Cultural AHC and WI: No (modern) Christmas

My understanding is that a large part of today's attitudes towards Christmas and rituals therof are largely inventions of the mid-19th century. So let's say Dickens doesn't write about Christmas for whatever reason and as a result of butterflies Christmas trees are never popularized outside of parts of germany and some noble/royal circles. So might different traditions develop around the holiday instead? Does Christmas still become as significant a holiday as it is today, or does it become a regionally popular holiday at best? Would New Year's or another winter holiday become the main Winter Solstice celebration?
 
Didnt the Pilgrims ban any displays of Christmas related stuff or the exchanging of gifts as Satanic? I seem to remember that most US government stuff still ran during Christmas for most of the 18th and 19th centuries. Maybe if this kind of thing was still going on in the US, the lack of the huge American comsumer demand for Christmas and all its related stuff would be gone, leading to a diminishing of global demand for this kind of thing. I mean, for a long time American trends became global ones, no insult intended to non-Americans.

On the plus side, I wouldn't be sitting at my retail job at 930 knowing that I have to be here until 11pm to satisfy the very few last minute shoppers out today. That would be awesome.
 
There was a This American Live segment about Christmas in early America, which apparently was celebrated with drunken revelry, until a group of semi-aristocratic elites distrustful of the developing American system and especially middle class rule tried to put a stop to it, creating a legend that Saint Nicholas the patron saint of New York and encouraging his saint's day as the main winter holiday in Manhattan, which didn't gain much traction until Clement Clarke Moore invented much of the American Christmas lore in A Visit from Saint Nicholas. So if that is avoided, Christmas could remain a rowdy holiday celebrated with drinking and partying while New Years could be the jolly, family holiday Christmas is IOTL.
 
There was a This American Live segment about Christmas in early America, which apparently was celebrated with drunken revelry, until a group of semi-aristocratic elites distrustful of the developing American system and especially middle class rule tried to put a stop to it, creating a legend that Saint Nicholas the patron saint of New York and encouraging his saint's day as the main winter holiday in Manhattan, which didn't gain much traction until Clement Clarke Moore invented much of the American Christmas lore in A Visit from Saint Nicholas. So if that is avoided, Christmas could remain a rowdy holiday celebrated with drinking and partying while New Years could be the jolly, family holiday Christmas is IOTL.

Somehow I find this hard to believe.....Santa Claus predates the 19th Century, don't you know?
If anything at all, to be honest, it was probably the other way around: the semi-aristocratic elites wanted Christmas to be the rowdy-ass holiday and New Year's to be the family-friendly spectacle.......
 
Somehow I find this hard to believe.....Santa Claus predates the 19th Century, don't you know?
If anything at all, to be honest, it was probably the other way around: the semi-aristocratic elites wanted Christmas to be the rowdy-ass holiday and New Year's to be the family-friendly spectacle.......

Saint Nicholas is an OLD thing.
 
Saint Nicholas is an OLD thing.
But traditionaly St. Nicolas was celebrated in december the 5th/6th, like it still is in the Netherlands and Belgium (and possiblyother countries). Just don't switch over his celebration towards christmas and suddenly christmas is a lot different.
 
Are you referring to Christmas in America? I am pretty sure it was a very important religious holiday all over Catholic world since, well, probably late Roman times. I admit that the forms it is celebrated currently in much of Europe (and elsewhere for what I can tell) are in part recent American imports, but some are not.

(by the way, the use of pumpkins for Halloween is now criticated by some traditionalists in Italy as foreign stuff and a recent borrowing, while it was attested in many rural areas; it just had disappeared with urbanization and came back as an American trend; I guess that some ways to celebrate Christmas may have had similar paths).
 
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