How many of you know who Mary Livermore was? She’s someone I think you’d like to know about if you don’t already. She was a 19th century educator, author, philanthropist and reformer—a preeminent figure in the causes of abolition and women's suffrage in the years before and after the Civil War. She was such a commanding lecturer she was known as "the Queen of the American platform.” She was so highly regarded that she was once recommended for the office of President of Tufts University at a time when Tufts did not even accept women as students. When she died in 1905 at the age of 85, The Boston Transcript proclaimed her "America's foremost woman." And—you should be proud to know—Mary Livermore was a Universalist! Her faith was, as she said, “the central thing in me. I do not engage in anything that is not, as I see it, the outcome of my Universalist faith ... (It) has given me a noble and abiding faith in human destiny.”

But Mary Livermore, born Mary Rice, was not always a Universalist. She, like many of us, was a “come-outer.” In fact, Mary Rice had an adult conversion experience of a sort, a conversion experience that occurred on Christmas Eve, 1843.

You see, Mary was raised as a strict Calvinist. Her father, Timothy Rice, was a staunch Baptist who believed unswervingly in the doctrine of election by grace—that only the most devout people would be saved—and he subjected his children to a severe religious discipline as a result. His oppressive religion took almost all the joy out of his life. And as a result, Mary obsessed about what happened to people when they die. And when a younger sister died suddenly without ever being baptized, Mary’s soul was in turmoil. Her parents accepted the idea that their daughter had died unsaved. But Mary rebelled at the thought and shocked both her family and her minister by saying that she would rather go to hell with her good sister than to heaven with a God who would so cavalierly damn an innocent child to eternal punishment.

The death of another sister a few years later plunged Mary into a deep theological despair that persisted throughout her teens and early twenties. Her only solace seemed to be academic study. She excelled as a student and graduated with honors from the Charlestown Female Academy. She then seized upon an opportunity to take a position as a tutor for a wealthy plantation owner in southern Virginia. Her experiences there only served to increase her theological torment.

The family Mary served were cultured and well read. From their library Mary became exposed to authors like Thomas Paine and Ethan Allen and other Deists. Their enlightenment ideas were appealing, but how to reconcile them with her upbringing? And furthermore, how did the master of the house reconcile his reading with the practice of slavery? When Mary returned home three years later to take a teaching position at a school in Duxbury, Massachusetts, Mary was in the depths of a dark night of the soul.

On Christmas Eve 1843, too depressed to study, Mary set out for a long walk in the night air. Headed toward the beach, she walked past a church. As she approached, the door was opened to admit latecomers. She heard the congregation singing, more joyously than she had imagined possible. Suddenly, almost against her wishes, she found herself in the back pew, listening to the young minister. His sermon, based on the Gospel of Matthew, was hopeful, elevating, full of the loving-kindness of God. The preacher said that God is no less forgiving than we, that even as the shepherd seeks the lost sheep, so will God in love seek out each and every person and bring them safely home.

That night Mary's despair lifted. That night Mary Rice "came home." She had found the Universalist church, the church with the message of all-embracing love and hope. Mary stayed for the entire service and even introduced herself to the minister afterwards. His name was Daniel Parker Livermore. Not only had Mary found her church home, she had found her soul mate.

Now, to be fair, Mary did take her time giving her intellectual and romantic assent. In the weeks that followed that Christmas Eve she read extensively about Universalism and she talked at length with the young minister—so much so that they feel in love and eventually were married. Mary took her time deciding to join the Universalist church, but whenever she told the story of her journey to Universalism, she always said Universalism had captured her heart with the power of a joyous song on Christmas Eve.

It’s a good thing that the church Mary passed that Christmas Eve was a Universalist church and not a Unitarian one, or else Mary might never have discovered the faith which calmed her soul and empowered her life’s work in social justice. For, if it had been a Unitarian church Mary had passed that Christmas Eve, chances are it would have been shuttered and dark.

You see, in 1843, there was a huge difference in how Unitarians and Universalists celebrated—or did not celebrate as the case may be—Christmas. If you remember, the Unitarian churches had evolved from the standing order of Congregational churches in New England. They were, in effect, the liberal wing of the Puritan church. Influenced by Enlightenment ideas, the Unitarians split with their orthodox brothers and sisters because they could no longer believe in the depravity of human nature and the corruption of human reason. But though they differed radically in theology from their orthodox brothers and sisters, they were still, in many ways, Puritans at heart. They were suspicious of anything that smacked of excess in matters of religion—they were certainly not the exuberantly celebrative type. Moreover, they looked down their noses at the celebration of Christmas as a superstition with no basis in scriptural authority. They urged all intelligent folk to have nothing to do with it.

For the Unitarians, everything religious had to be tested against reason and scientific fact, or at least the scientific facts of the time. And they could find no evidence that December 25 was the birthday of Jesus. And how could things like mistletoe and holly have anything to do with the desert upbringing the child Jesus would have experienced in Nazareth? The early Unitarians treated December 25 as no different from any other.

Well, of course, they were right about the facts. We know now that the date of December 25 was chosen by the early church as the birthday of Jesus because it coincided with the Roman festival of Saturnalia which celebrated Saturn, the patron God of Rome. The early church knew that they could never hope to eradicate this extravagant week long revel of eating, drinking, and other unrestrained behavior with its bon fires and candles, and gift giving. And so they simply coopted it. We know now, also, that many of the traditions associated with Christmas have nothing to do with Christianity but are appropriations of Northern European customs that accompanied the great pagan mid-winter festivals marking the winter solstice. Evergreens, mistletoe, yule logs, trees decorated with lights—all these were means to beckon the return of the sun in a dark time of the year.

The Unitarians may have been literally correct in eschewing Christmas as unscriptural and unfactual, but the Universalists, on the other hand, were Christmas lovers from the start. They were also liberal Christians and heirs to the Enlightenment, but they put a greater emphasis on the goodness of God than on the powers of human reason. They wanted their religious observances to speak to the heart as well as the mind. They knew that traditional Christmas celebrations derived from centuries old mid-winter festivals—that mistletoe and plum puddings and wassail bowls had no part in the life of a man who lived and died in a Middle Eastern country. They knew—and they didn’t care.

Universalists were more interested in what the celebration of Christmas did for the human heart, for the human family. They recognized the need in the middle of cold New England winters for a holiday of light and warmth and love. They turned Christmas into a celebration of hearth and home, and they turned their churches into extensions of their homes. At their churches, they lit yule logs in the fireplaces, set out candles, hung wreaths and mistletoe, gathered for worship, shared a festive meal and sang and sang and sang—with exuberant joy, as Mary Livermore witnessed. What matter the origins of the day if it brought churches, communities and families closer together, with smiles and good wishes, gifts and tokens of affection, and reminders of the dream of peace on earth, good will to all? As one chronicler says, “for early American Universalists, there was no such thing as too much Christmas!”

I think, had I been alive 150 years ago, I would have preferred to be a Universalist than a Unitarian.

Now to be fair, by the 1850s, the Unitarians were climbing on the bandwagon. And eventually Unitarian Churches celebrated Christmas in much the same way as their Universalist cohorts. Indeed, there is some evidence that, even earlier, there were—heaven forfend—“closet” Christmas revelers among the Unitarian clergy. William Ellery Channing is rumored to have celebrated Christmas in his home. And it is well documented that the Unitarian minister Charles Follen erected a Christmas tree for his children as early as 1832. Follen, a German immigrant, is generally credited with introducing the custom of a decorated Christmas tree to the country in general.

In fact, once they decided to go with the flow and celebrate Christmas, Unitarians made significant contributions to what has come to be considered a “traditional American Christmas.” Two Christmas carols considered classics were written by Unitarian clergy - ”Watchman, Tell Us of the Night” and “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear”. And that popular Christmas song, “Jingle Bells” was written in 1854 by James Pierpont, the son of a Unitarian minister while he was serving as the organist for his father’s church. The poem, “Twas the Night Before Christmas” was written by a Unitarian—Clement Clarke Moore. Americans know what Santa Claus looks like thanks to the pictures popularized by Unitarian artist, Thomas Nast, in the late 19th century. And would Christmas be Christmas without the perennial renditions of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol? Dickens was an English Unitarian and it is claimed that he was inspired to write A Christmas Carol after hearing his minister preach a Christmas sermon. Would that all our sermons were as effective!

Universalists and Unitarians, and Unitarian Universalists after, have been celebrating Christmas for more than 200 years now. It is our most popular religious holiday. But while the old division between Unitarians and Universalists over Christmas is hardly apparent today, there are some echoes of that old debate that surface on occasion. Those new to Unitarian Universalism often ask why we celebrate Christmas if we are not Christians, for example. Contrary to the early Unitarians, however, when we learn that many of the Christmas traditions have roots in older mid-winter festivals, it is likely to make us more comfortable—not less—in reveling in the holiday. We know that Christmas is older than any one religious tradition and thus, like our Universalist forebears, we can join in this ancient festival with full appreciation for its deep roots in the human psyche.

Like our Universalist forebears, we know that the religious life must speak to the heart as well as the mind. What matter the origins of Christmas if it brings churches, communities and families closer together, with smiles and good wishes, gifts and tokens of affection, and reminders of the dream of peace on earth, good will to all? Christmas is as much ours to celebrate as it is for others. And we human beings need all the reasons for rejoicing, for reclaiming our finest hopes, we can manage. We have only to look as far as our morning paper to know that we human beings need this season and all its ways of touching the depths of human desire, all its exhortations to goodness and hope and joy abundant we can imagine.