The observance of particular days and seasons, and of certain customs connected with them, has been in all countries more or less mixed up with religion. Many of these customs have, it is well known, descended to us from pagan times. The Church, unable altogether to eradicate them, has, in some cases, tacitly sanctioned, in others incorporated them into her own system. At the Reformation some of these observances were thought to savour too strongly of their pagan origin, or to be too nearly allied to papal superstitions. Accordingly we find that in a country like Scotland, where reformation amounted to a total subversion of all the forms which had hitherto subsisted, even such a festival as Christmas was proscribed, and of course with it have fallen all the joyous observances which characterize that season in England. In Guernsey, from the reign of Queen Elizabeth to the Restoration of Charles II., the Presbyterian form of Church government reigned supreme, and the ministers seem to have set their faces strongly against anything which in their estimation could be looked upon as superstitious. In the reformed churches of Geneva and France, whose discipline the islands had adopted, all Saints’ days had been abolished, and, although the greater festivals of Christmas and Whitsuntide were retained, there were those in the insular congregations who would gladly have seen these also discarded. Dr. Peter Heylin, who visited the islands in 1629, tells us how “the Ministers were much heartened in their inconformity by the practice of De La Place, who, stomaching his disappointment in the loss of the Deanery of Jersey, abandoned his native country, and retired to Guernsey, where he breathed nothing but confusion to the English Liturgy, the person of the new Dean (David Bandinel), and the change of government. Whereas there was a lecture weekly every Thursday in the Church of St. Peter’s-on-the-Sea, when once the feast of Christ’s Nativity fell upon that day, he rather chose to disappoint the hearers, and put off the sermon, than that the least honour should reflect on that ancient festival.” We find that in the year 1622 the Clergy of the Island complained to the Royal Court of the practice that existed in the rural parishes of people going about on the Eve of St. John and on the last day of the year begging from house to house--a custom, which, in their opinion, savoured much of the old leaven of Popery, and which, under the guise of charity, introduced and nourished superstition among their flocks; whereupon an ordinance was framed and promulgated, forbidding the practice under the penalty of a fine or whipping.