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Christmas observance was outlawed in Boston in 1659, with a fine of five shillings. [64] [65] [66] The ban by the Puritans was revoked in 1681 by an English appointed governor, Edmund Andros; however, it was not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region. [67]
In the 19th and 20th centuries, African American spirituals and songs about Christmas, based in their tradition of spirituals, became more widely known. An increasing number of seasonal holiday songs were commercially produced in the 20th century, including jazz and blues variations.
Completely secular Christmas seasonal songs emerged in the late 18th century. "Deck the Halls" dates from 1784, and the American "Jingle Bells" was copyrighted in 1857. In the 19th and 20th centuries, African-American spirituals and songs about Christmas, based on the tradition of spirituals, became more widely known.
For example, ABC News Australia reported that one claim from the 15th century states that in the 8th century, Christian missionary, Saint Boniface, came across Germans who were offering sacrifices ...
By the late 20th century, the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah and the new African American cultural holiday of Kwanzaa began to be considered in the U.S. as being part of the "holiday season", a term that as of 2013 had become equally or more prevalent than "Christmas season" in U.S. sources to refer to the end-of-the-year festive period.
The Christmas tree became very common in the United States of America in the early 19th century. Dating from late 1812 or early 1813, the watercolor sketchbooks of John Lewis Krimmel contain perhaps the earliest depictions of a Christmas tree in American art, representing a family celebrating Christmas Eve in the Moravian tradition. [78]
Father Christmas Packing 1931, as imagined in a private letter by J. R. R. Tolkien, published in 1976. Father Christmas appeared in many 20th century English-language works of fiction, including J. R. R. Tolkien's Father Christmas Letters, a series of private letters to his children written between 1920 and 1942 and first published in 1976. [97]
The process of Christmas becoming a national holiday in the U.S. began when Representative Burton Chauncey Cook of Illinois introduced a bill in the U.S. Congress after the U.S. Civil War (1861–1865). It passed in both houses of Congress, and President Ulysses S. Grant signed it on June 28, 1870.