Civil War Christmas in Natchez, Mississippi

Natchez Daily Courier, Dec. 25, 1862

“The peculiar situation of our country, forbids us realizing the usual pleasures and festivities of a Christmas Day, in all their bearings. Fathers and sons are absent in the tented field; many a family mourns the loss of some loved one, struck down by the invader; while others are suffering from the crushing and vindictive acts of the inhuman foe. Under such circumstances, it cannot be expected that homes will look natural, or the inmates gathered about the hearth-stone appear altogether gay. Yet to such of us who may be permitted to greet each other on this occasion of Christmas, we cannot refrain from wishing a happy season. Let us remember those who are absent, and invoke the God of all mankind, that they may be returned to us before another Christmas, with the blessings of Peace to our glorious Confederacy.

“Christmas has been celebrated from time immemorial by the believers in Christ, and many times have the Roundheads of the ancient puritanical stock attempted its suppression. Some of these same Roundhead descendants, at the North, are now the prime movers for the destruction of the South; and should they succeed, it would not astonish us at all to hear of their making, as in ancient days, one grand attempt to destroy the time-honored institution of Christmas. The old Roundheads decided that it was impious to eat cake and drink ale on Christmas; why should the latter-day, Abolition Roundheads hesitate to set aside Christmas day altogether as a season of Christian rejoicing and festivity?

“But we hope the Butlers, the Banks, and all other Cromwellian Roundheads of New England, will be banished [from] the South before another Christmas Holyday.”

https://ricochet.com/582944/across-five-christmases-a-story-of-the-civil-war/

These days, you would be hard-pressed to find anyone of Northern heritage, and few Southern, who would see the American Civil War as the English Civil War fought in the New World. But the writer scores a truth in his remonstrance of Northern Roundheads, the English Puritans who sought to decide how others would conduct daily lives and Sunday services. The Massachusetts Roundheads were as bent on control as they were in their own claims of liberty.

The history of the United States is the story of Massachusetts vs. Virginia. John Adams and his followers wanted Washington and Jefferson out of the way, as the Virginians threatened the Progressive Northeast. Nothing has changed.

If you think otherwise, consider the number of Progressive Americans who wish to “set aside Christmas day altogether as a season of Christian rejoicing and festivity.”