"For almost 400 years, Christmas was banned in Scotland. At the height of the Reformation, in 1583, when anything smacking of Catholicism and idolatrous excess was thrown out with contempt, Christmas and all its trappings was wiped off the official calendar ...Reinforced by the hard arm of the law, this was a ban that had bite... This was an age when religious belief could mean the difference between life and a very nasty death....
Scottish Presbyterians, when called on for support by the Puritans of the English Parliament in 1644, did so on the understanding that their allies would in exchange impose the ban on Christmas. For over a decade traditional English Christmas festivities were prohibited
From Scotland, the ban on Christmas spread briefly, as Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army brought the Cromwellian revolution to England. Cromwell's Puritans banned Christmas in England for about a decade but the measure was unpopular. Feelings among pro and anti Christmas advocates ran strong and, after a second enforcement act against Christmas was passed by the English Parliament in 1647,
Again the people rebelled, this time so forcefully that armed officers had to be sent to remove evergreens decorating St Margaret's Church, near the English Parliament itself. Rioting broke out in London, Kent, Oxford, Canterbury and Ipswich, in which several people were killed. A petition with more than 10,000 signatures demanded either the restoration of Christmas or else the king back on the throne...
Even after the bans were revoked in England in 1660, Puritans and other Non-Conformists "ranted against Anti-Christ's-masse and those Masse-mongers and Papists who observe it", and were commonly known to "inveigh against New Year gifts and evergreens, or to attack the Pope by refusing to eat plum-broth; or to condemn those who ate mince-pies as Papists and idolaters"....
These attitudes were carried to the New World by English Puritans, Quakers, Baptists and Scottish Presbyterians. In America, reprisals were as harsh here as back in Scotland. In Massachusetts a five-shilling penalty was imposed on anyone found feasting or shirking work on Christmas Day...
A hundred years later the Quakers were still ranting against the Christmas pie as "an invention of the scarlet whore of Babylon, an hodge podge of superstition, Popery, the Devil and all his works".
From England the Protestant War on Christmas then crossed the Atlantic, migrating with the Puritans who were fleeing the persecution of their political and theological tendency that followed the overthrow of Cromwellian government, to the New World. Under Puritan rule in the Bay State Colony, Christmas was at one point legally banned for two decades.
Christmas fared worse in Scotland though and was only brought back after four centuries because of the experience of Scottish soldiers during World War Two. As Amy McNeese describes,
Abroad and in the company of English soldiers, many Scots experienced their first proper Christmas dinner. Once tasted, it was never forgotten. On their return home, these servicemen began to celebrate the festival with some style, and gradually their ideas took root.
full article on Huff
for more on why Christmas is when it is see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sol_Invictus -
Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") was the Roman state-supported sun god created by the emperor Aurelian in 274 and continued, overshadowing other Eastern cults in importance,[1] until the abolition of paganism under Theodosius I. Although known as a god, the term "Unconquered Sun God' is not found on any Roman document.
The Romans held a festival on December 25 of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, "the birthday of the unconquered sun." December 25 was the date after the winter solstice,[2] with the first detectable lengthening of daylight hours. There was also a festival on December 19.[3]
The title Sol Invictus had also been applied to a number of other solar deities before and during this period. The type of Sol Invictus, though not the name, appears on imperial coinage from the time of Septimius Severus onwards.[4]
Though many Oriental cults were practiced informally among the Roman legions from the mid-second century, only that of Sol Invictus was officially accepted and presacribed for the army.[5]
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After his victories in the East, the emperor Aurelian introduced an official cult of Sol Invictus, making the sun-god the premier divinity of the empire, and wearing his radiated crown himself. He founded a college of pontifices, and dedicated a temple to Sol Invictus in 274. It is possible that he created the festival called dies natalis Solis Invicti, "birthday of the undefeated Sun", which is recorded in 354 (in the Chronography of 354) as celebrated on the 25th December;[6] but no earlier reference to it exists. The cult of Sol Invictus was the leading official cult of the fourth century
In the legions, where a policy of individual religious freedom is attested by personal inscriptions, on shrines and through votive offerings in every part of the Empire, outside the camps themselves, the only Eastern cult that was officially tolerated, probably from Aurelian's reign, and certainly under Constantine, was that of Sol Invictus.[7]...
Constantine decreed (March 7, 321) dies Solis—day of the sun, "Sunday"—as the Roman day of rest [CJ3.12.2]:
On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country however persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits because it often happens that another day is not suitable for grain-sowing or vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost.
The religion of Sol Invictus continued to be part of the state religion until all paganism was abolished by decree of Theodosius I on February 27, 390...
Some Christians accept the idea that Sol Invictus may be behind the date of Christmas, with the idea that the early church "baptized" the holiday by imbuing it with a new, Christian meaning. In the 5th c., Pope Leo I (the Great) spoke of this in several sermons on the Feast of the Nativity. Here is an excerpt from his 26th sermon:
But this Nativity which is to be adored in heaven and on earth is suggested to us by no day more than this when, with the early light still shedding its rays on nature, there is borne in upon our senses the brightness of this wondrous mystery.
But this sermon was not in any way related to Sol Invictus directly.
In his 22nd sermon, he directly addressed those who attributed the Nativity to Sol Invictus:
Having therefore so confident a hope, dearly beloved, abide firm in the Faith in which you are built: lest that same tempter whose tyranny over you Christ has already destroyed, win you back again with any of his wiles, and mar even the joys of the present festival by his deceitful art, misleading simpler souls with the pestilential notion of some to whom this our solemn feast day seems to derive its honour, not so much from the nativity of Christ as, according to them, from the rising of the new sun . Such men's hearts are wrapped in total darkness, and have no growing perception of the true Light: for they are still drawn away by the foolish errors of heathendom, and because they cannot lift the eyes of their mind above that which their carnal sight beholds, they pay divine honour to the luminaries that minister to the world.
In this sermon, Pope Leo I clearly establishes that the two feast were held on the same day, but that they are also not related.
Solar symbolism was popular with early Christian writers[11] This is also apparent in the prayers and hymns of the Church, such as the Eastern Orthodox Troparion of the Nativity:
Thy birth, O Christ our God,
rose upon the world as the light of knowledge;
for through it those who worshipped the stars
were taught by a star to adore Thee, the Sun of Righteousness,
and to know Thee, the Sunrise from on high.
O Lord, glory to Thee...
According to the scholiast on the Syriac bishop Jacob Bar-Salibi, writing in the twelfth century:
"It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day."
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