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How the Puritan war on Christmas failed: Young'uns just couldn't stay away from drunken sex at Yuletide
By adamg on Sun, 12/11/2016 - 4:02pm
New England Folklore recounts how even Puritans would unbuckle their hats and whoop it up over Christmas break, despite the best efforts of stern leaders such as Cotton Mather:
Historians have analyzed New England birth records from the early 18th century, and they've found that the largest number of children were born in September and October, roughly nine months after Christmas. Even more interesting, many of these children were born only seven months after their parents were married. In other words, they were conceived illegitimately during Christmas, and their parents only married once they realized a child was coming.
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Comments
Peter Muise
This looks like a link to his blog, not the usual J. Bell blog
Sigh, where's my copy desk?
You're right. Attribution fixed: It was Peter Muise on New England Folklore, not J.L. Bell (who concentrates on the events leading up to the Revolution, not 17th-century stuff) who wrote the piece.
Mother’s poor diet linked to premature births
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn3660-mothers-poor-diet-linked-to-...
Yes, and ...
Your point? Children born at 7 months gestation routinely survive in 2016. They died at birth up through the 1960s. That included Patrick Bouvier Kennedy, who was only three or four weeks premature and born to the First Lady and US President.
It was the research effort made after his death that resulted in the survival rates for premature birth that we see today.
Ergo, in the colonial era, these were not pre-term births if the children routinely survived.
Related:
https://www.farnamstreetblog.com/2014/12/history-of-christmas/
haters
So basically, all of xmas used to be like a big SantaCon, and the Puritans were like the original SantaCon haters. Weird.
I for one
am shocked--SHOCKED--that religious conservatives turned out to be hypocritical asshats projecting their hangups on the rest of the community.