He said
that the General Court of Massachusetts had enacted a special law
against the keeping of Christmas, visiting with fine and imprisonment
the transgressors who dared to celebrate that Popish festival. It was
the misfortune and not the fault of the Brook Farmers that the Bethlehem
Birthday was no more to them than Saint Jude's day or the Feast of the
Tabernacles.
In the Old Colonie Christmas was the one great day of all the year for
children. We did not have the Christmas tree, but we had the Bethlehem
manger in the Dutch Reform Church at the foot of the high pulpit and
dominie Bogardus told us the story of the Birthday of Our Lord in simple
words which we could all understand. Early in the morning we ran down to
the sitting room where our stockings were hanging from the mantel shelf
filled by Santa Claus with Christmas gifts, with more piled on the table
for our friends and for poor families. That was what an effusive writer
once called the "halcyon and vociferous" beginning of the day.
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