This Carcass breath'd

The English government, under Oliver Cromwell, bans Christmas (1647).

Christmas was attacked by the interregnum government and their supporters as, as Ezekias Woodward put it in his pamphlet of 1656, 

the old heathens feasting day, in honour to Saturn their idol-god. The Papists massing day. The prophane mans ranting day. The superstitious mans idol day. The multitudes idle day. Whereon, because they cannot do nothing: they do worse then nothing. Satans, that adversaries working-day. The true Christian mans fasting-day. Taking to heart, the heathenish customes, Popish superstitions, ranting fashions, fearful provocations, horrible abhominations committed against the Lord, and His Christ, on that day, and days following. (sig. A1r) 

The government banned traditional festivities and iconography, and insisted that the markets be open. In 1647 this led to riots in Canterbury. A pamphlet-war erupted between those who, like Woodward, supported the suppression of Christmas, and those such as John Taylor (‘The Water Poet’) and the anonymous author of The Vindication of Christmas (1652) (see last post) who condemned it.