Christmas -- Bah! Humbug!

As they say: you can take the boy out of England, but you can't take England out of the boy. As well as Marmite and bangers & mash, I like mince pies and Christmas pudding as much as the next (English) person, but consider this:

The Puritans considered Christmas un-Christian, and hoped to keep it out of America. They could not find Dec. 25 in the Bible, their sole source of religious guidance, and insisted that the date derived from Saturnalia, the Roman heathens' wintertime celebration. On their first Dec. 25 in the New World, in 1620, the Puritans worked on building projects and ostentatiously ignored the holiday. From 1659 to 1681 Massachusetts went further, making celebrating Christmas "by forbearing of labor, feasting or in any other way" a crime.

Those Puritans, who were never hounded out of Britain but left because they thought the place was going to the dogs, were doubtless overjoyed to see Christmas -- Christ mass, a 'popish plot' -- banned back home under the Parliamentary Commonwealth and later by the Protectorate during Britain's republican era (1649-60). Human nature being what it is, however, the Saturnalian spirit ultimately triumphed... Anyway, pass me a mince pie, will you? Thanks! The War over Christmas: New York Times (reg. required).