Sixty-five days after setting off from England, the group of 100 travelers and their ship, the Mayflower, landed in in what is now modern-day Plymouth, Mass., on Dec. 18, 1620.
The Mayflower was off-course, tossed by storms and angry seas and in need of supplies.
The travelers referred to themselves as pilgrims–people who go on a long journey for religious reasons. But these pilgrims did not find friendly inns to rest in for Christmas. They arrived to wilderness.
Nine days after their landing, some spent Christmas Day aboard the Mayflower, while others went to cut trees to build their cabins.
Over time, the struggle of the Pilgrims became steeped in myth as their descendents re-imagined their holidays. One 1900 women's magazine article proposed the preposterous idea that the Puritans decked their ship with holly and ivy, wrapped gifts for indigenous children and feasted for Christmas.
In fact, the religious members of the voyage, the Puritans, rejected the celebration of Christmas as a holdover from Roman Catholic excesses in Europe. Their journals said simply that on Christmas they 'began to drink water' and then the ship's master offered some beer.
By 1621, the pilgrims certainly had not changed their attitude. According to their journals, some non-Puritan members of the community said they would not work on Christmas and began to play sports in the streets of the tiny village. The colony governor quickly put an end to those activities.
In an historical bah humbug, the Puritans went on to outlaw the celebration of Christmas in 1659. If you got caught having too much fun on Dec. 25, you were fined five shillings.
