Truth v. Myth: The First Thanksgiving

It’s that time of year again; time for our annual post on the first Thanksgiving. We’re re-running last year’s edition, with slight updates.

In November 2024, we were staggering under the weight of the presidential election. In November 2025, it’s much, much worse. But the message we sent then is the one we send now, and we believe in it. The long, slow fight to turn this tyrannical tide has begun; for that, we can give thanks this year.

This isn’t the post we thought would be offering for our first post after the presidential election. But it is, for two reasons.

First, it’s okay not to know exactly what to do now, beyond what we have always recommended—taking positive action through our democratic system to continue the fight for liberty and justice for all in this country. We have no special insights into how to do this now, when nominees for federal cabinet positions and departmental leadership are being assembled to put longstanding plans to destroy that system into action. American history does not offer us a parallel situation to draw wisdom from. This attack is brand-new in its horrors. We’ll be figuring out what to do with all of you in the months that come.

For as much as things seem surprisingly normal right now, we know this is the equivalent of the “phony war”—the period between September 1, 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland to being WWII and May 1940, when they invaded France. During that eight-month period, there were no major battles between the Axis and the Allies in Europe, only some small strikes and maneuvers. (Of course, the war was furious in Asia and North Africa during this time.) People in Britain, France, and the U.S. began to wonder if a continent-wide war had really begun at all.

They found out soon enough that it had. And that day will come to us here, on January 20, 2025. In the meantime, we gather our resources, get our heads together, and prepare.

Second, the type of myth-busting history this post represents is precisely the real historical work that the next Trump administration is dedicating to stamping out. An objective description of the people involved in a historical event, including their political, social, religious, and personal identities, that doesn’t seek to build anyone up or tear anyone down but lets those people’s actions do one or the other. We’re going to keep doing this no matter what. This version of the post includes the updates we made last Fall in our “housekeeping” update so that the inaccurate text is now removed.

So let’s get into our annual tradition of posting about “The First Thanksgiving”, and know that we’ll be keeping on through this uncertain and fearful period together.

This is the time of year when, in the course of thinking about and celebrating Thanksgiving, people take a moment to wonder about this event. What was it? why did it include Indigenous people? what did it mean to the Pilgrims?

The answers are rooted in the “gotcha” fact that the Pilgrims never celebrated “the first Thanksgiving”. They celebrated “a thanksgiving”, definitely in lower-case letters, one of many thanksgivings they would observe whenever they felt God had blessed them. When they observed a thanksgiving in 1621, they had no idea whatsoever of it becoming an annual tradition or holiday.

President Lincoln actually instituted this holiday during the Civil War to unite the U.S. in thanks for its blessings even in the midst of that terrible war. Here’s how he put it:

In the midst of a civil war of unequaled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union.

—Britain and France have refused, in the end, to support the Confederacy, the U.S. itself is still intact and strong, and the U.S. Army and Navy are driving back the enemy.

Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consiousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.

—The U.S. economy has not fallen apart for lack of cotton produced by the labor and suffering of enslaved Americans, as the South had always predicted it would. Industry and agriculture are stronger than ever and the U.S. continues to expand.

No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.

—God has punished the U.S. with this war for the sin of slavery, but is showing encouraging signs of his support for the U.S. war effort.

And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

—While thanking God for his mercies to the U.S. so far, Americans should also offer up prayers asking for his care for all those who have lost someone in the war, and asking for his help in ending the war as quickly as possible.

So the First Thanksgiving in the U.S. was held in November 1863 and, insofar as it was meant to celebrate victories in a war to end slavery, it represented a good cause. Why, given this, are we taught that the First Thanksgiving happened in 1621? Let’s go back to that year and trace the progress of this mistaken idea from then to now.

The Pilgrims had landed in lands the Wampanoags belonged to and cared for that are now called Cape Cod in the state of Massachusetts the previous November—a terrible time to try to establish a settlement. Their provisions were low, and it was too late to plant anything. It is another myth that they landed so late because they got lost. They had intended to land south of Long Island, New York and settle in what is now New Jersey, where it was warmer, but their ship was almost destroyed in a dangerous reef area just south of Cape Cod, and the captain turned back. They then had to crawl the ship down the Cape, looking for a suitable place to land. Long story short, they ended up in what is now Plimoth.

Most Americans know how so many of those first settlers died from starvation and disease over the winter, and how it was only by raiding Wampanoag food caches–and sometimes their graves–that the colony survived at all. (See our post “Saints and Strangers: myths and misunderstandings” for more on this crime.) By the Spring, there were not many colonizers left to plant, but they dragged themselves out to do so. Without help from the Wampanoags, who showed them planting techniques—potentially just to keep the Pilgrims from raiding their winter stores again—they would not have survived. By November 1621, a very good harvest was in, and Governor William Bradford called for a day of thanksgiving.

The Pilgrims often had days of thanksgiving. In times of trouble, they had fasts, which were sacrifices given for God’s help. In celebration times, they had thanksgivings to thank God for helping them. So thanksgivings were a common part of Pilgrim life, and calling for a thanksgiving to praise God for the harvest would not have been unusual, and would have been a day spent largely in church and at prayer.

Here is the only—yes, the one and only—eyewitness description of what happened next:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. They four in one day killed as much fowl as, with a little help beside, served the company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted, and they went out and killed five deer, which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our governor, and upon the captain and others. And although it be not always so plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet by the goodness of God, we are so far from want that we often wish you partakers of our plenty.

That’s Edward Winslow, writing about the thanksgiving in his journal of Pilgrim life called “Mourt’s Relation”, published in 1622. We see that the Wampanoag sachem Massasoit and 90 of his men arrived at some point, having heard about the feast, and the Pilgrims hosted them for three days, and had some rather traditional Anglican sport firing their guns. A one-day thanksgiving turned into three days of feasting and games.

Edward does not explain why the Wampanoags “came amongst them”. It’s possible a messenger was sent to the sachem Massasoit to inform him of the “entertainment” (as English people of this time called an event) for diplomatic reasons. Certainly the Wampanoags had a right to feel they could join in, since it was their help that had led to the good harvest. We don’t know if the English were surprised when so many Wampanoag men arrived, or if they expected it, since after a year the English were more familiar with the Indigenous practice of regularly visiting them, in informal ways, to help establish kinship ties between the groups. The Wampanoag contribution of five deer to the observance was substantial, turning it into a less religious, more secular “feasting” celebration.

The fact that this thanksgiving was shared between Wampanoags and English makes it almost unbearably poignant. The Pilgrims were colonizers, and with a very few, isolated exceptions they would not be turned from their desire to occupy the land and remove the Wampanoags. Feeling compassion for their suffering that first year is natural, but it displaces compassion for the Indigenous people who helped them when they could have destroyed them, and in return were systematically displaced from the land they belonged to and subjected to a determined attempt to eradicate them, by death or being driven away, that continues to this day in the U.S. We wrack our minds, as the English then would have said, trying to understand this destructive mindset that remains so entrenched in humans around the globe.

People today generally assume there was another thanksgiving the next year. But as religious Separatists, the Pilgrims only held a thanksgiving for the first good harvest because it was a life-saving change from the previous Fall. Once they were on their feet, they expected good harvests, and didn’t have to celebrate them. It was also against their religious beliefs to celebrate annual holidays—like the Puritans, they did not celebrate any holidays, not even Christmas. Holidays were a human invention that made some days better than others when God had made all days equally holy. So to hold a regular, annual harvest thanksgiving was not their way. When things were going well, Separatists and Puritans had days of thanksgiving. When things were going badly, they had days of fasting. None of them were annual holidays .

The hype to locate the modern Thanksgiving holiday in the Pilgrims’ first thanksgiving only began after 1863, when historians noted the tradition of impromptu thanksgivings in the 1600s and made an unwarranted and improper connection to the new holiday to make it seem less new and more traditionally American. Before then, the Pilgrims’ many days of thanksgiving and fasting were completely forgotten. As we saw above in Lincoln’s statement, the Pilgrims certainly weren’t the inspiration for the holiday we celebrate today—they were retroactively brought into that in the worst, most ironic way: after the Civil War, southerners resented Thanksgiving as a “Union” holiday celebrating U.S. victories in the war and so the focus was changed from fighting slavery to the Pilgrims… who had supported slavery.

If only that first thanksgiving–an impromptu, bi-cultural celebration–had set the tone for the rest of the interactions between the English colonizers and the Indigenous peoples of North America. This year, spend Thanksgiving however you like, and share the truth about where the holiday really comes from—the depths of a terrible war fought for the greatest of causes. Let Thanksgiving inspire you to stand up for the founding principles of this nation and re-commit to upholding them in your own daily life of good times and bad. And if possible, look into joining in any local protest against colonization and the destruction of people, lands, and living things that takes place in your area on Thanksgiving. Join with Indigenous people if you can to acknowledge that upholding the principles of liberty and justice for all can’t begin without a 180 move away from the values of colonization.

None of this constitutes “hating America”. Indeed, it actually moves us closer to recovering the America that could have been had colonization been overruled by kinship.

Trump is literally erasing the Constitution

We first became aware of this via a TikTok from ThePeopleUS, who documented their multiple phone calls to the Library of Congress, whose ConstitutionAnnotated website shows the Constitution without Article 1, Sections 9 and 10.

ThePeopleUS was told by the person who answered the phone at the LOC’s main reading room that this was the result of a “coding error”.

If you go to the National Constitution Center and read its faithful documentation of the Constitution, you can see the text of these erased sections:

Section 9: Powers Denied Congress

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

The first item is a revolting protection of the “slave trade”, which Congress was protecting.

The next two are key:

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

—The U.S. government is currently violating this section of the Constitution. What “habeas corpus”, as it is commonly abbreviated, means is no person can be sentenced to prison or any other type of detention without a court ensuring that the detention is legal. This article of the Constitution protects Americans against unlawful imprisonment and allows anyone detained by the government to challenge their detention in court.

With the federal government currently rounding people up and putting them in concentration camps here and in other countries without trial and without proof that their imprisonment is legal, we currently have no habeas corpus protections in this country anymore. The Trump administration has erased this section of the Constitution to make that permanent.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

—The U.S. government is currently violating this section of the Constitution. A Bill of Attainder is a piece of legislation that declares a person or group guilty of a crime and sentences them to punishment–all without a trial. This is a centuries-old weapon of dictatorship. And the federal government is currently using it without any effective resistance from members of Congress.

And now the last:

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

—The U.S. government is allowing the Trump administration to prepare to violate this by prepping us for a third presidential term for Trump. He will become our King. Likely with the consent of Congress. And he has accepted many presents from foreign states, including his new AirForce One jet from Qatar.

Section 10: Powers Denied to the States

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

–This ties into Section 9, by reiterating that, like the federal government, the states can’t create a King or suspend habeas corpus either.

Here’s what Snopes reported on August 6:

In a post to X (archived) on Aug. 6, 2025, the Library of Congress explained that it was aware some sections of Article 1 were missing from the Constitution’s text on its site. It said this was “due to a coding error” and that it expected the issue to be resolved soon. There was also a disclaimer at the top of the website on Aug. 6, 2025, that read, “The Constitution Annotated website is currently experiencing data issues. We are working to resolve this issue and regret the inconvenience.”

The Library of Congress did not respond to a Snopes request for more information on why that portion of the Constitution was missing from on the website. However, the full text of the Constitution is also available on the National Archives’ website. That version of the text was not missing any sections from the Constitution on Aug. 6, 2025.

Did you read through the sections above in full, or just look at what was highlighted in bold? The government is counting on Americans’ complete ignorance of what is in the Constitution.

They’re counting on a mind-bending contradiction wherein people claim the government must follow the Constitution to the letter, and never interpret it, and so we should reinstitute slavery, because the Constitution is our sacred white nationalist founding document AND that the Constitution can be re-written whenever Republicans want to to say whatever they want.

Heartfelt thanks to everyone, like ThePeopleUS, who realized this fascist coup move and brought it to public awareness. The majority of Americans will either not care or actively support this. It’s up to the minority to push back.

Criminalizing pregnancy is the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act all over again

Back in 2017 we noted that the war on “illegal immigration” had evolved into laws against helping immigrants that were horribly reminiscent of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act that prosecuted any American who helped an enslaved person escape slavery.

In 2021, we updated it to note that the war on women via abortion restrictions was more of the same. In “Texas Senate Bill 8 is the Fugitive Abortion Act of 2021”, we went over the restrictions in that bill and drew the obvious comparisons.

The removal of citizenship and human rights from women through pregnancy laws, the frothing hate for trans women based on the insistence that “women” be defined as pregnancy vehicles, and the attempted reduction of women to service animals that have characterized the last four years are astounding. We’re re-running the 2021 article without update because we refuse to exhaust ourselves by listing all of the hate-filled gibberish coming out of almost every state and local government. The message in the 2021 bill has only been made more cartoonishly violent.

Criminalizing miscarriage, arresting medical professionals who try to help women suffering miscarriage, arresting women who suffer miscarriage–these are straight out of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act’s playbook. The goal is make people afraid to get involved, to stand up for democracy. Many Americans resisted then; many resist now. It’s harder to do with all the digital surveillance now available, but just as important now as it was then. Because enslaving anyone, by virtue of race or reproduction, is tyranny.

Here’s the post from 2021:

Section 7 – And be it further enacted, That any person who shall knowingly and willingly obstruct, hinder, or prevent such claimant, his agent or attorney, or any person or persons lawfully assisting him, her, or them, from arresting such a fugitive from service or labor, either with or without process as aforesaid, or shall rescue, or attempt to rescue, such fugitive from service or labor, from the custody of such claimant, his or her agent or attorney, or other person or persons lawfully assisting as aforesaid, when so arrested, pursuant to the authority herein given and declared; or shall aid, abet, or assist such person so owing service or labor as aforesaid, directly or indirectly, to escape from such claimant, his agent or attorney, or other person or persons legally authorized as aforesaid; or shall harbor or conceal such fugitive, so as to prevent the discovery and arrest of such person, after notice or knowledge of the fact that such person was a fugitive from service or labor as aforesaid, shall, for either of said offences, be subject to a fine not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisonment not exceeding six months, by indictment and conviction before the District Court of the United States for the district in which such offence may have been committed, or before the proper court of criminal jurisdiction, if committed within any one of the organized Territories of the United States; and shall moreover forfeit and pay, by way of civil damages to the party injured by such illegal conduct, the sum of one thousand dollars for each fugitive so lost as aforesaid, to be recovered by action of debt, in any of the District or Territorial Courts aforesaid, within whose jurisdiction the said offence may have been committed.

That’s Section 7 of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. This Act of Congress allowed states and territories of the U.S. to create commissioners to hunt down black Americans who escaped slavery and return them to their enslavers. If an enslaved person was able to reach a state that had legally banned slavery, their enslaved status was not overturned. Instead, the people of that state were forced, by Section 7, to void their own antislavery laws by helping the slave commissioners in whatever way those commissioners demanded: help them to find enslaved people, take them into custody, guard them while they awaited return to their enslaver, and turn them over to the enslaver. Preventing a slave commissioner from enforcing slavery in a free state was illegal. Helping an enslaved person hide or escape was illegal. Knowing about people who were helping or hiding enslaved people was illegal, because it was a form of “hindering” the slave commissioner. The penalty for those who hindered slavery, directly or indirectly, was a $1,000 fine (a fortune in the mid-1800s), up to six months in prison, and another $1,000 fine to pay back the enslaver the “civil damages” they experienced as “the party injured by such illegal conduct”. Since very few Americans would have $1,000 to pay the first fine, the second $1,000 would be collected “by action of debt” – that is, seizure of property and/or any other asset the person might possess.

We posted about the FSA four years ago, in September 2017 in “The 2017 Fugitive Slave Act”; that time, we were comparing it to laws making it criminal to help immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, and turning police officers into “immigrant-catchers” just like the slave commissioners were “slave-catchers”. When you are rewarded for doing something, you will find ways to do it. When you are punished for doing something, you’ll stop. That’s how these acts work.

This September, in Part 1 of a short series, we’re comparing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 to the 2021 Texas Senate Bill 8. Why? Because this Bill, now law, makes it illegal for a woman to get an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy in the state of Texas, and therefore illegal for anyone to provide an abortion or, crucially, to help a woman to get an abortion in Texas after six weeks in any way. Abortion is realistically banned by this procedure, not just or primarily because not all women know that they are pregnant at just six weeks, but because

–all women are forced to make two appointments with an abortion provider, one to get an ultrasound so they can be shown their “baby” and told that they will be “murdering” it if they get an abortion, and one to get another ultrasound before the procedure;

–women under age 18 are forced to get written and signed parental approval to get an abortion; and

–only women with strong support systems, money, and flexible employers who allow time off are able to travel out of Texas to a state that does provide abortions after six weeks.

With the passage of this bill into law, it’s not just illegal to perform an abortion; it’s also illegal to drive a woman out of state to get one elsewhere, to pay for one, or, potentially, to tell a woman where she can get an abortion after six weeks. The law is purposefully vague, using the phrase “conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion” to cover just about anything.

Let’s do a close reading. We took the text of this Bill from the website Texas Legislature Online, which is part of the official State of Texas government website. We’re not reproducing the entire text, but letting you know which sections we’re looking at.

AN ACT

relating to abortion, including abortions after detection of an unborn child’s heartbeat; authorizing a private civil right of action.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF TEXAS: SECTION 1. This Act shall be known as the Texas Heartbeat Act.

–The use of the word “child” is already a red flag for subjectivity. A fetus at 6 weeks is a fetus, not a “child”. Anti-choice advocates have long used the words “baby” or “child” to describe something that could one day be a baby or child, but currently is not. From the moment an egg is fertilized by sperm, it’s a “baby”, as Section 171.201 (5) says: “‘Pregnancy’ means the human female reproductive condition that: (A) begins with fertilization”.

Calling the Bill the “Texas Heartbeat Act” technically refers to the fact that a fetal heartbeat is detected between 3-6 weeks after fertilization. But even the language of this Bill in Section 171.201 (1) reveals what a technicality this is: “‘Fetal heartbeat’ means cardiac activity or the steady and repetitive rhythmic contraction of the fetal heart within the gestational sac.” Is this what anti-choice advocates want you to think of when you hear “Texas Heartbeat Act”? No; they want you to think of a valentine-shaped heart that represents a baby with feelings and emotions.

Basically, calling a 6-week old fetus a “child” or “baby” is like calling someone you enslave a “laborer” or “worker”, as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 did, consistently calling people who escaped slavery “fugitives from labor.”

Sec. 171.207. LIMITATIONS ON PUBLIC ENFORCEMENT. (a) Notwithstanding Section 171.005 or any other law, the requirements of this subchapter shall be enforced exclusively through the private civil actions described in Section 171.208. No enforcement of this subchapter, and no enforcement of Chapters 19 and 22, Penal Code, in response to violations of this subchapter, may be taken or threatened by this state, a political subdivision, a district or county attorney, or an executive or administrative officer or employee of this state or a political subdivision against any person, except as provided in Section 171.208.

–Here the Bill leads early with its key component: it’s not being enforced by the State government. No enforcement of the Bill may be taken or threatened by anyone representing the state. Here’s the first part of that following section they refer to:

Sec. 171.208. CIVIL LIABILITY FOR VIOLATION OR AIDING OR ABETTING VIOLATION. (a) Any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state, may bring a civil action against any person who:

–Texas never claimed that this Bill is constitutional. The evil genius of it is that it doesn’t have to be constitutional if the state is not carrying it out. No one working for the state government of Texas will be asked to prevent a woman from getting an abortion, or take anyone to court for having an abortion or helping a woman to get one. The state’s hands are off. It’s private citizens who will do this work. Yes, they’re authorized by state law, but this means that anyone who wants to challenge this law will have to go after every individual citizen who acts on it–which could be thousands or tens of thousands of people. No one can sue the State of Texas over it.

Pro-choice advocates will certainly take the first private citizen who acts on this law to court, and hope to work that individual case up to the Supreme Court, just like Brown v. Board of Education or Plessy v. Ferguson. But in the meantime, unknown numbers of people will continue to act on it–far greater numbers than work in Texas state government. 25 million people live in Texas. Far fewer work in state government.

This is an authorization of vigilantism, as we will see. Let’s continue that last section:

Sec. 171.208.  CIVIL LIABILITY FOR VIOLATION OR AIDING OR ABETTING VIOLATION. (a)  Any person, other than an officer or employee of a state or local governmental entity in this state, may bring a civil action against any person who:

(1)  performs or induces an abortion in violation of this subchapter;

(2)  knowingly engages in conduct that aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion, including paying for or reimbursing the costs of an abortion through insurance or otherwise, if the abortion is performed or induced in violation of this subchapter, regardless of whether the person knew or should have known that the abortion would be performed or induced in violation of this subchapter;

(1) is clear: no abortions can be provided after six weeks. (2) is that horribly vague “conduct that aids or abets the performance” of an abortion that could cover anything. The only specific they give is that insurance companies that pay for abortion can be sued. The vanishingly small number of insurance companies that ever cover abortion will soon, one fears, be reduced to zero.

You may be asking at this point, where is the burden of proof? How can anyone prove that someone “aided or abetted” in an abortion in any way? It’s just hearsay–I can go to court and say “I know that Person A drove Person B to get an abortion” or, worse, “I know that Person A encouraged Person B to get an abortion,” or even “Person A knew that when Person B left the house that day they were going to drive out of state to get an abortion and didn’t try to stop them.” There’s no end to the dystopian nightmare that is made possible here.

This law also makes someone guilty until proven innocent, which is the opposite of the legal principle the U.S. is founded on. If Person A is sued, they are forced to appear in court and argue that they are innocent. The Bill refers to someone in this situation as the “defendant” and the person who sued them as “the claimant”, and never was the word “claim” so accurately and awfully used. No one making a claim against someone will be thrown out of court, and every groundless case will have to be heard–and the “defendant” will pay all the legal fees if they are found guilty, and the state will pay all the legal fees if they are not, as we see here:

[3] (b)  If a claimant prevails in an action brought under this section, the court shall award:

(1)  injunctive relief sufficient to prevent the defendant from violating this subchapter or engaging in acts that aid or abet violations of this subchapter;

(2)  statutory damages in an amount of not less than $10,000 for each abortion that the defendant performed or induced in violation of this subchapter, and for each abortion performed or induced in violation of this subchapter that the defendant aided or abetted; and

(3)  costs and attorney’s fees.

So if Person X takes Person A to court and wins, Person A is first made incapable of repeating their crime (“injunctive relief” is a court order that demands that someone stop doing something), and Person X, the Claimant, gets “not less than” $10,000 for each abortion performed or “aided and abetted” by Person A, and the court will pay for Person X’s court costs and attorney’s fees. Person X, of course, pays their own costs and fees.

Remember how the Fugitive Slave Act guaranteed $1,000 to anyone who turned in someone hindering a slave commissioner? And put the hinderer in jail, and made them pay another $1,000 so they couldn’t do it again (injunctive relief)? Just add a zero to the Texas law and we’ve got the same situation, except that in 1850 the person found guilty paid the reward to the person who had turned them in. Now, it’s all taxpayers in Texas. Everyone, regardless of their stance on abortion, is helping to prosecute people who provide or “aid and abet” abortion.

(d) Notwithstanding Chapter 16, Civil Practice and Remedies Code, or any other law, a person may bring an action under this section not later than the fourth anniversary of the date the cause of action accrues.

–There’s a statute of limitations of four years on suing someone for providing, aiding or abetting abortion. We’re surprised it’s that short. Why fear that memory or hearsay or “claims” will be harder to prove with passage of time? Concerns about proof don’t seem to trouble anyone who wrote or passed this Bill.

Sec. 171.212. SEVERABILITY.

(c) The legislature further declares that it would have enacted this chapter, and each provision, section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, or word, and all constitutional applications of this chapter, irrespective of the fact that any provision, section, subsection, sentence, clause, phrase, or word, or applications of this chapter, were to be declared unconstitutional or to represent an undue burden.

–This is surprisingly frank. The Texas state legislature would have passed last word of this bill, “irrespective of the fact” that any part of it “were to be declared unconstitutional or to represent an undue burden.”

Part of this lack of concern for constitutional law comes from their deviant removal of enforcement from the state to the private citizen–again, it doesn’t matter if the law is unconstitutional if the state is not carrying it out (even though the state is, of course, carrying it out by allowing cases to be heard and punishing the courts if they don’t hear the cases).

But the larger part is that this is meant to be read as a brave, moral stand against the immorality of abortion. Even if the whole world tells us we’re wrong, the lawmakers say, we know that we’re right, and we stand by it. This wrapping oneself in morality is very selective in the U.S., and seems mostly to occur when right-wing politicians go against something liberal politicians support.

It’s also almost always about life-or-death stands that are fairly meaningless: support our troops by funding weapons and wars, because they’re fighting for our freedom… but don’t give military personnel a living wage, safety from rape and/or abuse based on sexuality, good life and health insurance, easy access to quality mental or physical health care, or good housing.

Here, it’s don’t “kill” an unborn “child” because that’s “murder”… but once that child is born, do nothing to fund early childhood education, school breakfasts, mother and infant health care, affordable and safe day care, after-school programs, or anything else that will help that child live a good life. This is not being “pro-life” but “pro-birth”.

People who ban abortion are almost always “pro-birth”. They want huge governmental involvement, investment, and protection for stopping abortion, and zero of the above for helping all children thrive, regardless of race, religion, first language, income, sex, sexuality, etc. They usually follow pro-birth laws with measures designed to prevent exactly that kind of level playing field for the children they insist be born, from segregated schools to gay “conversion camps” (aka torture centers).

There’s no room for this in a democratic nation. The history of the United States is one of incrementally increasing democracy, of getting closer to liberty and justice for all. Making a Christian position against abortion the law for all Texans, and, one day, for all Americans, is a violation of our founding principle of separation of church and state. Un-American oppression and disregard for the Constitution, vigilantism and sexism, have no place in our nation. Religious belief is not protected by the Constitution, as we’ve noted before:

…What the First Amendment does regarding religion is: first, it forbids our federal legislature from making any laws creating an official state religion; second, it forbids our federal legislature from preventing people from worshipping as they see fit. That’s what “free exercise” means–how you worship. Whether you go to a church, synagogue, mosque, or have a prayer room in your home, you are protected. If you wear a head covering like a yarmulke or turban as a form of worship, you are protected.

The First Amendment is all about physical forms of religious worship. It comes from a time when people would burn Catholic churches or refuse to let Jewish Americans build synagogues. It stops this, and stops schools from forbidding students to wear religious clothing.

It does not protect religion itself, or as we usually put it, religious belief. It does not protect anyone’s right to believe certain things. If one’s religion prohibits homosexuality or birth control, that is a belief, not a form of worship. Belief is not protected because belief is so amorphous. One could claim any crazy notion as a religious belief and demand that it be protected. We could say that our religion says women shouldn’t ride public transportation, or men should not be allowed to use public showers, or cats can’t be kept as pets, and we would have to be accommodated.

The Founders were wise enough not to get into religious belief. They just made a safe space for public and private physical worship.

Laws like the ones passed in Texas, and getting closer to passage in many other states, define one specific version of Christianity as “religious belief”, and seek to make it the state (and national) religion. That’s not what we’re supposed to do in America.

Pearl Harbor was the start

While driving home from work one day last week, one of us at the HP saw a letterboard sign in front of a small cornerstore in their mid-sized city that read:

“Was WWII over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?”

We don’t know anyone at the store, and have no idea what their intent was, but we assume it was a call to resistance against dictatorship in America. The first emotional response was positive. It actually took one second to catch on to… the Germans?

A quick check confirms that the Empire of Japan, not its Axis ally Germany, bombed the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, drawing the U.S. at last into officially declaring war and committing the women and men of its military to combat in World War II.

So was this sign a joke? Was it, just maybe, a knowing nod to how little Americans know about our own history? Or was it evidence of that?

We can’t know. But we can decide to commit ourselves to the first meaning of resistance. When we see the stunning blows dealt to America’s democracy by Americans who have done nothing but benefit from it, the very fact that this is happening reads like defeat. But it’s not. It’s the opening salvo of anti-Americans against the rest of us. And we, like the U.S. navy after Pearl Harbor, need time to assemble our full defenses and our offense, time for people who haven’t taken action to realize they must, and time to move from grief to furious resolve. But then we, like the U.S. navy, military, government, and people will shift into a high gear of both resistance and counter-attack. For us, it won’t be through killing and violence, but through an unstoppable commitment to our democratic processes.

So we’re reeling from the Pearl Harbor attack that began in January. But as another American once said, we have not yet begun to fight.

Washington is a foreigner

We’ve had a very unsettling experience here at the HP.

Our 2012 post “Washington’s Farewell Address: Avoiding Foreign Entanglements” has been trending since Inauguration Day, most likely because of this section:

“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally. This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy. The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.”

—This is the part of the Address that most people remember (the idea, if not the actual words). Here Washington is warning against political factions, and he equates the formation of political parties with inevitable dissension. This definition of what can happen when partisanship runs rampant must sound familiar to us today: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension… leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual [who] turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.” When the political process grinds to a halt because one or more political parties refuses to work with others, only a charismatic individual can take the lead, and this kind of cult of personality is antithetical to democracy.

“Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast, patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency, it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose. And there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.”

—Political factions or parties “[serve] always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection.” Again, so familiar to us today, at a time of great partisan conflict.

Formal despotism has come upon us in the United States under Trump. Whether it becomes permanent remains to be seen, but that is the intention of Trump and everyone who supports him. Factionalism, magnified beyond all possibility before the advent of social media, has agitated our nation with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms, kindled the animosity of one part against another, and foment first riot and now insurrection (by way of the executive branch).

Washington… the name conjures up the entire American journey, from colonies to revolution to democratic republic. The highs of Enlightenment, Constitution, and the quest for representative government contrasted with the lows of colonizing conquest, slavery, and denying women the rights of citizens. The triumph of creating the phrase “with liberty and justice for all” and the failure of having to struggle and fight for over two centuries to make it more of a reality. (Yes, the phrase comes from the 1885 pledge of allegiance, but think about why that is–why someone 110 years after the Revolutionary War began, a veteran of the U.S. Army during the Civil War, used it to express American patriotism). Washington played a crucial role in founding and preserving the United States, quite literally for better and for worse. His enlightened understanding of liberty and willingness to fight for it stand beside his callow and inhuman reluctance to stop breeding human beings for sale when he understood that it was, in fact, clearly morally evil. We inherit both sides in America. The fight since his time has been to reduce the evil by growing the good until we finally achieve real democracy. As young people, when we saw Washington’s image in a K12 textbook, it reminded us we are inheritors of a just war for equality.

But now, one of us recently saw this classic, familiar image of Washington somewhere in passing, and had the weird and troubling realization that it felt foreign. They had, in short, the feeling that the line has been broken.

The line from our founding through the centuries to today, with its successes and failures on the path toward full democracy, is broken. We’re not connected with our past anymore. Washington is no longer someone to learn lessons from as we shape our collective identity. His image used to be a nutshell for the idea that doing the work to make liberty and justice for all a reality is what makes us Americans. He left so much unfinished and even untouched. Generations that followed him took up that work, honoring the good in our history but insisting on calling out and destroying the bad.

But now Americans are being told that we have no collective identity, only factions, only one of which is righteous. That fighting for justice is not our inheritance or our mission. That, in fact, our society has always been just because it has always benefitted rich straight white Christians. That, we are now told, is what we need to make sure continues.

The majority of our current government and our citizens no longer understand what’s good in our history, let alone acknowledge the evil within it. They’re destroying history, deleting its records, burning its archives, and forcibly teaching something new and false and deadly, dedicated to the principle that no humans are created equal to rich straight white Christians.

Is the break irreparable–permanent? Not yet. Maybe not ever, if the minority who stay on the path to full democracy refuse to leave it. The sickening nature of this moment should be a tonic that keeps us on that path. Maybe moments of disconnect, destruction, and rupture like this are what it takes to remind us of the high stakes of this battle. For now, not recognizing Washington anymore is pretty strong medicine to take.

Authoritarians owning history?

What is an “unproven concept?

Ray Rodrigues, chancellor of the state university system in Florida, believes he knows. He’s one of the many officials overseeing the censorship and government control of higher ed curricula in almost every state in the U.S. Florida was an early leader in this authoritarianism, so we can look at them in particular. In 2023, the state government issued undergraduate general-education requirements–in other words, the courses that people getting a bachelor’s degree in any Florida institute of higher eduction may be offered. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, the state law “curtails ‘identity politics,’ distortions of major historical events, and ‘unproven, speculative, or exploratory content’ in the curriculum.”

As historians, we immediately see that second phrase, but all of these efforts are efforts to own history–to control what historical archives, artifacts, and other resources will be preserved and which will be gutted in order to be remade into authoritarian-friendly resources; which institutions offer degrees in history; and, of course, to control who writes history, what they write about, and how.

“Identity politics” is interestingly presented as obviously bad. There’s no need for them to explain why it’s harmful. The phrase has been rigorously bent by Republicans in this country to mean “ridiculous, untrue claims that there are many human identities (PS: there aren’t) that should be accepted as real and natural and not be discriminated against.” With this broad definition, authoritarian agents can go to war with almost any “claim” they like.

“Distortions” of historical events also requires, even begs for, clarifying detail. The horrid irony, of course, is that these authoritarian agents make their living distorting historical events.

Finally, “unproven content”… again, so broad as to be meaningless, unless it is to be wielded as an all-purpose weapon against anything that isn’t distorted to represent authoritarianism. But there’s little need for us to describe it when Ray Rodrigues is happy to do it for us:

“When a state like Florida can say we’ve eliminated these unproven concepts from general education,” thereby relegating them to electives and other courses that students opt to take, Rodrigues said, “that puts Florida in a position to say, ‘We are addressing the No. 1 concern the American public has expressed about higher education.’”

The “number one” concern he refers to in order to justify the entire censorship project is left completely undefined. Americans are “concerned” about “unproven concepts”. That’s it.

What are some of the harmful, specious “identity politics”, “unproven concepts”, and “distortions” that have been targeted in Florida? Here are examples an administrator at FIU shared with the Chronicle:

A course called “Labor and Globalization” is “too focused on struggles/challenges of those in low-wage jobs” and should be revised.
“The Basic Ideas of Sociology” and “Global Women’s Writing: Gendered Experiences Across Societies and Cultures” — are “too focused on women” and should be removed from the general-education curriculum.
“Theories of Black America” and “Global Gender Issues” deal with race and gender.
“Disability and Society” (no reason stated in the article)
“Sociology of Gender” and “Anthropology of Race and Ethnicity” – “our administration (provost and dean) has made clear that they do not think that either of these is a battle worth fighting”
World Regional Geography
The Basic Ideas of Sociology
Basic Communication Skills (“no Western canon”)
Introduction to Machine Learning (“confirm course meets the ‘natural-science criteria’ of the law”)
Perspectives on the Short Story

It’s obvious why courses explicitly focused on unproven concepts like race, sex, and gender were removed/banned. What’s more insidious are the seeming outliers. Sociology is clearly considered to promote “liberal” ideas by authoritarians; studying human societies from anything other than a religious standpoint will open the door to “identity politics.” Ditto studying world geography, where students would inevitably learn about other races. America-first is the curricular mandate here. Banning a communications course because it doesn’t include “western canon” seems like deliberate provocation by ignorant people drunk on their own power.

The story of what happened to the course “Perspectives on the Short Story” tells us all we need to know: after it was removed, the English professor teaching it contacted the chair of the department, Andrew Epstein. the ideally named person teaching it, Robin Truth Goodman, reports that Epstein: “told her he thought he could make a case for the short-story course by changing its title from ‘Perspectives on’ to ‘Introduction to the Short Story,’ which to me just means they didn’t like the idea of difference in perspective.”

Yes, Dr. Goodman is correct. A course was banned without anyone looking at what it taught or how. A word they have banned was in the title, and that was all it took. If “Labor and Globalization” changed its name to “Capitalism and how it Benefits Society” the course would be reinstated.

Every battle we face today in the U.S. is about owning history. Real historians do what they can to expand that ownership, by teaching real history to the general public, wherever they may be. Researching real events and people in the past and faithfully recording what they did, then thoughtfully and objectively hypothesizing about why what they did is important, how it shaped events and people that followed them, and impact us to this day, is what doing history is. It is always speculative and exploratory as hypotheses are formed. Established hypotheses–canonical history–can and must always be challenged by real historians doing the above, and not by authoritarian lackies making (white, straight, male, Christian) things up as they go along and saying it’s history.

Do whatever you can wherever you are to stand up to fake history. Every small action helps.

Words matter–especially the unacceptable ones

Sometimes a picture or two is worth a thousand words. Here’s a combination of words and images from Milo Rossi on YouTube that struck us forcefully:

We also want to shout out to Austin Archer, as always, but particularly for his “brief recap of the last 48 hours” video, in which he goes against the grain of online content creators by saying the words “Nazi” and “sieg heil” and “Hitler salute”, because he isn’t afraid of being demonetized for “unacceptable content”. While most commentators are getting around these words by saying “he did what he did, you saw what you saw, it is what it is”, that in itself is an accommodation of the fascism that was done, seen, and is.

Historians don’t shy away from using appropriate terminology to describe events. Saying those words aloud is part of what we’re doing right now.

The last American president…?

We just watched President Biden’s short farewell address. In it he reiterated that America is great when it offers possibility to everyone, sustains its democratic institutions, keeps the three powers separate, and does not put the president above the law.

These principles were once considered givens in any discussion of what America means, how our government works and what it protects, and what our society represents. Now they are reclassified as liberal talking points, partisan ideals actively opposed and scorned by the majority of Americans.

Last week, on January 10, the president-elect appeared in court onscreen to have any punishment for his felony conviction waived–an “unconditional discharge”–by judge Juan Merchan. Here’s how the New York Times described it:

“Donald Trump the ordinary citizen, Donald Trump the criminal defendant” would not be entitled to the protections of the presidency, Justice Merchan said, explaining that only the office shielded the defendant from the verdict’s gravity.

“This court has determined that the only lawful sentence that permits entry of judgment of conviction without encroaching on the highest office of the land is an unconditional discharge,” Justice Merchan said.

He then wished Mr. Trump “godspeed” and departed the bench.

Despite the lenience, the proceeding carried symbolic importance: It formalized Mr. Trump’s status as a felon, making him the first to carry that dubious designation into the presidency.

Yesterday, January 14, Special Counsel Jack Smith (again reported by the NYT) issued his final report:

Jack Smith, the special counsel who indicted President-elect Donald J. Trump on charges of illegally seeking to cling to power after losing the 2020 election, said in a final report released early Tuesday that the evidence would have been sufficient to convict Mr. Trump in a trial, had his 2024 election victory not made it impossible for the prosecution to continue.

“The department’s view that the Constitution prohibits the continued indictment and prosecution of a president is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof or the merits of the prosecution, which the office stands fully behind,” Mr. Smith wrote.

He continued: “Indeed, but for Mr. Trump’s election and imminent return to the presidency, the office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.”

One president goes out, struggling to get the words out as he repeats what Americans used to take for granted, whether they liked it or not, and another comes in, effortlessly destroying what he doesn’t like, to the delight of his followers.

There’s been a lot of talk about what Vice President Kamala Harris “did wrong” in her campaign for president. If only she had done this or that… but it’s all too clear that she lost not because of anything she did or didn’t do, but because the majority of people in this country don’t want democracy and so voted against it. Those who didn’t vote fall into this category.

We reference history here, but there is no historical precedent for what we’re going through, or for what’s to come. At least not in American history. There are many historical precedents for it in other nations. The comparison to Nazi Germany is not overblown.

So what’s the role of the historian in America now? President Biden said it’s our turn to stand guard. Standing guard means a dogged fight, as we now from our own history. It means young children walking a gauntlet of armed mobs to desegregate our public schools. It means women withstanding violence and discrimination for the right to vote. It means gay people marching in the streets through hate-filled crowds to claim their citizenship. It means fighting a civil war to end slavery. Standing guard is not silent, passive work but a daily, active resistance to the forces of fascism. It means standing by the truth and refusing to go along with lies. All battles for civil rights are long and terrible ordeals. But the results when we win those battles are what make life worth living.

So that’s what we’ll be doing, here and elsewhere. People sometimes comfort themselves in dangerous times by saying “history is cyclical–these troubled times will pass.” And that’s true. But the cycle of history only moves when people put their shoulders to the wheel to move it. We’ve seen anti-democracy Americans throw their bodyweight into pushing the nation into a future of destruction, and so we’re moving in that direction. But an equal and opposite reaction can come–if we work at it. It won’t just happen. It will take decades to turn that tide. But what else is worth doing? We can’t think of a better way to spend our time.

Christmas in colonial New England–or not

Re-running our Christmas Classic this year. Enjoy the holiday break!

In December we think of Christmas and the ever-evolving forms of celebration of that holiday in America. And being the HP, we think of the very long period over which Christmas was not celebrated in Woodland New England.

The Separatist Pilgrims and the Puritans, the two English groups who settled what is now New England, did not celebrate Christmas because they did not celebrate any holidays, because they believed that every day was given by God, and so every day was holy. It was humans who picked and chose certain days to be better than the rest, thus impugning God’s holy creation by identifying some days as unimportant and boring. Holidays were the creation of humans, not God, and an insult to God in more ways than one: not only was the creation of holidays a disparagement of other days, but the usual form of celebrating holidays in England involved raucous immorality. There were few silent nights during religious holidays in Europe. They were times of drunkenness, gaming, gambling, dancing, and licentiousness, and as a major Christian holiday, Christmas involved high levels of all these things. “Men dishonor Christ more in the 12 days of Christmas,” wrote the reformist Bishop of Worcester Hugh Latimer in the mid-1500s, “than in all the 12 months besides.”

While they lived in England, the Pilgrims and the Puritans withdrew from Christmas celebrations, conspicuous by their absence from the debauched partying in the streets. When they removed to America, both groups took great pleasure in putting an end to the observance of holidays, Christmas in particular. Both groups observed many special days, either of thanksgiving or fasting. When something particularly good happened, a thanksgiving was held. This involved a church service and then gatherings at home or in groups (see Truth v. Myth: The First Thanksgiving for more). When danger threatened, or something bad happened, a fast was held. This involved a day of church services preceded by fasting, which meant not eating and even refraining from sex the night before. (Puritans knew that nothing humbled people like hunger and celibacy.) No other special days were observed.

So December 25 was just like any other day for the Pilgrims and Puritans. If it was a Sunday, you’d go to church and perhaps hear a sermon that referenced Jesus’ birth. If it was a Tuesday, you got up and went to work as usual. In Plimoth, where the Separatist Pilgrims were outnumbered by unreformed Anglicans, Governor Bradford had a hard time stopping the Anglicans from celebrating Christmas. The Anglicans would not learn from the example of the Separatists, who were hard at work on Christmas day 1621. Here is Bradford’s own account of a run-in he had with unreformed celebrants that day (he refers to himself in the third person here as “the Governor”):

“And herewith I shall end this year. Only I shall remember one passage more, rather of mirth than of weight. One the day called Christmas day, the Governor called them out to work, as was used. But the most of this new company excused themselves and said it went against their consciences to work on that day. So the Governor told them that if they made it matter of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed; so he led away the rest and left them. But when they came home at noon from their work, he found them in the street at play, openly; some pitching the bar and some at stool-ball, and such like sports. So he went to them, and took away their implements, and told them that was against his conscience, that they should play and others work. If they made the keeping of [Christmas a] matter of devotion, let them keep [to] their houses, but there should be no gaming or revelling in the streets. Since which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least openly.” [Of Plymouth Plantation, 107]

When the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony absorbed the Pilgrim Plimoth Colony into itself, and Massachusetts came under direct royal control in 1681 (losing its political independence), the Anglican governor assigned to the colony brought back Christmas celebrations. In 1686, when King James II created the Dominion of New England, composed of Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, and East and West Jersey, and designed specifically to destroy Puritan political independence and religious identity, the royal governor James chose, Edmund Andros, was bitterly resented by all his new subjects. When Andros went to church to celebrate Christmas in Boston in 1686 he needed an armed escort to protect him.

Now Christmas was associated with royal dictatorship and all the grief of the Dominion, and the people of New England and especially Massachusetts continued to boycott the holiday well into the 18th century. When the Revolutionary War began, Christmas boycotts rose in popularity as the day was again tied to royal control and tyranny. After the war, Congress met on Christmas Day, businesses were open, and while private celebrations were not uncommon, there was no official recognition of Christmas in New England. In fact, no state recognized Christmas as an official holiday until Alabama took the plunge in 1836. President Grant made it a federal holiday in 1870, and that was about the time that New England at last gave up the remnants of its ancient resistance. (Readers of Little Women, which Louisa May Alcott began to write in Concord, Massachusetts in 1868, will remember that while the Marches celebrate Christmas with gusto as well as reverence, Amy March is able to go to a store first thing Christmas morning to exchange a gift, revealing that Christmas was still a day of business in Massachusetts at that late date.)

It’s ironic, given this history, that the winter scenes created by Massachusetts-based lithographers Currier and Ives became the template for “a traditional New England Christmas” in the 1870s, complete with one-horse open sleighs and jingle bells. Sleigh rides, roasting chestnuts, spiced apple cider—all these Christmas traditions originated in New England, but they were not specific to Christmas when New Englanders enjoyed them in the 18th century. They were just part of winter. Even the “traditional” white Christmas relies on a cold northern winter, a defining characteristic of the region that no one in colonial times associated with the holiday.

Today, there are still branches of Protestantism that look down on “the observance of days”, and urge that all days be seen as equally holy and important. But Christmas is here to stay… for the foreseeable future, anyway.