Let us all turn our attention this year to a more traditional Christmas. People have forgotten Christmas was created to honor the birth of Christ, and critics say Americans pay too much attention to Christmas, saying it interferes with the religious freedom of those who are not Christians.
For most Americans, Christmas is surrounded by more traditions than any other holiday, yet many of these traditions are not really very old ones. The nation's first settlers would be very surprised to see how Americans celebrate Christmas today.People in other parts of the world have been celebrating Christmas for many centuries, and December was a winter holiday season in northern and southern Europe even before the birth of Christ. Christians borrowed other traditions from ancient times.
In the years before Christ, people honored the evergreen tree as a sign of life after death. For Christians, it became a sign of Christ's birth.
Many of the first European settlers in America disapproved of such customs. They believed that people should honor God in a simpler way. So Christmas became a day just like any other day for most people in America's Northern colonies. In fact, Massachusetts Bay Colony passed a law in 1639 banning Christmas. The law said that anyone observing the holiday would have to pay money as punishment.
In America's Southern colonies, the Church of England became the established religion. Its traditions were closer to that of the Roman Catholic Church. So it became common for the people on large farms in the South to celebrate Christmas with huge dinners and dancing.
After 1800, people began to mix together more and they began to borrow Christmas traditions from each other. Settlers from Germany observed Christmas by cutting live evergreen trees and covering them with candles and fruits. By the middle of the 19th century, people all over America were putting up evergreen trees at Christmas.
Dutch settlers in New York were most responsible for creating another popular American tradition - Santa Claus. He gave presents to children who had been good and coal or straw to children who had been bad. Other Americans who lived nearby greatly enjoyed the Dutch celebrations. They decided to make St. Nicholas a part of their own celebrations.
An American named Thomas Nast also played a part in creating Santa Claus. Beginning in the 1860s, Nast drew pictures of Santa Claus for an American publication called Harpers Weekly. He based his pictures on the memories of a kind old man he knew as a child in Germany. These pictures showed a fat, smiling old man with a red nose and a white beard dressed in a red suit with white fur and a black belt. Today, more than 100 years later, that same Santa Claus can be seen everywhere at Christmastime.
These Christian traditions have done more to preserve peace and goodwill in this world than all other sources in history. Let us not lose them.
Stanley B. Nance
Salt Lake City