Decorated for Christmas and with both a cross and flanking tablets displaying The Ten Commandments, the First Church of Deerfield, Massachusetts, appears  very different from the four buildings that preceded it.  This brick building was constructed next to the town common in 1824.  It was the town’s  fifth “meetinghouse” and the first to be used “solely for worship,” and not also for town meetings. Christmas was not celebrated in New England until the middle years of the 19th century so decorations like these never appeared in previous meetinghouses. Note the grain-painted box pews and the absence of an altar.