At the time that the Religious Society of Friends was founded in the seventeenth century, the Church of England required its members to observe numerous holy days, feasts, fasts, and festivals, which George Fox regarded as without divine authority and inconsistent with early Christian practices. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Discipline warned that “our members cannot consistently join with any in the observance of public fasts, feasts, or what are termed holy-days . . . nor with those tumultuous demonstrations of joy, and nightly illuminations, which are generally attended with rioting, drunkenness, and many other excesses incompatible with the Christian name.” Cincinnati Friends obliged by holding meetings for business even on Christmas Day, as if it were any other day.
By the end of the nineteenth century, however, that began to change. In 1898, Americus V. Williams reported that “[at] Easter time, instead of the regular lesson, [the First-Day School] had exercises appropriate for the day. The young ladies and young gentlemen of the school learned six Easter songs, a vocal solo with piano, violin, and organ accompaniment was rendered, the primary class sang an Easter song, besides which sixty of the scholars took part in various readings and recitations bringing out the lesson of the Resurrection and making the hour thus spent profitable to all who attended.”
Christmas festivals were also held for the children of the school, and the Meeting began to provide both Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners for families who could not afford to celebrate. A collection of $3.75 one Thanksgiving bought two bushels of potatoes, ten pounds of meat, three pounds of coffee, six pounds of sugar, five quarts of beans, six loaves of bread, six pounds of pork, and six pounds of rice. "There was donated by one of our members enough dry groceries to supply a family of four for one week and meat and vegetables for one day,” noted the minutes.
In 1928, Cincinnati Friends held a Christmas party that was so enjoyed by members of the Meeting that the same committee was appointed to plan an all-day meeting for the following Easter Sunday. The observance of holidays remained a practice of the Meeting for many years thereafter.
This article comes from the book Friends Past and Present: The Bicentennial History of Cincinnati Friends Meeting (1815–2015). You can obtain a copy of the printed book or a Kindle version from Amazon.com. The proceeds of all sales go to Cincinnati Friends Meeting.