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. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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.

Image by Avro, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

In 2013, the cura­tors of the tour­ing muse­um exhib­it “David Bowie Is” released a list of David Bowie’s 100 favorite reads, pro­vid­ing us with deep­er insights into his lit­er­ary tastes. Cov­er­ing fic­tion and non-fic­tion, the list spans six decades, mov­ing from Richard Wright’s mem­oir Black Boy (1945) to Susan Jacoby’s The Age of Amer­i­can Unrea­son (2008). As we once not­ed in anoth­er post, “his list shows a lot of love to Amer­i­can writ­ers, from … Tru­man Capote to … Hubert Sel­by, Jr., Saul Bel­low, Junot Díaz, Jack Ker­ouac and many more. He’s also very fond of fel­low Brits George Orwell, Ian McE­wan, and Julian Barnes and loves Mishi­ma and Bul­gakov.”  You can read the full list below, and, if you choose, also explore a relat­ed book from 2019–Bowie’s Book­shelf: The Hun­dred Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life.

1. Inter­views With Fran­cis Bacon by David Sylvester
2. Bil­ly Liar by Kei­th Water­house
3. Room At The Top by John Braine
4. On Hav­ing No Head by Dou­glass Hard­ing
5. Kaf­ka Was The Rage by Ana­tole Bro­yard
6. A Clock­work Orange by Antho­ny Burgess
7. City Of Night by John Rechy
8. The Brief Won­drous Life Of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
9. Madame Bovary by Gus­tave Flaubert
10. Ili­ad by Homer
11. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkn­er
12. Tadanori Yokoo by Tadanori Yokoo
13. Berlin Alexan­der­platz by Alfred Döblin
14. Inside The Whale And Oth­er Essays by George Orwell
15. Mr. Nor­ris Changes Trains by Christo­pher Ish­er­wood
16. Halls Dic­tio­nary Of Sub­jects And Sym­bols In Art by James A. Hall
17. David Bomberg by Richard Cork
18. Blast by Wyn­d­ham Lewis
19. Pass­ing by Nel­la Lar­son
20. Beyond The Bril­lo Box by Arthur C. Dan­to
21. The Ori­gin Of Con­scious­ness In The Break­down Of The Bicam­er­al Mind by Julian Jaynes
22. In Bluebeard’s Cas­tle by George Stein­er
23. Hawksmoor by Peter Ack­royd
24. The Divid­ed Self by R. D. Laing
25. The Stranger by Albert Camus
26. Infants Of The Spring by Wal­lace Thur­man
27. The Quest For Christa T by Christa Wolf
28. The Song­lines by Bruce Chatwin
29. Nights At The Cir­cus by Angela Carter
30. The Mas­ter And Mar­gari­ta by Mikhail Bul­gakov
31. The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
32. Loli­ta by Vladimir Nabokov
33. Her­zog by Saul Bel­low
34. Puck­oon by Spike Mil­li­gan
35. Black Boy by Richard Wright
36. The Great Gats­by by F. Scott Fitzger­ald
37. The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea by Yukio Mishi­ma
38. Dark­ness At Noon by Arthur Koestler
39. The Waste Land by T.S. Elliot
40. McTeague by Frank Nor­ris
41. Mon­ey by Mar­tin Amis
42. The Out­sider by Col­in Wil­son
43. Strange Peo­ple by Frank Edwards
44. Eng­lish Jour­ney by J.B. Priest­ley
45. A Con­fed­er­a­cy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
46. The Day Of The Locust by Nathanael West
47. 1984 by George Orwell
48. The Life And Times Of Lit­tle Richard by Charles White
49. Awop­bopaloobop Alop­bam­boom: The Gold­en Age of Rock by Nik Cohn
50. Mys­tery Train by Greil Mar­cus
51. Beano (com­ic, ’50s)
52. Raw (com­ic, ’80s)
53. White Noise by Don DeLil­lo
54. Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The South­ern Dream Of Free­dom by Peter Gural­nick
55. Silence: Lec­tures And Writ­ing by John Cage
56. Writ­ers At Work: The Paris Review Inter­views edit­ed by Mal­colm Cow­ley
57. The Sound Of The City: The Rise Of Rock And Roll by Char­lie Gillette
58. Octo­bri­ana And The Russ­ian Under­ground by Peter Sadecky
59. The Street by Ann Petry
60. Won­der Boys by Michael Chabon
61. Last Exit To Brook­lyn By Hubert Sel­by, Jr.
62. A People’s His­to­ry Of The Unit­ed States by Howard Zinn
63. The Age Of Amer­i­can Unrea­son by Susan Jaco­by
64. Met­ro­pol­i­tan Life by Fran Lebowitz
65. The Coast Of Utopia by Tom Stop­pard
66. The Bridge by Hart Crane
67. All The Emperor’s Hors­es by David Kidd
68. Fin­ger­smith by Sarah Waters
69. Earth­ly Pow­ers by Antho­ny Burgess
70. The 42nd Par­al­lel by John Dos Pas­sos
71. Tales Of Beat­nik Glo­ry by Ed Saun­ders
72. The Bird Artist by Howard Nor­man
73. Nowhere To Run The Sto­ry Of Soul Music by Ger­ri Hir­shey
74. Before The Del­uge by Otto Friedrich
75. Sex­u­al Per­son­ae: Art And Deca­dence From Nefer­ti­ti To Emi­ly Dick­in­son by Camille Paglia
76. The Amer­i­can Way Of Death by Jes­si­ca Mit­ford
77. In Cold Blood by Tru­man Capote
78. Lady Chatterly’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
79. Teenage by Jon Sav­age
80. Vile Bod­ies by Eve­lyn Waugh
81. The Hid­den Per­suaders by Vance Packard
82. The Fire Next Time by James Bald­win
83. Viz (com­ic, ear­ly ’80s)
84. Pri­vate Eye (satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, ’60s – ’80s)
85. Select­ed Poems by Frank O’Hara
86. The Tri­al Of Hen­ry Kissinger by Christo­pher Hitchens
87. Flaubert’s Par­rot by Julian Barnes
88. Mal­doror by Comte de Lautréa­mont
89. On The Road by Jack Ker­ouac
90. Mr. Wilson’s Cab­i­net of Won­der by Lawrence Weschler
91. Zanoni by Edward Bul­w­er-Lyt­ton
92. Tran­scen­den­tal Mag­ic, Its Doc­trine and Rit­u­al by Eliphas Lévi
93. The Gnos­tic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
94. The Leop­ard by Giuseppe Di Lampe­dusa
95. Infer­no by Dante Alighieri
96. A Grave For A Dol­phin by Alber­to Den­ti di Pira­jno
97. The Insult by Rupert Thom­son
98. In Between The Sheets by Ian McE­wan
99. A People’s Tragedy by Orlan­do Figes
100. Jour­ney Into The Whirl­wind by Euge­nia Ginzburg

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Bowie’s Book­shelf: A New Essay Col­lec­tion on The 100 Books That Changed David Bowie’s Life

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of 20 Books That Could Rebuild Civ­i­liza­tion

David Bowie Songs Reimag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: Space Odd­i­ty, Heroes, Life on Mars & More

Hayao Miyaza­ki Selects His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

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. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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.