How to talk politics at Thanksgiving tableīut after the corpse was buried there were lavish funeral dinners, accompanied by lots and lots of alcohol. There were no fancy coffins or tombs, and funeral ceremonies were so simple as to be almost nonexistent. These Puritans were not as puritanical as we imagine, however.Įarly Puritan funerals were surprisingly simple affairs.
So they refused to celebrate Roman Catholic festivals, not least Christmas, which was banned by the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1659. To be sure, they aimed (as their name implies) to “purify” the Church of England of every last vestige of Roman Catholicism. And New England’s Puritans were by no means allergic to fun. When we think of the New England Puritans who gave to us Thanksgiving, we tend to run to predictable nouns, including killjoy and prude.īut Thanksgiving is a festival, which is to say it was made for fun. Editor's note: Stephen Prothero, a Boston University religion scholar and author of 'God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions that Run the World,' is a regular CNN Belief Blog contributor.
