Into this festal season of
the year--as it already was, and continued to be during the
greater part of two centuries--the Puritans compressed whatever
mirth and public joy they deemed allowable to human infirmity;
thereby so far dispelling the customary cloud, that, for the
space of a single holiday, they appeared scarcely more grave
than most other communities at a period of general affliction.
But we perhaps exaggerate the gray or sable tinge, which
undoubtedly characterized the mood and manners of the age. The
persons now in the market-place of Boston had not been born to
an inheritance of Puritanic gloom. They were native Englishmen,
whose fathers had lived in the sunny richness of the Elizabethan
epoch; a time when the life of England, viewed as one great
mass, would appear to have been as stately, magnificent, and
joyous, as the world has ever witnessed. Had they followed their
hereditary taste, the New England settlers would have
illustrated all events of public importance by bonfires,
banquets, pageantries, and processions. Nor would it have been
impracticable, in the observance of majestic ceremonies, to
combine mirthful recreation with solemnity, and give, as it
were, a grotesque and brilliant embroidery to the great robe of
state, which a nation, at such festivals, puts on.
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