ver, from what has already
been said, that the English Puritans were but following early Christian
precedents when they attacked the paganism that manifested itself at
Christmas.

A strong Puritan onslaught is to be found in the "Anatomie of Abuses" by
the Calvinist, Philip Stubbes, first published in 1583. "Especially," he
says, "in Christmas tyme there is nothing els vsed but cardes, dice,
tables, maskyng, mumming, bowling, and suche like fooleries; and the
reason is, that they think they haue a commission and prerogatiue that
tyme to doe what they list, and to followe what vanitie they will. But
(alas!) doe they thinke that they are preuiledged at that time to doe
euill? The holier the time is (if one time were holier than an other, as
it is not), the holier ought their exercises to bee. Can any tyme
dispence with them, or giue them libertie to sinne? No, no; the soule
which sinneth shall dye, at what tyme soeuer it offendeth....
Notwithstandyng, who knoweth not that more mischeef is that tyme
committed than in all the yere besides?"{56}

When the Puritans had gained the upper hand they proceeded to the
suppression not only of abuses, but of the festival itself. An excellent
opportunity for turning the feast into a fast--as the early Church had
done, it will be remembered, with the Kalends festival--came in 1644. In
that year Christmas Day happened to fall upon the last Wednesday of the
month, a day appointed by the Lords and Commons for a Fast and
Humiliation. In its zeal against carnal pleasures Parliament published
the following "Ordinance for the better observation of the Feast of the
Nativity of Christ":--

"Whereas some doubts have been raised whether the next Fast shall be
celebrated, because it falleth on the day which, heretofore, was
usually called the Feast of the Nativity of our Saviour; the lords
and commons do order and ordain that public notice be given, that the
Fast appointed to be kept on the last Wednesday in every month, ought
to be observed until it be otherwise ordered by both houses; |185|
and that this day particularly is to be kept with the more solemn
humiliation because it may call to remembrance our sins and the sins
of our forefathers, who have turned this Feast, pretending the memory
of Christ, into an extreme forgetfulness of him, by giving liberty to
carnal and sensual delights; being contrary to the life which Christ
himself led here