Christian History Home > Issue 41 > The American Puritans: Did
You Know? The American Puritans: Did You Know? Little-known or
remarkable facts about the American Puritans Critic H. L.
Mencken once said, wrongly, “Puritanism is the haunting fear
that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” On the contrary,
Puritans read good books and enjoyed music. They drank beer with
meals and rum at weddings. Puritans swam and skated, hunted and
fished, and played at archery and bowling (as long as the games
were not in a public tavern or on Sunday). The famous
“Pilgrims,” who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620, were so radical
they were usually disliked and sometimes hated. Unlike most
Puritans, they did not seek to reform the Church of England;
they thought the church was beyond help. Most weddings in New
England were performed not by ministers but by magistrates.
Wedding rings, seen as “popish,” were not used. The early
settlers of Massachusetts included more than 100 graduates of
Oxford and Cambridge. One historian termed Mass