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The surest way to conjure up images of repression, joylessness, self-righteousness, and hypocrisy is to call something or someone "Puritan." Twentieth-century poet Kenneth Hare wrote, "The Puritan through Life's sweet garden goes/To pluck the thorn and cast away the rose." The Puritans themselves were used to such scorn. From its very first use in early 1560s, "Puritan" was a term of abuse, implying a "holier than thou" attitude on the part of those who were so called—a claim to superior saintliness. The Puritans, at least at first, detested the title. Richard Baxter said, "I am neither as good nor as happy" as the name suggested. They preferred to call themselves "the godly," "the faithful," or "God's elect." But in the sense that this was a movement of people who wanted to purify the church in accordance with Scripture, it was an apt nickname.

Though the Puritans have gained an unaesthetic reputation for banishing paintings and musical instruments from churches, closing theaters, etc., they were not—contrary to popular opinion—hostile to the arts themselves. Puritans associated art in churches with Catholicism, but they bought art for their homes. They objected to theaters, which had become centers of prostitution and dissipation in their day, but they did not necessarily object to dramatic art—John Milton wrote a masque, Comus, for private performance. Oliver Cromwell owned an organ, and he hired an orchestra and held dancing at his daughter's wedding.

Anglican treatises on marriage listed procreation as the primary purpose of marriage, followed by restraint and remedy of sin, and finally companionship. The Puritans reversed the order, putting mutual society, help, and comfort in first place.

Daniel Rogers wrote, "Husbands and wives should be as two sweet friends, bred under one constellation, tempered by an influence from heaven whereof neither can give any reason, save mercy and providence first made them so, and then made their match; saying, see, God hath determined us out of this vast world for each other." In direct contrast to the medieval Catholic glorification of celibacy, the Puritans placed a very high value on marriage, sex, and family—as long as they occurred in that order!

When Oliver Cromwell became Lord Protector of England, he canceled Christmas—prompting modern naysayers to cry, "Humbug!" But it wasn't a Scrooge-like hatred of joyous festivities that prompted the Puritans to distrust carols, mistletoe, and decorated trees. Christmas, like the rest of the saints' days and festivals in the Catholic/Anglican calendar, was in their view not only unnecessary and unbiblical, it also diminished the specialness of the one day of every week Scripture did set apart for Christians to celebrate God's work in Christ: the Sabbath. As Richard Greenham explained, "Our Easter day, our Ascension day, our Whitsuntide is every Lord's Day."

The Puritans were not averse to devoting certain days to spiritual activities on occasion. They were fond of calling their own private thanksgiving days, to which they invited family members, neighbors, and the local pastor. According to his diary, Puritan pastor Thomas Heywood attended several dozen such thanksgiving days per year.

The Puritans perfected the art of pithy definitions and aphorisms. Here are a few examples:

"Theology is the science of living blessedly forever" (William Perkins).

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