The holiday season is slowly coming to an end so we’ve ended a period with all kinds of traditions. Thanksgiving dinner with the family, Black Friday shopping with the crazy people, decking the halls, making some cookies and having a fair bit of sex?
Of course, when it comes to celebrating the holidays, we all know Thanksgiving is the starting line. And it’s impossible to think of this holiday without your thoughts turning to the Puritans who began it all. Traditionally, we think of Puritans as being… well, a bit puritanical. But is this an accurate idea of these early settlers?
It’s true that the Puritans left England because they felt out of place and even persecuted for their beliefs. It’s important to note that, at that point in history, England was a regular party town but on a much larger scale.
While the great Gin Craze didn’t officially hit England until the 1700s, by the time the Pilgrims left in the early 1600s, the country was already beginning their love affair with booze. England has always had a bit of a saucy side and Puritans at the time found the behaviour too bawdy and, in some cases far too tempting.
Their pilgrimage to the New World was, in many ways, an attempt to remove temptation from their lives. The thinking was that they could settle in a new country, away from these worldly issues and focus on living off the land and devoting their hearts, minds and bodies to their religious practices.
But ask anyone who tries to avoid temptation – often running away makes it even more enticing. For the Puritans this meant addressing a number of sexual issues head on as they established new colonies. Their laws on sexuality remain some of the most outspoken and they include everything from rules regarding homosexual acts and adultery to severe punishments for bestiality. Their focus on sex with animals is particularly interesting since they go into such detail. Clearly, getting intimate with the livestock was a serious problem in the new colonies.
Sexuality has been seen as something dirty and sinful throughout much of man’s early history. The Bible, which was the main source of information for the Puritans, clearly describes sex as the main problems with men. In the stories, man’s downfall from grace is blamed directly on Adam and Eve and their desire to know more about sex. Then, of course, their first sense of shame comes as a result of realizing they are naked. Finally, there are a number of offences and sins connected even with the thought and desire for sex.
This framework placed sex squarely in the cross hairs of the Puritans at the time. So it’s no wonder the group focused much of their legal attention to the subject when they began to settle and create a structure of laws and rules to govern themselves.
Perhaps the most telling is the amount of literature aimed at eroticism that was published around this time. The Scarlet Letter is, of course, the most famous, as it gives a glimpse into this world only a few hundred years after it began. Originally published in 1850, the story is of an affair between a Puritan woman and a minister which is revealed when she becomes pregnant. She is marked for life – literally with a scarlet letter – while he remains undetected.
The story offers insight not only into the inequality of genders at this time, but also of Puritanical life which was clearly still steeped in sex. The only difference was that it was so repressed people were willing to pretend it just didn’t exist at all.
Sex at the holiday dinner table may not be the best conversational topic. But understanding the role sexuality played in our history and traditions does make it possible to sneak in a cheeky grin while passing the whipped cream.
