I don't think that the voluminous works of Edmund Gosse are much read nowadays except by specialists in Edwardian literature, but Father and Son (1907) is one of the great autobiographies and deserves to be more widely known than it is.
Gosse's father, Philip Henry Gosse, whom Charles Darwin once called "an honest hodcarrier of science," was a leader of the Plymouth Brethren, a very strict, very puritanical branch of English Protestantism. According to his son, P. H. Gosse held the view that the celebration of Christmas was "nothing less than an act of idolatry. The very word is Popish,' he used to exclaim, 'Christ's Mass!' Then he would adduce the antiquity of the so-called feast, adapted from horrible heathen rites, and itself a soiled relic of the abominable Yule-Tide. He would denounce the horrors of Christmas until it almost made me [that is, Edmund the autobiographer] blush to look at a hollyberry." One year, young Edmund secretly ate some Christmas plum-pudding that had been offered to him by 'rebellious' servants. Overcome with guilt and stomach-ache, he fled to his father, crying out "Oh! Papa, Papa, I have eaten of flesh offered to idols!" His father then "ran with me into the midst of the startled servants, seized what remained of the pudding,... and ran till we reached the dust-heap, when he flung the idolatrous confectionery on to the middle of the ashes, and then raked it deep down into the mass." Only an accomplished comic writer could have invented a phrase as marvelous as "idolatrous confectionery," where the triviality of the noun undermines the high seriousness of the adjective.
Objections to Christmas celebrations, though not always expressed as vigorously as father Gosse's, are a longstanding Protestant tradition. The aggressive hawking of Christmas by right-wing fundamentalists is of recent origin. The genuine sons and daughters of the Reformation would have abhorred the materialism, the consumerism, and the tactless triumphalism of contemporary Christianity.
This is not to say that all "holiday season" celebrations are inherently offensive. I myself honor two traditions, both musical. The first is to see how few times I can have my ears subjected to the odious "little drummer boy." Avoiding the monotonous little guy requires the boycotting of the radio, the television, shopping malls, and department stores between Hallowe'en and New Year's Day -- but it's well worth it.
A second custom is to listen every year to The Messiah. The performance of choice is of course the extremely intelligent Pearlman version (Boston Baroque Orchestra and Chorus-- Martin Pearlman, Conductor [Telarc 80322]). Blessings and honor and glory be unto George Frederick Handel and to his unequalled oratorio.
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