I was thinking about how it's such a social sin to ignore something like Christmas. It had me wondering if we've placed more and more emphasis on agreeing with a common social narrative over time. Are modern Americans more complicit and more herd-like in their behavior than Americans were in the 1800s?
I don't want to limit this discussion to Christmas, although maybe that would be a good starting point. Were there as many shared social customs 100+ years ago as there are now, and how taboo were they to be broken?
Granted, I keep using Americans from the present vs 1800s because the sub rules require specific places and times, but I don't know if these are the best examples or not.
One point of clarification: I know of many anecdotes, but prevalence and strength of claim is much harder for a non-historian to know. Yes, I know Christianity used to be a stronger force. I know communities were smaller and tighter. The question is, how much tighter were they, and how common was that? This is in comparison to present day, where social norms get communicated through social media at the speed of light, and social justice is delivered even faster for people who step out of line. For that reason, my assumption is that we effectively live in a more rigid time, with more religious-like views (the modern ones are not about astrological or metaphysical origins, but everything else is the same) because of this. Thus, people are more likely to be viewed as antisocial now for something that would have been completely ignored in the past.
This is a broad question so I will provide an answer for one particular perspective.
Daniel Boone and his family lived in Eastern Missouri from 1800 to 1837. Daniel Boone died in 1820 but his son Nathan continued to live in the area until 1837. When they arrived in Missouri in 1799, the entire territory that became the state of Missouri had a population of roughly 5000 Europeans (Spanish/French) and European Americans. So we are looking at an extremely rural and undeveloped territory. The Boones moved to this territory with numerous relatives, cousins, family-by-marriage, friends etc. that would live in the immediate area as them (25 mile radius roughly). I would argue that their familial community was just as close and connected as we are today, even though the family might live over an hour away. We have records of the family that they had dances together for the holidays, Christmas dinners, etc.
One story of Nathan Boone alludes to the fact that it was encouraged for someone to attend their family's holiday celebrations. In an interview from the 1850s of Nathan Boone, he recounts a hunting/trapping expedition during the winter months around 1800-1805 and how it resulted in him coming into conflict with local American Indian tribes and even a "panther" (mountain lion). However, because his expedition got cut short, he made it back to his wife and family on Christmas. His wife made a comment "it was the first Christmas he had spent at home since our marriage, and I had to thank the Indians for that."
Reading "against the grain" of this comment indicates there may have been some disappointment in previous Christmases when Nathan had been gone from the family to hunt. However the story also indicates that it was common due to environmental or social circumstances that people would miss Christmas as well.
While this story provides insight into a frontier family in the late Early Republic/Regency period of American history, the circumstances would be different in places like Boston, New York, Philadelphia, etc, or even Missouri in the 1870s-1880s in the "high Victorian" era.
Lyman Draper, My Father Daniel Boone: The Draper Interviews with Nathan Boone, edited Neal O'Hammon, (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1999): Chapter 10