"The year 1681 saw the law against the celebration of
Christmas repealed, but many of the Puritans were not reconciled
to this action."
- The American Christmas: a study in
national culture By James Harwood Barnett, p.3
Henry Ward Beecher,
clergyman and lecturer, wrote in 1874 of his boyhood in
New England, “To me Christmas is a foreign day, and I shall die so.
When I was a boy I wondered what Christmas was. I knew there was
such a time, because we had an Episcopal church in our town, and I
saw them dressing it with evergreens, and wondered what they were
taking the woods in church for; but I got no satisfactory explanation.
A little later I understood it was a Romish institution, kept up by
the Romish Church.” Eventually the major Protestant denominations
accepted Christmas, “although they reacted violently against the
corruption of the Christkindl, the Christ Child, into ‘Kriss Kringle,’
”
- Celebrations: The Complete Book of
American Holidays
by
Robert J. Myers, pp. 315-316.