Com­plaints about the com­mer­cial-age cor­rup­tion of Christ­mas miss one crit­i­cal fact: as a mass pub­lic cel­e­bra­tion, the hol­i­day is a rather recent inven­tion. Whether we cred­it Charles Dick­ens, Bing Cros­by, or Frank Capra—men not opposed to marketing—we must reck­on with Christ­mas as a prod­uct of moder­ni­ty. That includes the sacred ideas about fam­i­ly, piety, and grat­i­tude we attach to the sea­son.

The Puri­tans of the Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Colony “despised Christ­mas,” notes Boing Boing. They asso­ci­at­ed it with debauch­ery: heavy drink­ing, glut­tony, riots, “row­di­ness and sin­ful behav­ior.” Not only that, but they “saw it as a false hol­i­day with stronger ties to pagan­ism than Chris­tian­i­ty,” writes Rebec­ca Beat­rice Brooks at the His­to­ry of Mass­a­chu­setts blog, and “they were cor­rect, accord­ing to the book The Bat­tle for Christ­mas.”

The His­to­ry Dose video above informs us that in 1659, “the Gen­er­al Court of Mass­a­chu­setts made it ille­gal to cel­e­brate Christ­mas.” Feast­ing, or even tak­ing off work on Decem­ber 25th would result in a fine of five shillings. It seems extreme, but the hol­i­day had a car­ni­va­lesque rep­u­ta­tion at the time. Not only were rev­el­ers, at the end of a long year’s work, eager to enjoy the spoils of their labor, but their car­ol­ing might even turn into a kind of vio­lent trick-or-treat­ing.

“On some occa­sions the car­ol­ers would become row­dy and invade wealthy homes demand­ing food and drink,” Brooks writes. They “would van­dal­ize the home if the own­er refused.” The Puri­tans’ author­i­tar­i­an streak, and respect for the sanc­ti­ty of pri­vate prop­er­ty, made can­cel­ing Christ­mas the only seem­ing­ly log­i­cal thing to do, with a ban last­ing 22 years. In any case, explic­it ban or no, spurn­ing Christ­mas was com­mon prac­tice for two hun­dred years of New England’s colo­nial his­to­ry.

In the end, for all its sup­posed intru­sions into the snow globe of Christ­mas purism, “we can par­tial­ly thank com­mer­cial­iza­tion for sus­tain­ing the domes­tic brand of Christ­mas we have today”—the brand, that is, that ensures we can’t stop talk­ing about, read­ing about, and hear­ing about Christ­mas, what­ev­er our beliefs, in the sev­er­al weeks lead­ing up to Decem­ber 25th.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Behold! The Very First Christ­mas Card (1843)

John Waters’ Hand-Made, Odd­ball Christ­mas Cards: 1964-Present

Watch Björk, Age 11, Read a Christ­mas Nativ­i­ty Sto­ry on an Ice­landic TV Spe­cial (1976)

Langston Hugh­es’ Home­made Christ­mas Cards From 1950

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

In 2013, the Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies announced that “self­ie” had been deemed their Word of The Year. The term, whose first record­ed use as an Insta­gram hash­tag occurred on Jan­u­ary 27, 2011, was actu­al­ly invent­ed in 2002, when an Aus­tralian chap post­ed a pic­ture of him­self on an inter­net forum and called it a “self­ie”. While devices for tak­ing pho­tos of one­self have been avail­able for many years pri­or to the pro­lif­er­a­tion of the smart­phones respon­si­ble for this phe­nom­e­non, the his­to­ry of the self­ie dates back to the ori­gins of pho­tog­ra­phy itself.

As the Pub­lic Domain Review notes, the first record­ed instance of the self­ie harkens back to what may have been the first pho­to­graph­ic por­trait. In 1839, a young Philadel­phia chemist named Robert Cor­nelius stepped out of his family’s store and took a pho­to­graph of him­self:

He took the image by remov­ing the lens cap and then run­ning [into the] frame where he sat for a minute before cov­er­ing up the lens again. On the back he wrote “The first light Pic­ture ever tak­en. 1839.”

Cor­nelius’ strik­ing self-por­trait was, appar­ent­ly, indica­tive of his knack for pho­tog­ra­phy; an entry in Godey’s Lady’s Book from 1840 reads:

… As a Daguerreo­typ­ist his spec­i­mens are the best that have yet been seen in this coun­try, and we speak this with a full knowl­edge of the spec­i­mens shown here by Mr. Gouraud, pur­port­ing to be, and no doubt tru­ly, by Daguerre him­self. We have seen many spec­i­mens by young Cor­nelius, and we pro­nounce them unsurpassable—they must be seen to be appre­ci­at­ed.

As a final con­so­la­to­ry note to those lin­guis­tic stal­warts whose blood boils at this bit of Aus­tralian slang enter­ing the lex­i­con, have no fear—the Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies Online is very, very dif­fer­ent than the Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell

See the First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre (1838)

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Bio­log­i­cal evo­lu­tion: nev­er has a phe­nom­e­non so impor­tant so lent itself to such clear, under­stand­able, ele­gant expla­na­tions. But just as evo­lu­tion itself pro­duces a seem­ing­ly infi­nite vari­ety of life forms, so the human under­stand­ing of evo­lu­tion has pro­duced count­less edu­ca­tion­al and enter­tain­ing kinds of illus­tra­tions by which to explain it. In the video above, astronomer-astro­physi­cist-cos­mol­o­gist Carl Sagan, no stranger to demys­ti­fy­ing the once seem­ing­ly unfath­omable phe­nom­e­na of our uni­verse, shows how evo­lu­tion actu­al­ly works with eight min­utes of crisp ani­ma­tion that take us from mol­e­cules in the pri­mor­dial soup, to bac­te­ria, to plants and polyps, to lam­preys, to tur­tles, to dinosaurs and birds, to wom­bats, to baboons and apes, to us. Then he goes back and does the whole four bil­lion-year evo­lu­tion­ary jour­ney again in forty sec­onds.

This con­cise les­son con­cerns itself not just with how we human beings came about, but how every­thing else came about as well. That wide-angle view of real­i­ty won a great deal of acclaim for Sagan’s Cos­mos: A Per­son­al Voy­age, the 1980 tele­vi­sion series on which the seg­ment orig­i­nal­ly appeared. Though most of its orig­i­nal broad­casts on life, the uni­verse, and every­thing still hold up as well as this clip on evo­lu­tion, a 21st-cen­tu­ry suc­ces­sor has late­ly appeared in the form of Cos­mos: A Space­time Odyssey, host­ed by astro­physi­cist Neil deGrasse Tyson, doubt­less the most suit­ed heir to Sagan’s tra­di­tion of enthu­si­asm and rig­or in pub­lic sci­ence com­mu­ni­ca­tion. For a more extend­ed treat­ment of evo­lu­tion, see also our post from ear­li­er this week on deGrasse Tyson’s episode on the sub­ject, in which he spends an entire hour on his equal­ly fas­ci­nat­ing expla­na­tion of what, up to and includ­ing you, he, and I, nat­ur­al selec­tion has so far come up with.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Where Did Human Beings Come From? 7 Mil­lion Years of Human Evo­lu­tion Visu­al­ized in Six Min­utes

Richard Dawkins Explains Why There Was Nev­er a First Human Being

550 Mil­lion Years of Human Evo­lu­tion in an Illus­trat­ed Flip­book

Free Online Biol­o­gy Cours­es

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.