05/07/2013, 10:55
...Actually, some people worse than criminals did a lot of the heavy lifting in colonizing the USA.
The 20% or so colonists who left England for the Americas "Seeking religious freedom" (most of the rest were looking for new economic opportunities) were a group called the Puritans, who's twisted, joyless, we-are-meant-to-suffer-and-so-should-you ideals of Christianity were so tight-ass and obnoxious, not even the English would tolerate them proselytizing their beliefs. Imagine a horrible combination of Jehovahs witnesses bothering you on a Saturday morning, with full-on fire-and-brimstone, hell&damnation, hate-fueled fundamentalists... And England refused to let them go door-to-door. Their cultish religion that they wanted the freedom to practice and spread was... pretty much the antithesis of all freedoms imaginable.
And they brought their totalitarian values with them. Echos of which we can still see active in U.S. values today.
If you think I'm exaggerating, one of the first things they did after establishing themselves in the "new world" was outlaw Christmas. Celebrating Christmas (which HAD already been conflated with the birth of Christ by this point, so there was not even that excuse) in any festive way was punishable with a fine. Christmas remained banned in America for a couple hundred years. It wasn't until fresh new waves of immigrants in the 1900s brought their own traditions and love of Christmas with them that a new type of "American Christmas" tradition started to develop.
The 20% or so colonists who left England for the Americas "Seeking religious freedom" (most of the rest were looking for new economic opportunities) were a group called the Puritans, who's twisted, joyless, we-are-meant-to-suffer-and-so-should-you ideals of Christianity were so tight-ass and obnoxious, not even the English would tolerate them proselytizing their beliefs. Imagine a horrible combination of Jehovahs witnesses bothering you on a Saturday morning, with full-on fire-and-brimstone, hell&damnation, hate-fueled fundamentalists... And England refused to let them go door-to-door. Their cultish religion that they wanted the freedom to practice and spread was... pretty much the antithesis of all freedoms imaginable.
And they brought their totalitarian values with them. Echos of which we can still see active in U.S. values today.
If you think I'm exaggerating, one of the first things they did after establishing themselves in the "new world" was outlaw Christmas. Celebrating Christmas (which HAD already been conflated with the birth of Christ by this point, so there was not even that excuse) in any festive way was punishable with a fine. Christmas remained banned in America for a couple hundred years. It wasn't until fresh new waves of immigrants in the 1900s brought their own traditions and love of Christmas with them that a new type of "American Christmas" tradition started to develop.
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