.uk/publications/church-and-people-interregnum-britain.
Written by Dr Rosalind Johnson