belief that holy days were an abomination, and no proper part of the worship of the people of God. This common belief was to remain in place well into the 1800s.Samuel Miller appears to be largely correct then when he declared that Presbyterians do not observe Holy Days. This was certainly the understanding of the first Presbyterians, it had been codified in their creedal documents, and it had been their practice both in Scotland and America for over 200 years. What then happened in the 19th and 20th centuries to change the practice of Presbyterians?The answer to that question is complex, but surprisingly it does not lie in any substantial rethinking of the underlying theological presuppositions that have guided Presbyterian worship since the Reformation. Rather, as we shall see, the increasing willingness of Presbyterians to observe holy days was ultimately the result of pressure from the laity, the movement towards the adoption of a common liturgy, and the pervasive atmosphere of pluralism, ecumenicism, and liberalism in the American Protestantism of the 19th and 20th century.America after the Revolution was a very different place from Europe, and even from the mother country she had painfully broken away from. Unlike most European countries, which had one established state church, America was simply awash in different forms of Christianity. Immigrants seeking freedom from the Religious persecution of Europe had flooded into the New World, and by the 1800s America was a nation unlike any other. A large town might have Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Presbyterian churches and whilst these churches were initially strongly associated with the immigrant populations they served (German Lutherans, French Catholics, Scottish Presbyterians) the strong American desire for novelty and experimentation gradually began to overcome the initial distaste for worshipping outside of ones own tradition.Nowhere was this attraction more apparent than on Holy Days. By the 1800s the initial Spiritual vigor that had marked the first Puritan settlers of New England had begun to dampen. Nominalism, legalism, revivalism, and heresy were all working to produce moribund and listless congregations in what had once been the fiery heart of Calvinism in America. Unitarian Universalism, which represented the triumph of rationalism and liberalism over the Scriptural faith nurtured by the Reformation, was growing in popularity, and by 1805 even the old Puritan bastion of Harvard had been overcome by it. In the midst of this sea-change in the religious attitudes of New Englanders, both the laymen and clergy of Calvinistic denominations began to express a curiosity about the rites and practices of different denominations. After over 200 years of non-observance, many of the descendents of the Puritans were extremely curious about the colorful celebration of holy days in non-Reformed denominations. In many cases it was precisely because the Puritan victory over holy days had been so complete in the new world that the laity and in some cases the clergy were unaware of the theological arguments against their observance or of the battles that had been fought in Britain over them. Henry Ward Beecher, who was raised in a Presbyterian household, wrote in 1874:To