Howard Pyle
George Washington called Boston’s annual Pope Night celebration ‘ridiculous and childish.’ But the working-class celebrants, especially the young men, loved the wild partying in the streets. It was the biggest holiday of the year (after all, the Puritans had banned Christmas).
Illustration of an early New England colonial Christmas tradition: Plymouth Gov. William Bradford putting down the Christmas revels.
The Banning of Christmas and Pope-Day Celebrations
The Puritans, including the group of them who came from England to our Plymouth shores, known as Pilgrims, banned Christmas. This was due to their intense hostility towards the “Romish Church,” and the Church of England, charged with following “popish” practices.
Christmas was banned in England for eleven years by Act of Parliament (1659), during the ascendancy of Oliver Cromwell and his Puritan party. In New England, Christmas was banned for twenty-two years by the Great and General Court of Massachusetts (the legislature).
Pilgrim Children were not allowed to have a Santa Claus, a Christmas tree, or a vacation from school on Christmas day. Adults were not allowed to feast, to dance, or to refrain from work on the 25th day of December. Such actions were punishable by fine or imprisonment. The Pilgrims boasted that they worked on Christmas. Samuel Sewell, famous for the diary he kept, noted in his chronicle, covering the years 1623-1729, many of the hostile acts against the observance of Christmas. He recorded with satisfaction the number of stores open on Christmas days and the carts coming to town. “Some,” he says, “somehow, observe the day, but are vexed, I believe, that the body of the people profane it; and blessed be God!”
Cotton Mather and other leaders of the Pilgrims pronounced as “blasphemy” the keeping of “Holy Days.” They resented the forms of English celebrations, which, no doubt, fell at times to the level of boisterous revelry that were a discredit to religion. They wanted no “wanton Bacchanalian Christmases,” spent “dicing, carding, masking (taking part in a masquerade), mumming (superstitious ceremonies), consumed in compotations (drinking, carousing), in interludes, in excess of wine, in mad mirth.” If they stopped there, the sympathies of most Christians would be on their side. But these dour immigrants to New England, who were known by their gait, dark clothing, lank hair, and sour demeanor, did not want any merry-making at Christmas whatsoever, for they hated all things Catholic, as the Devil hates holy water. Because of their Puritanical hatred of Christmas, Thanks-giving was made a prominent holiday. All the usual foods associated with Christmas in “Merri England” were rejected in favor of the indigenous turkey, Indian pudding, and pumpkin pie. Christmas carols were tabooed.
In England the anti-Catholic feeling against the “popish” practice of celebrating Christmas culminated in the Roundhead (Puritan) Parliament (1643) abolishing saints’ days, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide. They even went so far as to destroy holly and mistletoe plants associated with Christmas, claiming that such plants were of the Evil One.
The enemies of the greatest Christian feast of the year attacked these and many more innocent joys, merely because they were of Catholic origin. Cromwell and his Puritans in England and on this side of the Atlantic are no more. On the other hand, the Church and the holy feast of Christmas continues to flourish in certain circles and do honor to the Babe of Bethlehem on December 25 of each year.
Pope-Night
Celebrated on November 5, Pope Night was an American version of England’s Guy Fawkes Day, and it was decidedly anti-Catholic. Fawkes, a Catholic partisan, had tried to blow up Parliament.
Plymouth, Mass., celebrated the first recorded Pope Night (also called Pope-Day) in 1623, when sailors lit a bonfire. The fire blazed out of control and burned down several nearby homes. That was so much fun the other seacoast towns took up the celebration. Pope Night spread to Marblehead, Newburyport and Salem in Massachusetts, Portsmouth in New Hampshire and New London in Connecticut.
The festivities generally featured fires, drinking and mockery of elites and authorities.
By the mid-1700s, the 5th of November was one of Boston’s most popular holidays. On that day, apprentices and young men paraded through town with giant effigies of the Devil, the Pope, and current political scapegoats, demanding coins from householders and passersby.
At nightfall, Boston’s North End and South End gangs met in the middle of town and brawled. The winners hauled away the other side’s paraphernalia and burned all the effigies in a festive bonfire. In 1764 the event became so violent that a young boy was killed, his head crushed by a wagon wheel.
The most detailed early description of a New England “Pope-Night” celebration comes from a history of Newbury, Massachusetts:
“Young men, as well as boys,…constructed a huge vehicle, varying, at times, from twenty to forty feet long, eight or ten wide, and five or six high, from the lower to the upper platform, on the front of which, they erected a paper lantern, capacious enough to hold, in addition to the light, five or six persons.
“Behind that, as large as life, sat the mimic pope and several other personages, monks, friars, and so forth. Last, but not least, stood an image of what was designed to be a representation of old Nick [the Devil] himself, furnished with a pair of huge horns, holding in his hand a pitchfork, and otherwise accoutered, with all the frightful ugliness that their ingenuity could devise.”
The effigies of the Pope and devil were giant puppets, with a boy hidden in the platform beneath them moving their heads. In Newbury, the boys would “call at the principal houses in various parts of the town, ring their bell, cause the pope to elevate their head, and look round upon the audience.” Then the young crowd would chant verses like these:
“The fifth of November,
As you well remember,
Was gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the gunpowder treason,
Should ever be forgot….
Here is the pope that we have got,
The whole promoter of the plot.
We’ll stick a pitchfork in his back,
And throw him in the fire.”
The boys’ “purser,” elected to look after their money, would step forward and collect coins from the audience. “Nearly all on whom they called, gave something,” recalled Newbury historian Joshua Coffin.
After night fell, the boys built a bonfire of the effigies, platforms, and any other wooden things they could steal, taking care to save the hard-to-replace wagon wheels and carved heads. They finished the evening by putting their money toward “a splendid supper.”
George Washington Abolishes Pope-Night
While the anniversaries and commemorations of important events in the history of our country will always awaken in the loyal hearts of Catholics, sentiments of joy and thanksgiving, Washington’s name and memory have peculiar claims on our grateful memories.
At the outbreak of the American Revolution hardly one of the colonies tolerated Catholics; Catholics were looked upon with suspicion, indeed with positive hatred, and this hatred crystalized in Boston into “Pope-Night.” On this day, November 5, every year, the effigies of the Pope and the devil were taken in procession through the streets of Boston and having received the taunts and insults of pious Protestants, were finally burnt, either on Copp’s Hill or Boston Common, amidst the expletives of devout Bostonians.
Soon after General Washington took command of the American Continental Army, he was informed that “Pope-Day” was to be celebrated in camp. He accordingly issued the following order, which abolished “Pope-Day” forever:
Nov. 5.—As the commander-in-chief has been apprised of a design formed for the observance of that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the effigy of the Pope, he cannot help expressing his surprise that there should be officers and soldiers in this army so void of common sense as not to see the impropriety of such a step at this juncture; at a time when we are soliciting, and have really obtained, the friendship and alliance of the people of Canada, whom we ought to consider as brethren embarked in the same cause—the defense of the liberty of America. At this juncture and under such circumstances, to be insulting their religion is so monstrous as not to be suffered or excused; indeed, instead of offering the most remote insult, it is our duty to address public thanks to these our brethren, so as to them we are indebted for every late happy success over the common enemy in Canada.” (Washington’s Works, III, p. 144).
This was the funeral oration on the celebration of Pope-Day.