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Interior of the First Church of Deerfield

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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Decorated for Christmas and with both a cross and flanking tablets displaying The Ten Commandments, the brick meeting house interior presents a very different appearance than the four buildings that preceded it. Built in 1824, outside the central common in Deerfield, Massachusetts, this was the fifth meeting house 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 meeting houses. Note the grain-painted box pews and the absence of an altar.

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