Witch0Winter
Banned
For a book I'm currently in the process of planning out, I have been researching the origins of our modern celebration of Christmas, to give some backstory to the tale. One of the interesting things I found out was how a lot of our modern perception of Christmas is a combination of stuff completely made up by Washington Irving and Charles Dickens, a result of the Second Great Awakening in the US and the Oxford Movement in Britain and her colonies, and, in the United States, another side effect of the Civil War mixing southern and northern attitudes.
What seemed even more interesting to me was how in the United States there was actually a large movement in the North to do away with celebrating Christmas entirely and instead focusing on the celebration of Thanksgiving as a more American holiday. It's really to the point where even a minor POD like Dickens and Irving writing about something else could potentially do away with Christmas celebrations in most of the US entirely, as even in the Civil War the North getting exposed to Christmas wouldn't be as receptive toward it and not do much about the holiday.
So what do you think would be the long-term effects on culture and capitalism without the wintry celebration in the United States, and also, possibly, in Britain/Canada/Australia/New Zealand?
What seemed even more interesting to me was how in the United States there was actually a large movement in the North to do away with celebrating Christmas entirely and instead focusing on the celebration of Thanksgiving as a more American holiday. It's really to the point where even a minor POD like Dickens and Irving writing about something else could potentially do away with Christmas celebrations in most of the US entirely, as even in the Civil War the North getting exposed to Christmas wouldn't be as receptive toward it and not do much about the holiday.
So what do you think would be the long-term effects on culture and capitalism without the wintry celebration in the United States, and also, possibly, in Britain/Canada/Australia/New Zealand?