Registration opens:
November 17th, 2026

Taming Christmas: How the Ancients Celebrated Christmas

and Why the Moderns Changed Everything

Join Archivist and historian Mickey Dicamillo as he uncovers how the centuries-old European Christmas Celebration went from a bawdy public affair to the tamed domestic holiday celebrated today.

By the mid-1600’s, the centuries old European celebration of Christmas was such a drunken, bawdy, public affair that the early Puritans arriving in America put an immediate ban on any Christmas celebrations in their Godly communities. New York newspapers in the early 1800’s illustrate that Christmas was far from a silent night and instead was a night of crime and terror. How then did the Christmas holiday become such a treasured tradition of gift giving, Santa Claus, family feasts, and domestic bliss? Join historian and archivist Mickey DiCamillo as he explains how the holiday was tamed, domesticated, and transformed into the celebration we recognize today.

Mickey DiCamillo is an archivist, historian, and information specialist. He has worked for the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Hagley Library and Museum. He has published in the Journal of Film and History, the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, and in 2004 was the Veterans of Foreign Wars New Jersey State Teacher of the Year for Civic Education. He lives in Moorestown, NJ where he has served on the board for the township's historical society. This program is sponsored by the Friends of the Plumsted Library.

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