20 October 2026
The 1659 Massachusetts Christmas Ban: Work, Don’t Feast
Why taking Christmas Day off in Puritan New England could cost five shillings - and why the law outlasted England’s own festive ban.
In 1659, the Puritan government of Massachusetts Bay made Christmas observance punishable by a five-shilling fine. Refusing to work, feasting or marking the day “in any other way” could trigger the penalty. The law expressed a larger campaign against holidays the Puritans considered unscriptural, superstitious and socially disorderly.
Did Puritans really ban Christmas in Massachusetts?
Yes. On 11 May 1659, the General Court of Massachusetts Bay ordered a five-shilling fine for anyone found observing Christmas by avoiding work, feasting or marking the day in another way. It did not outlaw the word “Christmas,” but it made the holiday’s recognizable observance a punishable offence across the colony.
The surviving record is unusually direct. The law said that Christmas and similar festivals had been “superstitiously kept in other countries,” producing disorder and dishonouring God. Its target was conduct: a colonist could be fined for stopping work, preparing a feast or observing the day by some other recognizable practice. The modern-spelling transcription preserved by Massachusetts ends with a fixed penalty of five shillings for every offence.
“Ban” is therefore fair shorthand, although the statute was framed as a penalty rather than a declaration that Christmas had ceased to exist. Massachusetts Bay’s government used civil law to enforce a religious judgment about the calendar. A festival familiar across England became evidence of nonconformity in New England. Ordinary acts - closing a workshop, laying a festive table, gathering for seasonal pleasure - could now reveal that a household rejected the colony’s official discipline.
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Date | 11 May 1659 |
| Location | Massachusetts Bay Colony, New England |
| Key figures | The General Court of Massachusetts Bay; Puritan magistrates and colonists |
| Outcome | Observing Christmas by avoiding work, feasting or otherwise marking the day became punishable by a five-shilling fine. |
| Status today | Repealed in 1681; Massachusetts recognized Christmas as a legal state holiday in 1856. |
Why did the Puritans oppose Christmas?
Puritans found no biblical command to celebrate Christ’s birth on 25 December. They also associated Christmas with Catholic ceremony, saints’ days and the unruly customs of the English festive season: prolonged feasting, drinking, gambling and public disorder. To them, working on Christmas Day demonstrated obedience to Scripture rather than hostility to Christianity.
The objection began with the Bible. Scripture recounts the Nativity but gives no date for it and commands no annual birthday feast. Puritans wanted worship stripped of practices they believed human institutions had added to Christianity. Christmas - Christ’s Mass - looked to them like a remnant of the Catholic calendar. The State Library of Massachusetts notes that they rejected holy days without scriptural sanction and sometimes derided 25 December as “Foolstide.”
The social argument was just as important. Christmas in early modern England was not yet a quiet domestic day centred on children and wrapped presents. It could involve twelve days of hospitality, alcohol, games, role reversal and demands made on wealthier neighbours. Puritan reformers read that licence as an invitation to sin and disorder. England’s Parliament abolished Christmas and other festivals in 1647; the Law Library of Congress records both the religious rationale and the resistance that followed.
“Whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like … shall pay … five shillings.”
— Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 11 May 1659 (source)
Did the Pilgrims celebrate Christmas in Plymouth Colony?
The Plymouth colonists did not treat Christmas as a normal holiday. On 25 December 1620, they worked on their first common house. A year later, Governor William Bradford allowed some newcomers to abstain from work for reasons of conscience, then stopped their games when he found them celebrating rather than worshipping.
Bradford’s account supplies the most vivid early New England Christmas scene. In 1621, several recent arrivals said it troubled their consciences to work on 25 December, so the governor excused them until they were “better informed.” Returning at noon, he found them playing stoolball and pitching the bar in the street. Bradford confiscated their equipment, reasoning that if some men worked, others could not turn the day into public recreation. Plimoth Patuxet Museums preserves the episode and its context.
That confrontation happened in Plymouth Colony, founded by the Mayflower Separatists commonly called Pilgrims. The 1659 law came from neighbouring Massachusetts Bay, founded by Puritans and governed from Boston. The groups shared a hostility to unscriptural festivals, but they were not the same colony or government. As the National Park Service explains, Massachusetts Bay was established north of Plymouth in 1629–30. The popular phrase “the Pilgrims banned Christmas” compresses two related histories into one.
What exactly did the 1659 Christmas law prohibit?
The law punished anyone found observing Christmas or a similar festival by “forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way.” It did not list presents, trees, carols or decorations. Its deliberately broad language allowed authorities to treat many visible departures from an ordinary working day as prohibited holiday observance.
The wording matters because modern Christmas symbols can distort the scene. Decorated domestic trees and the later American Santa tradition were not what Massachusetts legislators had in mind. The statute named two immediately legible offences: refusing ordinary labour and holding a feast. “Any other way” widened the net without producing a catalogue of forbidden objects. The problem was the act of keeping a humanly appointed holy day, not one particular food, gift or ornament.
The law also reveals how a government policed time. A date that neighbours elsewhere treated as exceptional had to appear ordinary in Massachusetts Bay. Shops, fields and households signalled conformity by continuing their routines. The offence became visible when routine stopped. That is the historical pressure behind the artwork: its wrapped gifts are a modern visual shorthand, while the explosive act translates the colony’s attempt to erase a festival from public life into a single fictional instant.
How severe was the five-shilling Christmas fine?
Five shillings was a meaningful household penalty, not a token charge. A precise modern-currency conversion would be misleading because seventeenth-century wages, goods and colonial money varied sharply. One useful contemporary comparison cited by the State Library of Massachusetts is that a chicken could cost about one shilling.
English accounting divided a pound into twenty shillings and a shilling into twelve pence, but Massachusetts Bay often lacked enough English coin for everyday exchange. Colonists used book credit, commodity payments and locally valued currency alongside imported money. That makes a neat “worth today” figure look more certain than the evidence permits. The fine is better understood through purchasing power and household consequence: it could absorb money or goods otherwise needed for food, labour or trade.
The statute imposed five shillings “for every such offence,” so repeated or separately observed celebrations could carry repeated liability. Yet the law’s importance was not only financial. A prosecution would publicly mark the offender as resisting the colony’s religious order. The threat worked through reputation as well as payment. Even without a surviving tally of convictions, putting the fine into the printed law announced that Christmas observance was no longer merely frowned upon; it was actionable misconduct.
When did Massachusetts allow Christmas again?
Massachusetts repealed the Christmas penalty in 1681, twenty-two years after its enactment. Legal permission did not create immediate enthusiasm: Puritan habits persisted, and Christmas remained an ordinary working day for many New Englanders. Massachusetts did not recognize Christmas as a legal state holiday until 1856; it became a US federal holiday in 1870.
England had restored both the monarchy and legal Christmas observance in 1660, only a year after the Massachusetts statute. The colonial ban nevertheless remained in force for another generation. Its repeal in 1681 removed the penalty, but law and culture move at different speeds. New England’s suspicion of the holiday survived in business routines, church practice and family custom. Christmas could be legal while still appearing foreign, theatrical or theologically suspect to communities shaped by Puritan memory.
By the nineteenth century, immigration, commerce, literature and changing family life were remaking the holiday. The civic calendar finally followed. The State Library of Massachusetts dates the repeal to 1681 and the state holiday to 1856; federal recognition followed in 1870. The reversal is complete but instructive: a day once punished for interrupting work ultimately became a day whose public meaning is reinforced by closing offices, schools and many businesses.
Sources
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