As noted in day 12's posting, in the Middle Ages the Christmas holiday (and other English Church Holy days, or holidays) turned into times of revelry and excessive drinking and feasting. Even after the Reformation the festivals were "Bacchanalian" Christmases in that they had ceased to be Christian holidays and instead were dominated by misrule and wanton behavior.
It was to this that the Puritans and Pilgrims in the first century of colonial life reacted so strongly, and in this context it is easy to see why they forbid that type of public celebration and for a time substituted former holidays with serious gatherings for Church and State matters. Also, they considered both Christmas and Easter holidays invented by man to memorialize Jesus, not prescribed in the Bible or celebrated by the early churches, and thus not proper Holy days.
[The Pilgrims: a small band of English who in 1620 sailed on the Mayflower and settled in Plymouth, MA. The Puritans: a much larger group of English, led by John Winthrop, who started the Massachusetts Bay Colony ten years after the Pilgrims arrived in the U.S. Both groups were English Protestants who wanted to purify the English Church by simplifying the creeds and ceremonies, maintaining strict religious discipline, and generally applying the principles of the Protestant Reformation.]
It has been suggested that the "10 lords a-leaping" from the song "The 12 Days of Christmas" represents the Biblical 10 Commandments.
(See Christmas in America, by Penne Restad, Oxford Univ. Press, 1995)
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