Christian colonists in the New World were often hostile to celebrating Christ’s birth. In North America and in Nueva España – Spain’s Latin American conquests – some didn’t like the idea at all. There were divisions in their own ranks. Sometimes it was a rejection of established Christian dogma, sometimes of widely accepted Christian practices. Sometimes liturgical history.
Friars following the Spanish conquistadores had no way of knowing how the defeated population of the shattered Mejica Empire was absorbing the scatter-shot Catholic teachings thrown at them. Spaniards disdained the dominant Nauhatl language. A few vaguely saw its value in controlling the huge uprooted population. But none recognized that the language was disintegrating with the collapse of the Aztec Empire, its society, gods and culture. Some of the clergy, thinking they were mastering the language of their converts, used a debased argot dense with fraying meanings, and awkward mispronunciations.
Defeated Mejicas, cast adrift by their gods and beliefs, began substituting clerically approved titles for “pagan” deities while continuing to worship ancient gods and goddesses. (Tonanzin for the apparition of the Virgin Mary, later known to both Spaniard and Mejica as La Virgen de Guadalupe.
Since Europe’s Medieval days, the Catholic Church employed allegorical plays to teach the illiterate the “lessons” of the Bible. Since the 1100s, such “mystery plays” were used in France, Austria, the Low Countries and the Iberian Peninsula. They became a major tool, along with the sword of course, in the Spanish Church’s armory for gaining wealth, spreading the word of god, and saving the world by occupying it. Mystery plays taught in simple and entertaining terms not only the implications of Christian saints, but of the dangers of sin and the devil. Such plays were performed by amateur theatrical groups and local religious organizations. They were meant to represent graphic – and attractive – examples of ethnic blending dominated by Catholic dogma. In New Spain, Spanish friars, often using translators, energetically organized such presentations on Catholic feast days performed by Mejica converts. Especially successful, friars and priests felt, were those surrounding Christ’s birth, the pastorelas. They displayed raw spontaneity and frequent irreverent humor. The theme of these, and many such plays, was temptation into sin. Pastorelas traditionally opened with four devils – Luzbel, Asmodeo, Sin and Lucifer. The four plotted to derail the holy journey of devout but vulnerable pilgrims to celebrate the birth of the Savior. Two major targets of devilish designs are an elderly and lively hermit, and Bartolo, the fool – who contribute most of the comedy. The climax of the pastorela comes when the hermit, tempted by the devils, is about to rob one of the shepherdresses as she sleeps. This scene is sometimes filled with misdirection implying double entendre. But, qué milagro, Saint Michael the Archangel appears and announces the holy birth. Foiled, Lucifer submits to Saint Michael; the shepherds proceed to the nativity site.
Such pastorelas soon were being performed not in churchyards, but in corrales and orchards and other improvised locations by “unsupervised” indigenous performers. Increasingly, European religious content was replaced by an Indian sense of comedic reality and a local sense of “religiosity.” The Spanish (and later, the Mexican) Catholic Church was appalled by such “heresy”. Young men and women known for their less than impeccable character were playing the leading roles. By 1765, the Church, mirroring the Spanish Crown’s prohibition in 1762, banned the performance of pastorelas in New Spain. The plays soon returned, but went in decline with the consumerization (urbanization) of Christmas, beginning in the 1970s. Now, some rural Mexicans are saying they’re staging a comeback.The successful invasion of the United States’ concept of Christmas (Santa Claus, Christmas trees, phony icicles, reindeer and Las Vegas-style ornamentation) in Mexico carries with it so many ironies that it’s difficult to select the most tonic.
For one thing, I know of no Mexican who realizes that Christmas was once banned in the U.S. And only a handful of U.S. citizens who know much about that fact.
Yet it’s a bit of history that the current crop of narrow-hearted Christians should know well. When the Puritans attained political power in England in the 1600s, they abolished Christmas. This joyful ritual of the Middle Ages that had made Christmas the most celebrated time of the English year outraged Puritans. They seemed to generally have a quota on happiness. It was so low, some said it was invisible. Certainly, good cheer struck the Puritans as too rowdy to be religious.
In the New World they became New England colonists and established a program of Blue Laws (published on blue paper) banning what then and since has been considered “normal” behavior. They banned the practice of Christmas in the New World in 1659. The Mather clan of Massachusetts – who seemed a bit crazed just a few years later – were leaders of this “temperance” movement. Richard Mather (1596-1669) had fled to the New World because of his stringent views of Puritanism. He became pastor of Dorchester, Massachusetts, until his death. His interestingly named son, Increase Mather (1639-1723) became pastor of North Church in Boston. He was a “vigorous” leader of the traditional Puritan order and served as president of Harvard University (1585-1701). He declared that Jesus was born in September, and that celebrating in December was both heretical and evil. His son, Cotton Mather, took after his forebears, succeeding his father as the “eloquent” pastor of North Church. Increase Mather stirred hysteria during the Salem witch trials of 1692, which hung 19 innocent people, many of them women. The accusations, trials and executions turned out to be nothing more than paranoia, communal fear, social bigotry and punitive superstition.
That seemed to be a season of religious feuding about the entire idea of Christmas. Episcopalians, Lutherans, Moravians and Roman Catholics observed the celebratory day. But Baptists, the “Plain Dutch” – the Amish, Brethren and Mennonites – the Quakers, Scotch-Irish, along with the Congregationalists and Presbyterians, rejected Christmas. But shortly, the Puritans began losing power. In 1681 the ban against Christmas was lifted.
By 1691, Increase Mather had noticeably decreased Harvard’s treasury, creating “an enormous debt,” in travel expenses. The General Court of the Harvard presented Increase – whose firm handed control of the church and the college had diminished – with an ultimatum to move to Cambridge or resign the presidency. He obeyed, but moved back to Boston six months later. His presidency ended early in 1692.