Jake
Puritan Board Senior
I found this book recommended by Backwoods Presbyterian/Ben Glaser very insightful on the origin of our modern holiday celebrations in America. This quote is in the context of how Christmas became accepted and started to take on some traditions formerly associated with New Years.
"For some Protestants, the exchange of gifts at New Year's, whatever the holiday's pagan associations, has been considered more acceptable than a similar observance of Christmas, with that holiday's dreaded Catholic connections. But as the theological precision and liturgical plainness that had long undergirded Calvinist opposition to Christmas gave way to liberal flexibility and romantic sentimentalism, the way was clear for middle-class Protestants to lift up Christmas a festival of home, church, Sunday school, and presents. By the 1850s and 1860s, fewer and fewer Protestants had scruples about Christmas, and most found Christmas presents well suited to religious reverence and domestic affection."
p. 125-126, Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays
"For some Protestants, the exchange of gifts at New Year's, whatever the holiday's pagan associations, has been considered more acceptable than a similar observance of Christmas, with that holiday's dreaded Catholic connections. But as the theological precision and liturgical plainness that had long undergirded Calvinist opposition to Christmas gave way to liberal flexibility and romantic sentimentalism, the way was clear for middle-class Protestants to lift up Christmas a festival of home, church, Sunday school, and presents. By the 1850s and 1860s, fewer and fewer Protestants had scruples about Christmas, and most found Christmas presents well suited to religious reverence and domestic affection."
p. 125-126, Leigh Eric Schmidt, Consumer Rites: The Buying and Selling of American Holidays