Oliver Cromwell didn't like Christmas. In fact, he wanted to ban it. This included legislating against the ubiquitous mince pie, now on sale at a supermarket near you. Why would the carbuncled Lord Protector want to trample on innocent yuletide celebrations?

Reason #1, it was Christ-"mass", an unwelcome remnant of Catholic volk-religion in an age of Protestant-Roman tensions. In place of Christ-"mass" came Christ-tide, a day of fasting and prayer.

Reason #2, "More mischief is that time committed than in all the year besides ... What dicing and carding, what eating and drinking, what banqueting and feasting is then used ... to the great dishonour of God and the impoverishing of the realm." [1]

The anti-Christmas legislation was so unpopular that riots broke out in some cities. Insurgents would get drunk, take control of the streets, decorate them with holly and shout royalist slogans: of these practices, three out of four are to this day familiar Christmas celebrations, while holly has generally fallen out of fashion.

Everyone bemoans the fact that the 'true meaning' of Christmas is undervalued, almost always without saying exactly what that meaning is. Do we argue for more religiosity? Isn't occasional Christmas church going as much a symbol of consumerism as the iPod? Or do we ask for a more charitable spirit, when that means services for the homeless appearing over Advent, only to cruelly evaporate on 2 January? If Christians choose these half measures over the Puritan radicalism that would mean turning their back on the contemporary volk-celebrations, it is surely because they (not so) secretly prefer the dicing, carding, banqueting and feasting to the alternatives.

Cromwell forced shops and businesses to remain open across the Christmas period, while strictly obliging them close on every other Sunday of the year. On Sundays, the Church celebrates the resurrection of Jesus, paradoxically, a truer symbol of the themes we claim to celebrate on 25 December than Christmas itself. So even if we'd never go the Puritan route, let's learn this lesson: as Arsene Wenger once said, where you are at Christmas might be important, but it's where you are at Easter that really counts.

Paul Bickley is a Researcher at Theos