One of the many causes of the War was the difference in the kinds of people who settled in the northeast as opposed to those who settled in Virgina and the Carolinas and later went west and south.
The Puritans of New England regarded Christmas as tainted with Catholicism and the Massachusetts Bay Colony banned Christmas in 1659. Meanwhile our ancestors down in Virgina were observing Advent for four weeks before Christmas, and making preparations for family and friends and house parties that lasted for days.
Polishing silver and brass, lighting the Advent wreaths and celebrating Christmas gloriously with music and drinking and dancing and revelry during the Twelve Days of Christmas, Dec 25-Jan 6 is how these stalwart Southerners handled it. And in their migrations south and west they took their cavalier heritage and Christmas traditions with them.
In fact, Arkansas, Louisiana and Alabama in the 1830's became the first states in the nation to declare Christmas a legal holiday. It was not until 1870 that Christmas became a federal holiday.
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