In London even Christmas decorations were forbidden, but when the Lord Mayor sent a man to take down some holiday greens from one of the houses, the saucy London ’prentice-boys swarmed out with sticks and stones and sent him flying. Then came on horseback, fat and lordly, even the great Lord Mayor himself, who thought his dignity would overawe the unruly boys. But they only laughed and shouted until his horse took fright and ran away—and perhaps he was glad to be let off so easily. Even where the people dared not openly fight the new laws, they did not obey them more than they could help. Spinning-wheels were idle because there was no flax, and ploughs were “gone to be mended” on Christmas Day in many an English village until after the death of Cromwell, when the holiday came to its own again in “merrie England.” The same dislike for the festival of Christmas, with its drinking, dancing, and stage plays, came over to the New World with the Puritans. Only a year after the landing at Plymouth Governor Bradford called his men out to work, “on ye day called Christmas Day,” as on other days. But certain young men, who had just come over in the little ship _Fortune_, held back and said it went against their consciences to work on that day. So the governor told them that he would spare them till they were better informed. But when he and the rest came home at noon from their work, he found them in the street at play openly, some pitching the bar and some at ball and such like sports. So he went to them and took away their implements and told them it was against _his_ conscience that they should play and others work. If they made the keeping of it matter of devotion, he said, let them keep their houses, but there should be no gaming or revelling in the street. Later, in 1659, a law was made that anybody found to be keeping “by feasting, or not working, or in any other way, any such day as Christmas Day, shall pay for every offense five shillings.” Going Home for Christmas.