1712 Puritan preacher Cotton Mather lashes out at Christmas excesses telling his congregation, “Can you in your conscience think that our Holy Saviour is honoured by Mad Mirth, by long Eating, by hard Drinking, by lewd Gaming, by rude Revelling? If you will yet go on and will do Such Things, I forewarn you That the Burning Wrath of God will break forth.”
1717 Floods ravage the Netherlands killing over 13,000. An Emden clergyman, Gerhardus Outhof, lamented witnessing “thousands of people of every age, men and women, drown in the salty seawater, many of whom were overtaken in their beds by the rushing waters.” Other ministers interpreted the disaster as divine punishment. It was God, they said, who was responsible for “the roar of this hurricane that brought the furious waves, it is God who brought the water and thrust it over the dike, and it is God who took the reins of the winds and floods.“
1739 Evangelist George Whitefield is in the mission field in America. His diary records: Tuesday, December 25. Endeavoured still to keep my Mind as much as possible in Union with all those pious Souls who I knew I were rejoicing in the Glad Tidings of Salvation by Jesus Christ The People were uncommonly attentive, most melted into Tears, and shewed what a great Impression the Word made upon their Hearts. … The Woman where we lodged would take nothing for our Christmas Dinner, and wished we could stay with them longer Oh how will it rejoice me to hear that some poor Soul this Day was born again! Then it would be Christmas Day indeed!
1744 Henry Brydges, the Duke of Chandos, who has bought a woman, a chambermaid, at a wife sale, marries her and makes her a duchess. The Duke of Chandos and a companion dined at the Pelican, Newbury, on the way to London. A stir in the Inn yard led to their being told that a man was going to sell his wife, and they are leading her up with a halter around her neck. They went to see. The Duke was smitten with her beauty and patient acquiescence in a process which would (as then supposed) free her from a harsh and ill-conditioned husband. He bought her, and subsequently married her (at Keith’s Chapel) Christmas Day, 1744.
1770 In Lodge Bay, Labrador, Captain George Cartwright, a merchant and British officer complains about local Yuletide behaviour: “At sun-set the people ushered in Christmas, according to the Newfoundland custom. In the first place, they built up a prodigious large fire in their house; all hands then assembled before the door, and one of them fired a gun, loaded with powder only; afterwards each of them drank a dram of rum; concluding the ceremony with three cheers. These formalities being performed with great solemnity, they retired into their house, got drunk as fast as they could, and spent the whole night in drinking, quarrelling, and fighting. It is but natural to suppose that the noise which they made (their house being but six feet from the head of my bed) together with the apprehension of seeing my house in flames, prevented me from once closing my eyes. This is an intolerable custom; but as it has prevailed from time immemorial, it must be submitted to. By some accident my thermometer got broke.”
1776 George Washington crosses the Delaware to attack Hessian forces in Trenton, New Jersey. He is successful and captures 900.
1793 French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre argues for a dictatorship. “Revolution is the war waged by liberty against its enemies; a constitution is that which crowns the edifice of freedom once victory has been won and the nation is at peace.” But until the enemies of the people have been defeated, the government had to have unlimited powers. “Those who call them arbitrary or tyrannical are foolish or perverse sophists who seek to reconcile white with black and black with white: They prescribe the same system for peace and war, for health and sickness”