How NYC Christmas Changed the World
Christmas in New York City is something truly magical. The world glimmers and sparkles, lights and decorations on every street corner, and traditions to fill your evenings. Some might associate New York Christmas with Macy’s incredible Santaland. Some might think of the Rockefeller tree, or the Rockettes steps away. But I think about something that happened almost 400 years ago.
On Christmas week in 1657, in New York City’s quieter outskirts, a group of pastors and town leaders gathered to write something almost unthinkable for their time: a rebuke for their governor, Peter Stuyvesant.
Stuyvesant, disturbed by the religious diversity he found in New Amsterdam, had outlawed any form of worship that wasn't his own Dutch Reformed. Quakers were being arrested, fined, and exiled. Homes were searched. In my own neighborhood of Astoria, prominent leaders were locked in jail for being baptized–considered an act of treason, swearing allegiance to a foreign kingdom.
So these Queens pastors sat down — in the quiet of Advent, with the Scriptures fresh in their minds — and wrote what became the Flushing Remonstrance.
On Christmas Eve, amidst candlelit services, beneath cold, clear stars, the messenger brought Stuyvesant their rebuke:
“We believe in the law of love, peace, and liberty — a freedom that extends to Jews, Turks, and Egyptians, because all are sons and daughters of Adam. [This is] the glory of Christ’s kingdom, where love, peace, and liberty forbid hatred, violence, and bondage.
Jesus told us that offenses will surely come, but woe to the one through whom they come. So we do not wish to harm any of His little ones, no matter what form or name they bear — Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist, or Quaker. We will gladly welcome anything of God we see in them, and we desire to treat all people as we ourselves would want to be treated. This, Christ says, is the heart of the Law and the Prophets.
Therefore, if any of these people come to us in peace, we cannot in good conscience lay violent hands upon them. We must allow them free passage to our town and our homes, as God persuades our consciences. For we are bound by the law of God and of man to do good to all and harm to none.”
The entire document is soaked in the language of the season. They speak of love. Of humility. Of their inability to judge another person’s conscience because God alone sees the heart. And they anchor their whole argument in the character of Christ Himself.
What they were really saying was this:
Because Christ has come into the world, we dare not harm those He created.
Because judgment belongs to God, we will not pretend it belongs to us.
And they risked their careers, their reputations, and their safety to say so.
The Flushing Remonstrance is often considered the basis of religious freedom — not only in the U.S. Constitution, but as a U.N. basic human right — but it was, at its heart, a Christmas document. It was born not out of relativism, but out of reverence. Not out of fear of man, but fear of God.
They believed that if God Himself crossed every barrier to draw near to humanity, then His people must refuse to erect barriers between one another. The child in the manger was their proof that love, not force, is God’s way of reigning.
And somehow, that conviction has shaped this city more than we realize.
Walk through New York today and you’ll see it everywhere: churches beside synagogues beside mosques; storefront fellowships next to botanicas; Christmas lights glowing over streets where a dozen languages are spoken. This is not accidental. It is the distant fruit of a group of Christians who believed, on a cold Christmas week, that protecting the freedom of others was an act of worship.
Their courage created the soil where a city like ours could grow.
So when I see New York soften at Christmas — when strangers hold doors and subway musicians play “Silent Night” and the whole city seems touched by a kindness it can’t explain — I think of those pastors. I think of the letter they delivered in December 1657. I think of the fear of God that steadied their hands as they wrote.
And I rejoice that the love those pastors defended nearly four centuries ago is still echoing through our streets.
A reminder that tolerance is not weakness. It is worship.
Coexisting is not about fear of man — but fear of the God who came to us in love.
And the lights shine a little brighter.
