Editing Christmas music (section)

===Puritan prohibition===
During the [[Commonwealth of England]] government under [[Oliver Cromwell|Cromwell]], the [[Rump Parliament]] prohibited the practice of singing Christmas carols as [[Pagan]] and sinful. Like other customs associated with Christianity of the [[Catholic]] and [[Magisterial Protestant]] traditions, it earned the disapproval of [[Puritans]].<ref name="Ban"/> Famously, Cromwell's interregnum prohibited all celebrations of the Christmas holiday. This attempt to ban the public celebration of Christmas can also be seen in the early history of [[Father Christmas]].

The Puritan [[Westminster Assembly of Divines]] established Sunday as the only holy day in the [[liturgical calendar]] in 1644. The new liturgy produced for the English church recognized this in 1645, and so legally abolished Christmas. Its celebration was declared an offense by Parliament in 1647.<ref name="Hutton">{{Cite book |last=Hutton |first=Ronald |title=The Stations of the Sun |publisher=Oxford |year=1996}}</ref> There is some debate as to the effectiveness of this ban, and whether or not it was enforced in the country.<ref name=Hutton/> During the years that the Puritan ban on Christmas was in place in England, semi-clandestine religious services marking Christ's birth continued to be held, and people sang carols in secret.<ref name="Ban">{{cite news |title=When Christmas carols were banned |url=https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20141219-when-christmas-carols-were-banned |access-date=February 22, 2023 |agency=BBC}}</ref>

Puritans generally disapproved of the celebration of Christmas—a trend that continually resurfaced in Europe and the US through the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.<ref name="pennsylvania">{{Cite book |last=Shoemaker |first=Alfred L. |title=Christmas in Pennsylvania |year=1999 |location=Mechanicsburg, PA |page=xvii |orig-year=1959}}</ref>