American Xmas

Let's get this out of the way.  Not my first rodeo (or post of this), but can't hurt to make it a "tradition."

First, Christmas as we know it in America didn't really get started until the 1820's. It wasn't widely celebrated until the 1860's, and didn't become an official national holiday until 1870. So the "observance" of it (whatever that means) in America is not all that old. (For a bit of perspective, A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, and many scholars today attribute the "revival" of Christmas celebrations in England to Dickens). And from almost the moment the holiday was observed as a holiday, it was connected to commerce. So the connection between Christmas and shopping, in America, is as old as Christmas in America itself.

The other matter is:  there was no single "church" in America (still isn't).  Christmas in Europe came directly from Rome and really wasn't widespread there until the 11th century (another story entirely), so most of what we think of as "traditional Christmas" is from medieval Europe (not that there's anything wrong with that!), and a lot of it in this country traces back to Tudor England.

We'll get to that.

The first important point is that Christmas didn't enter this country via the Roman Catholics (who gave us the word, after all).  Christmas was banned by the Puritans, who pretty much hated it.  But what they hated was not what Scrooge hated:  they didn't hate Christmas trees (that didn't show up until the 19th century here, anyway) or greens and garland, or even Santa Claus.  The Puritans hated the raucous nature of Christmas; oh, and that the word itself referred to the "Christ Mass," which was much too "Romish" (their word) to tolerate in the New World.

But I need to put that in context, so bear with me a moment.  As I said, most of the celebrations of Christmas we have today (in America, anyway) have roots in Tudor England and the court of Henry VIII.  There was gift giving even then, but gift giving was engaged in only among the peerage, and  Henry expected the best gifts to come to him. He was rather how you imagine Donald Trump to be on Christmas morning: his gifts to others are small, but he expects to receive large.  Gifting to family and friends was far in the future from Henry; adult to child giving further away still. Today Christmas is for children, first and foremost. The root of that is one I'm interested in tracing.

Henry’s Christmas celebrations also lasted for 12 days and included many feasts (mostly because the food was available and food storage almost nonexistent. Use it or lose it was the rule for much of Europe for centuries). It included the “Lord of Misrule,” usually a courtier given license to lead the drinking and carousing and general carrying on. That doesn’t reach back to Rome, either. But Puritans in America, like Increase Mather, tried to argue that it did.

In the Apostolical times the Feast of the Nativity was not observed....It can never be proved that Christ was born on December 25....The New Testament allows of no stated Holy-Day but the Lords-day...It was in compliance with the Pagan saturnalia that Christmas Holy-dayes were first invented. The manner of Christmas-keeping, as generally observed, is highly dishonorable to the name of Christ.

--Increase Mather, 1687.  

“If it had been the will of God that the several acts of Christ should have been celebrated with several solemnities, the Holy Ghost would have made known to us the day of his nativity, circumcision, presentation in the temple, baptism, transfiguration, and the like.” . . . . “This opinion of Christ’s nativity on the 25th day of December was bred at Rome.”

Also Increase Mather.

He's not wrong about that date for Christmas Day.  It was established by Rome. But his connection of Christmas to Saturnalia is where many an armchair historian and scholar has determined that's exactly what history says (it isn't.)  The salient point for us is that Christmas in America had little or nothing to do with the Church (or any church), and a great deal more to do with commerce.  I can explain that rather simply (this isn't a lecture, after all), by pointing to the figure of Santa Claus.

Take it as accurate the name “Santa Claus” from from the Danish figure Sinterklaas, who in turn comes from St. Nicholas (whose feast day is Dec. 6; we'll get there, too).  I have a picture of Sinterklaas, and it hardly resembles the figure of Clement Moore, Thomas Nast, or Haddon Sondblom (the artist of the '50's and '60's Coca-Cola Santas of my childhood.)  Sinterklass is depicted astride a regal white horse, bedecked with golden bridle and all the trimmings, as it flys through the sky (sans wings, not unlike the reindeer).  Sinterklaas sits regally and proud in the saddle, a tall, lean man wearing a Bishop's mitre and carrying a golden crozier.  Hardly the "jolly old elf" Moore says he saw in his living room. But Sinterklaas is a Catholic figure, a saint and the very picture of a Prince of the Church.  Santa Claus is a creature of mythology ("elf") who comes as a kind and trustworthy peddler, taking care of  Christmas for Mom and Dad and (especially) the kids.  Who are presumed to be "good" without having to prove it (post-Romanticism has been good for children, by and large). In the latest very American iteration, toy stores in "Red One" (the newest Xmas movie about Santa) all have "portals" to the North Pole, the better to deliver the toys which are provided to the children.  Or...something.  It's all about commerce, anyway, which is hardly what Sinterklaas was about.

Our American Christmas, in brief, was never about Advent and scriptures and taking care of the poor, which is one of the lessons of the Christchild being born in a feeding trough ("manger" is the nicer euphemism).  Although now we make the former saint kneel beside the Babe,  in tacit recognition that Santa Claus has eclipsed the "reason for the season."  Which it was in Europe; but never really was in America.

The fact is, Christmas as we know it and celebrate it in America, is pretty much an invention of the market place, and has only and ever tangentially been related to Christmas as a religious observance, as the "Christ Mass" held to honor the birth of the Savior. It's more like the two celebrations occur coincidentally at the same time of year, than that one is a vulgar and degrading corruption of the Platonic ideal of the other. Dickens has Scrooge attend church on Christmas morning, a changed man.  It's not that Christmas fell on a Sunday that month, but that Christmas was a holy day throughout Europe.  Look back up at what Increase Mather said; there was never such an observance in America.  Even today, most non-Catholic (and Episcopalian?) churches in America close on Sunday when that's Xmas Day.  Once you understand all that, the picture becomes much clearer; or perhaps darker.

If you want to understand how Christmas got started in America, consider the example of the European Feast of Fools. As New Advent says, it was "a celebration marked by much license and buffoonery." Scholars again differ on the reach and importance of this festival; some crown it as a n important "release valve" of the tensions and pressures of feudal society. Others, like Michel Foucault, downplay it. It was limited to northern France and a few other regions of Europe, and always opposed by the Church. The lesson for us is that this 'feast' was a folk celebration, not a church one, and its irreverence was tolerated by the Church because they couldn't stop it, more than it was encouraged as a way of reminding the peasants of their place in the hierarchy (a comparison to Christmas in the slave holding South will prove instructive here, if I remember to mention it again). Christmas, too, was a folk celebration, one more honored in the British South (thanks to the presence of the Episcopal church) than in Puritan New England (where it was officially banned for a time, in at least some of the New England states). Restad's history presents Christmas as largely a folk celebration, in contrast to Thanksgiving, which was vigorously promoted in the 19th century by Sara Josepha Hale, who did more than any individual to promote Thanksgiving as a national holiday (ironically, the objections to it were on church/state grounds. It was argued that a national day of giving thanks would violate the First Amendment, an objection that was finally obviated by the times, when Lincoln established what later became the holiday) Aside from the religious entanglement objection, Thanksgiving was regarded as more of a "New England" celebration than a national one, for much of that century. Christmas, on the other hand, crept into public celebrations from many lands and many hands, and was early on largely disconnected from any religious observance, and while promoted as connected to the Christchild, was really no more dependent upon Church sanction than it is now. The idea, in other words, that there was a "pure" Christmas observance in America once upon a time, which the marketplace or the public square corrupted, is as false as the idea that the Christmas celebration we know now descended in an almost unbroken line from the Roman Saturnalia. It just happens that people like an excuse to exchange gifts and eat a lot of food, and especially for people from a northern European culture, winter is a jolly good time to do that.

Christmas that year, not one to look forward to, was one we should alway look back on.

That's the opening sentence of "Looking Back on Christmas" by William Owens.  I don't know if it's memoir or fiction, but it's become one of my favorite Christmas stories.   It's the story of a family gathering in rural Texas on Christmas Eve.  The family gathers, then sits down to dinner, and after dinner:

After the first table [old Texas tradition my family carried on with in my childhood:  the men ate first, then retired, and the women and children ate.  Yeah, my wife was appalled by that, too, and it was long before we were married that she encountered it.] the men and the bigger boys built up a big fire in the pasture between the house and the front gate.  Then, while the women stood on the front porch to watch, Uncle Charlie gave the little children firecrackers and showed them how to shoot them.  He put a paper fuse against a live coal.  When it had lighted he threw it away from the fire into the dark.

"Don't ever let one go off in your hand," he said, "And don't throw it close to nobody.  Somebody might get hurt."

While we went through the firecrackers he had given us, the men made a trip back to the kitchen.  This time they brought the jug with them and set it in the back end of a wagon.  They brought out more fireworks, and Monroe had the sack of powder in his coat pocket.

"Time for a roman candle," Uncle Charlie said.

He took a long red roman candle and went to the fire.

"You all watch now," he said, "I'm gonna hold it like I was aiming to shoot the gate."

Charlie runs into the dark and let's the candle shoot balls of fire, then he gets Othal to join him in a roman candle battle.  Full disclosure:  I once did something similar with my cousin, although in summer, not winter.  We used plastic tubes from his golf bag to launch bottle rockets at each other.  We didn't even have the excuse of alcohol, we were just young and dumb.

Anyway, you get the flavor of the celebration.  Firecrackers going off, then roman candles being fired at each other in close range.  Then when those are exhausted and everyone's tired of running around and through the house:

Uncle Charlie was not ready for the fun to be over.  He went up the steps and across the front porch.  Aunt Niece was standing in the door, with the lamplight behind her.  He lifted her chin with his fingers and went on past her, to the chimney corner where he kept his double-barreled shotgun.  Then he came out with the gun under his arm and a box of shells in his hand.

Near the fire, he loaded both barrels and set the stock against his shoulder.

"You aiming at the gate?" Othal asked.

"You got to aim at something."

He fired, and after the first blast we heard shot rattle against the gate.

"Got it first shot," Othal said, and ran for his own gun.

In no time at all, five guns were blazing away at the gate, and the little children were running for hiding places under the house.  I shivered at the sound, but felt safe, for their backs were to us and they were aiming at the gate.

Then Othal came running around the house, loading and firing as he ran, and some of the others took after him.  The women had run inside, but I could hear them telling the men to stop.  Too scared to stay under the house, I crawled out and started for the door.  In the darkness I can straight into Otha's knees, and he let a double-barreled blast go off right over my head, leaving a burning flash in my eyes and a ringing in my ears.

The gate was "a wide, heavy gate made of oak timbers fourteen feet long and an inch thick."  However, the next morning:  "We went to look at the gate, and found it half hanging from the posts, with the timbers drilled and splintered by shot."  The story ends this way:

Uncle Charlie came in with a backstick for the fireplace.  My grandmother was waiting for him.

"You ruint the gate," she said.

"I reckon we did."

He laughed and the light in his blue eyes showed he was not sorry.  She frowned and went out to the front porch.

Aunt Niece came in, with a peeled orange in her hand.

"Christmas gift," he said to her.

She went up to him and stuck a slice of orange between his teeth.  They were both laughing without making a sound, and once he leaned over and kissed her.

"I had me some Christmas," he said.

Not so long ago, that story.  It wasn't just in the 1800's that Christmas was a lot different.  But I cite it because this is precisely the celebration of Christmas the Puritans despised.  And frankly, when Christmas Day is spent either in the glow of unbridled lust (wanting goods is as lustful as wanting sexual congress), or the afterglow of "Now what?", I think we could do with a bit more of a raucous Christmas celebration.  Sometimes I think we vanquished the Puritans, and still the Puritans won.

The interesting thing about Christmas in America is that it's always been a glorious bastard, a jackdaw of a project grabbing "Christmas trees" from Germany (related to the "Paradeisbaum" of the medieval German morality plays) and decking the halls and boar's heads and feasting from England (which may or may not be related to, or even influenced by, Druidic practices. It's always seemed like a bit of a stretch to me to go from kissing under the mistletoe directly back to Frazer's "golden bough"). Carols were a medieval creation coming, per Restad, from pagan folk dances that people liked and simply "Christianized" (like most things, the Church couldn't beat 'em, so it joined 'em), although many of the carols we know today are products of the 18th and 19th centuries (so it goes). The idea of caroling, IOW, is much older than most of our carols. As Restad points out, Christmas in America was cobbled together from European bits and pieces, and the parts that fit in America stuck, and the parts that didn't fell away.

We forget, too, that America initially had no holidays. Europe had them because of the church, which was universal throughout the different countries of Europe, and because of local customs. But without a universal church, or established local customs, America went, for almost a century, without any national holiday which all citizens could claim as their own. Ironically, again, that holiday became Christmas; but not because all Americans were, or were even presumed to be, Christians.

Stephen Nissenbaum argues that the American Christmas was formed more by Clement Clark Moore's poem than any other single source. (He also thinks Moore's poem shows the transformation of gift giving from peer to peer (or husband to wife, or employer to employee, as seen in A Christmas Carol), to parent to child.  For Nissenbaum, Moore's "jolly old elf" is a harmless peddler with a sack of goods, which he gives rather than sells, and leaves for the children.  It's not that Moore invented the custom, but that he popularized it.) Accepting Nissenbaum's position arguendo, what is most notable about "The Night Before Christmas" is that it creates a holiday and the celebration of it, without ever getting closer to religion than the word "Christmas" (which the Puritan New Englanders despised as a "Romish" word, but which, by Moore's day, had lost almost all religious connotation). This was more a feature than a bug in the 19th century. Dicken's Christmas Carol comes closer to invoking the religious reasons for the season, but he does it mostly in terms of Victorian sentimentality, than in terms of any church doctrine. Penne Restad points out that Christmas was grabbed onto by merchants in America almost as soon as it emerged as a public celebration. The emergence of the holiday coincided with a renewed interest in the power and importance of domesticity, an interest probably prompted by the Industrial Revolution and the quick acceptance by Americans of the ideals of the Romantic movement (especially the importance of children as children). Personally, I think the tradition arose from a combination of Romanticism and the Pietistic movement of the 17th century, which effects lingered long in a Protestant dominated culture, but Restad makes clear the connections between the desires for domestic values and the importance of a uniting holiday, one everyone could gather into despite cultural ("Germany" as we know it, for example, didn't exist in the 19th century. We often overlook how many cultural differences there were between Europeans, differences that carried over into America) and doctrinal differences. In this sense, Christmas was the first truly "American" holiday. Grafted onto European roots, without doubt; but made a holiday both observant Christians and non-Christians (and yes, there were some, even in the 19th century!) could engage in. It's not at all insignificant that Christmas in America began almost as a religious observance almost anyone could join, and quickly became a public holiday everyone could revel in. And aside from the Puritan's objections to the holiday's Catholic roots, it was the revelry they objected to almost as much.

Where were we then? Oh, yes: Christmas has always been two things at once, especially in America. It's never been a particularly religious holiday, so much as it's been a holiday named for and celebrated around a religious observance (which is still more honored in the breach than in the keeping). Christmas became, almost as soon as it was universally celebrated, a celebration of hearth and home, of domesticity (to this day, does a Christmas tree remind you first of Rockefeller Center, or of your childhood home?) Restad shows us that the Christmas tree itself became an American custom because it came with stories of German families gathered around a small tree on a table top, revealed in all its decorations and offerings of presents by the parents to the excited children. It was the American twist that the tree got bigger and bigger until it had to scrape whatever ceiling it was placed under from the floor on which it had to sit. Some things truly never change.

And I have to add here:  that's a problem in its own right, though probably not the one you are thinking of right now:

In their comprehension of poverty and its solutions, most Americans moved little beyond Dickens. They believed their Christmas generosity praiseworthy. Charles Dudley Warner thought the present American Christmas to be "fuller of real charity and brotherly love, and nearer the Divine intention" than earlier Christmases. The New York Tribune found the holiday "hearty and generous-minded, [full of] good-cheer and open-handed hospitality." "Nowhere in Christendom," it contended, "are the poor remembered at Christmas-tide so generously as they are in American cities, especially in our own."

In this show of self-congratulation, Americans persisted in seeing poor relief as a matter of individual action to be undertaken on much the same terms as gift-giving within the circle of family. That is, Christmas was the time to give. The best and largest gifts went to those closest to the circle's center. The lesser gifts, in descending order of value, went out to relatives and acquaintances of decreasing importance. The worthy poor, as the outermost members of the larger community family, received gifts too, though the least valuable of all the gifts given.

Penne L. Restad, Christmas in America, p. 139, 140

Perhaps I should explain who the "worthy poor" were:

A sense that there were those who were worthy of relief and those who were not qualified the attention devoted to poverty relief [after the Civil War], though. Children almost always deserved aid, as did honest women. Seldom did the same plea go out for men. A seasonal article on the New York Tribune implored the public to provide for poor children. In 1877, it reminded readers that most Americans were "Christian people," and advised them to try their best to keep children from being deprived at this time "when they think that all good gifts and gladness come straight from Him whose birthday it is." At the same time, the paper advised the sympathetic to ignore plain street beggars.

As Restad notes:

The sentimentalization of "worthy paupers" at Christmas time, whether in fact or in fiction, did not bring into question the essential structure of the market economy that had, if only indirectly, produced their poverty. Instead, it imbued destitute women and vagabond children with admirable qualities that existed apart from materialism, perhaps even as substitues for tangible wealth. It also aroused the sympathies of readers by giving a face to poverty, and placed the means of solving the problems of hunger and homelessness in the hands of individuals.(p. 135)

I've learned to look to history for lessons in how we got here, and to understand culture as a genetic inheritance (metaphorically speaking) almost as pre-determined as eye color or gender. we think what we think and act the way we act in part because of who our ancestors were, and what they passed on as important and valuable. The "worthy poor" is an interesting category, especially at this season of the year, when even the most unbelieving among us is encouraged to reflect on the lessons of the man who grew up from the Christchild. Well, perhaps lessons is not the right word. As Bob Cratchit puts it to his wife, speaking of his youngest son:

"Somehow he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see."

We don't, after all, want to be reminded that Jesus never put a faith test before someone before Jesus would speak to them, and the one time it is recorded that he did, the Syro-Phoenician woman rebukes him quite accurately. We still prefer our Jesus be more like us, and to start him up from childhood that way, every new year.

I'm well aware of the John Cheever story  about Christmas being a sad season for the poor. First it crossed my mind as just a good post title; then I reflected on how much it represents that American ideal that individual actions can alleviate poverty for the "worthy poor." I can't think of a story that illustrates that better than Cheever's. It's not really a question of generosity, even, because that question gets down to the issue of ownership in the first place. Restad notes in her history of Christmas in America that it was the affluence and abundance produced after the Civil War that led people to think of widening the circle of their gift-giving, to begin to include at all the "worthy poor." Hard to condemn such compassion, and any critique of it looks just like that: condemnation. But there were other voices, even in the 19th century, even in America:

People nowadays interchange gifts and favors out of friendship, but buying and selling is considered absolutely inconsistent with the mutual benevolence which should prevail between citizens and the sense of community of interest which supports our social system. According to our ideas, buying and selling is essentially anti-social in all its tendencies. It is an education in self-seeking at the expense of others, and no society whose citizens are trained in such a school can possibly rise above a very low grade of civilization
-- Edward Bellamy

The ultimate aim of production is not production of goods but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality.
-- John Dewey

I confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human beings
-- John Stuart Mill

The gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them ... It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.
-- Robert F. Kennedy

We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power....[What is required is] a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

There was a story about a Christmas yard display in Detroit that was too political for some of the neighbors. And generally that's our line on Christmas: we want to reserve it "for the children," and of course, that's still how we think of the "worthy poor," as children. Hard to think of men as children, so they get excluded from the "worthy poor" very easily. We also don't like quotes like those above associated with our Christmas revels. Fair enough. But perhaps even at Christmas we could look again at the ideas of scarcity and abundance, and consider again whether charity really means merely scraping the crumbs off our tables, or if it means something more.

Christmas is a sad season for the poor; but that doesn't mean it has to be; or that our charity has to be based on sorrow, either.

So is our Christmas ruined by all this commercialism? Depends on whether or not you agree with Linus about "what Christmas is all about." I like his answer, personally. But that's the answer for some of us; it isn't, and doesn't have to be, the answer for all of us. Let it be unto you according to your...well, faith, is how the German E&R Church concluded that blessing. But this isn't necessarily a matter of faith. So let it be unto you according to your best interest. Keep Christmas as it best suits you. And may it be a blessing unto you. Now, and into the ages.

Xmas In America

First, Christmas as we know it in America didn't really get started until the 1820's. It wasn't widely celebrated until the 1860's, and didn't become an official national holiday until 1870. So the "observance" of it (whatever that means) is not all that old. (For a bit of perspective, A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, and many scholars today attribute the "revival" of Christmas celebrations in England to Dickens). And from almost the moment the holiday was observed as a holiday, it was connected to commerce. So the connection between Christmas and shopping, in America, is as old as Christmas in America itself.

The other matter is:  there was no single "church" in America (still isn't).  Christmas in Europe came directly from Rome and really wasn't widespread there until the 11th century (another story entirely), so most of what we think of as "traditional Christmas" is from medieval Europe (not that there's anything wrong with that!), and a lot of it in this country traces back to Tudor England.

We'll get to that.

The first important point is that Christmas didn't enter this country via the Roman Catholics (who gave us the word, after all).  Christmas was banned by the Puritans, who pretty much hated it.  But what they hated was not what Scrooge hated:  they didn't hate Christmas trees (that didn't show up until the 19th century here, anyway) or greens and garland, or even Santa Claus.  The Puritans hated the raucous nature of Christmas; oh, and that the word itself referred to the "Christ Mass," which was much too "Romish" (their word) to tolerate in the New World.

But I need to put that in context, so bear with me a moment.  As I said, most of the celebrations of Christmas we have today (in America, anyway) have roots in Tudor England and the court of Henry VIII.  There was gift giving even then, but gift giving was engaged in only among the peerage, and  Henry expected the best gifts to come to him. He was rather how you imagine Donald Trump to be on Christmas morning: his gifts are to others are small, what he expects to receive is large.  Gifting to family and friends was far in the future from Henry; adult to child giving further away still. Today Christmas is for children, first and foremost. The root of that is one I'm interested in tracing.

Henry’s Christmas celebrations also lasted for 12 days and included many feasts (mostly because the food was available and food storage almost nonexistent. Use it or lose it was the rule for much of Europe for centuries). It included the “Lord of Misrule,” usually a courtier given license to lead the drinking and carousing and general carrying on. That doesn’t reach back to Rome, either. But Puritans in America, like Increase Mather, tried to argue that it did.

In the Apostolical times the Feast of the Nativity was not observed....It can never be proved that Christ was born on December 25....The New Testament allows of no stated Holy-Day but the Lords-day...It was in compliance with the Pagan saturnalia that Christmas Holy-dayes were first invented. The manner of Christmas-keeping, as generally observed, is highly dishonorable to the name of Christ.

--Increase Mather, 1687.  

“If it had been the will of God that the several acts of Christ should have been celebrated with several solemnities, the Holy Ghost would have made known to us the day of his nativity, circumcision, presentation in the temple, baptism, transfiguration, and the like.” . . . . “This opinion of Christ’s nativity on the 25th day of December was bred at Rome.”

Also Increase Mather.

He's not wrong about that date for Christmas Day.  And his connection of Christmas to Saturnalia is where many an armchair historian and scholar has determined that's exactly what history says (it isn't.)  The salient point for us is that Christmas in America had little or nothing to do with the Church (or any church), and a great deal more to do with commerce.  I can explain that rather simply (this isn't a lecture, after all), by pointing to the figure of Santa Claus.

Take it as accurate the Santa Claus from from the Danish figure Sinterklaas, who in turn comes from St. Nicholas (whose feast day is Dec. 6; we'll get there, too).  I have a picture of Sinterklaas, and it hardly resembles the figure of Clement Moore, Thomas Nast, or Haddon Sondblom (the artist of the '50's and '60's Coca-Cola Santas of my childhood.)  Sinterklass is depicted astride a regal white horse, bedecked with golden bridle and all the trimmings, as it flys through the sky (sans wings, not unlike the reindeer).  Sinterklaas sits regal and proud in the saddle, a tall, lean man wearing a Bishop's mitre and carrying a golden crozier.  Hardly the "jolly old elf" Moore says he saw in his living room. But Sinterklaas is a Catholic figure, a saint and the very picture of a Prince of the Church.  Santa Claus is a creature of mythology ("elf") who comes as a kind and trustworthy peddler, taking care of  Christmas for Mom and Dad and (especially) the kids.  Who are presumed to be "good" without having to prove it (post-Romanticism has been good for children, by and large). In the latest very American iteration, toy stores in "Red One" (the newest Xmas movie about Santa) all have "portals" to the North Pole, the better to deliver the toys which are provided to the children.  Or...something.  It's all about commerce, anyway, which is hardly what Sinterklaas was about.

Our American Christmas, in brief, was never about Advent and scriptures and taking care of the poor, which is one of the lessons of the Christchild being born in a feeding trough ("manger" is the nicer euphemism).  Although now we make the former saint kneel beside the Babe,  in tacit recognition that Santa Claus has eclipsed the "reason for the season."  Which it was in Europe; but never really was in America.

The fact is, Christmas as we know it and celebrate it in America, is pretty much an invention of the market place, and has only and ever tangentially been related to Christmas as a religious observance, as the "Christ Mass" held to honor the birth of the Savior. It's more like the two celebrations occur coincidentally at the same time of year, than that one is a vulgar and degrading corruption of the Platonic ideal of the other. Once you understand that, the picture becomes much clearer; or perhaps darker.

If you want to understand how Christmas got started in America, consider the example of the European Feast of Fools. As New Advent says, it was "a celebration marked by much license and buffoonery." Scholars again differ on the reach and importance of this festival; some crown it as a n important "release valve" of the tensions and pressures of feudal society. Others, like Michel Foucault, downplay it. It was limited to northern France and a few other regions of Europe, and always opposed by the Church. The lesson for us is that this 'feast' was a folk celebration, not a church one, and its irreverence was tolerated by the Church because they couldn't stop it, more than it was encouraged as a way of reminding the peasants of their place in the hierarchy (a comparison to Christmas in the slave holding South will prove instructive here, if I remember to mention it again). Christmas, too, was a folk celebration, one more honored in the British South (thanks to the presence of the Episcopal church) than in Puritan New England (where it was officially banned for a time, in at least some of the New England states). Restad's history presents Christmas as largely a folk celebration, in contrast to Thanksgiving, which was vigorously promoted in the 19th century by Sara Josepha Hale, who did more than any individual to promote Thanksgiving as a national holiday (ironically, the objections to it were on church/state grounds. It was argued that a national day of giving thanks would violate the First Amendment, an objection that was finally obviated by the times, when Lincoln established what later became the holiday) Aside from the religious entanglement objection, Thanksgiving was regarded as more of a "New England" celebration than a national one, for much of that century. Christmas, on the other hand, crept into public celebrations from many lands and many hands, and was early on largely disconnected from any religious observance, and while promoted as connected to the Christchild, was really no more dependent upon Church sanction than it is now. The idea, in other words, that there was a "pure" Christmas observance in America once upon a time, which the marketplace or the public square corrupted, is as false as the idea that the Christmas celebration we know now descended in an almost unbroken line from the Roman Saturnalia. It just happens that people like an excuse to exchange gifts and eat a lot of food, and especially for people from a northern European culture, winter is a jolly good time to do that.

Christmas that year, not one to look forward to, was one we should alway look back on.

That's the opening sentence of "Looking Back on Christmas" by William Owens.  I don't know if it's memoir or fiction, but it's become one of my favorite Christmas stories.   It's the story of a family gathering in rural Texas on Christmas Eve.  The family gathers, then sits down to dinner, and after dinner:

After the first table [old Texas tradition my family carried on with in my childhood:  the men ate first, then retired, and the women and children ate.  Yeah, my wife was appalled by that, too, and it was long before we were married that she encountered it.] the men and the bigger boys built up a big fire in the pasture between the house and the front gate.  Then, while the women stood on the front porch to watch, Uncle Charlie gave the little children firecrackers and showed them how to shoot them.  He put a paper fuse against a live coal.  When it had lighted he threw it away from the fire into the dark.

"Don't ever let one go off in your hand," he said, "And don't throw it close to nobody.  Somebody might get hurt."

While we went through the firecrackers he had given us, the men made a trip back to the kitchen.  This time they brought the jug with them and set it in the back end of a wagon.  They brought out more fireworks, and Monroe had the sack of powder in his coat pocket.

"Time for a roman candle," Uncle Charlie said.

He took a long red roman candle and went to the fire.

"You all watch now," he said, "I'm gonna hold it like I was aiming to shoot the gate."

Charlie runs into the dark and let's the candle shoot balls of fire, then he gets Othal to join him in a roman candle battle.  Full disclosure:  I once did something similar with my cousin, although in summer, not winter.  We used plastic tubes from his golf bag to launch bottle rockets at each other.  We didn't even have the excuse of alcohol, we were just young and dumb.

Anyway, you get the flavor of the celebration.  Firecrackers going off, then roman candles being fired at each other in close range.  Then when those are exhausted and everyone's tired of running around and through the house:

Uncle Charlie was not ready for the fun to be over.  He went up the steps and across the front porch.  Aunt Niece was standing in the door, with the lamplight behind her.  He lifted her chin with his fingers and went on past her, to the chimney corner where he kept his double-barreled shotgun.  Then he came out with the gun under his arm and a box of shells in his hand.

Near the fire, he loaded both barrels and set the stock against his shoulder.

"You aiming at the gate?" Othal asked.

"You got to aim at something."

He fired, and after the first blast we heard shot rattle against the gate.

"Got it first shot," Othal said, and ran for his own gun.

In no time at all, five guns were blazing away at the gate, and the little children were running for hiding places under the house.  I shivered at the sound, but felt safe, for their backs were to us and they were aiming at the gate.

Then Othal came running around the house, loading and firing as he ran, and some of the others took after him.  The women had run inside, but I could hear them telling the men to stop.  Too scared to stay under the house, I crawled out and started for the door.  In the darkness I can straight into Otha's knees, and he let a double-barreled blast go off right over my head, leaving a burning flash in my eyes and a ringing in my ears.

The gate was "a wide, heavy gate made of oak timbers fourteen feet long and an inch thick."  However, the next morning:  "We went to look at the gate, and found it half hanging from the posts, with the timbers drilled and splintered by shot."  The story ends this way:

Uncle Charlie came in with a backstick for the fireplace.  My grandmother was waiting for him.

"You ruint the gate," she said.

"I reckon we did."

He laughed and the light in his blue eyes showed he was not sorry.  She frowned and went out to the front porch.

Aunt Niece came in, with a peeled orange in her hand.

"Christmas gift," he said to her.

She went up to him and stuck a slice of orange between his teeth.  They were both laughing without making a sound, and once he leaned over and kissed her.

"I had me some Christmas," he said.

Not so long ago, that story.  It wasn't just in the 1800's that Christmas was a lot different.  But I cite it because this is precisely the celebration of Christmas the Puritans despised.  And frankly, when Christmas Day is spent either in the glow of unbridled lust (wanting goods is as lustful as wanting sexual congress), or the afterglow of "Now what?", I think we could do with a bit more of a raucous Christmas celebration.  Sometimes I think we vanquished the Puritans, and still the Puritans won.

The interesting thing about Christmas in America is that it's always been a glorious bastard, a jackdaw of a project grabbing "Christmas trees" from Germany (related to the "Paradeisbaum" of the medieval German morality plays) and decking the halls and boar's heads and feasting from England (which may or may not be related to, or even influenced by, Druidic practices. It's always seemed like a bit of a stretch to me to go from kissing under the mistletoe directly back to Frazer's "golden bough"). Carols were a medieval creation coming, per Restad, from pagan folk dances that people liked and simply "Christianized" (like most things, the Church couldn't beat 'em, so it joined 'em), although many of the carols we know today are products of the 18th and 19th centuries (so it goes). The idea of caroling, IOW, is much older than most of our carols. As Restad points out, Christmas in America was cobbled together from European bits and pieces, and the parts that fit in America stuck, and the parts that didn't fell away.

We forget, too, that America initially had no holidays. Europe had them because of the church, which was universal throughout the different countries of Europe, and because of local customs. But without a universal church, or established local customs, America went, for almost a century, without any national holiday which all citizens could claim as their own. Ironically, again, that holiday became Christmas; but not because all Americans were, or were even presumed to be, Christians.

Stephen Nissenbaum argues that the American Christmas was formed more by Clement Clark Moore's poem than any other single source. Accepting his position arguendo, what is most notable about "The Night Before Christmas" is that it creates a holiday and the celebration of it, without ever getting closer to religion than the word "Christmas" (which the Puritan New Englanders despised as a "Romish" word, but which, by Moore's day, had lost almost all religious connotation). This was more a feature than a bug in the 19th century. Dicken's Christmas Carol comes closer to invoking the religious reasons for the season, but he does it mostly in terms of Victorian sentimentality, than in terms of any church doctrine. Penne Restad points out that Christmas was grabbed onto by merchants in America almost as soon as it emerged as a public celebration. The emergence of the holiday coincided with a renewed interest in the power and importance of domesticity, an interest probably prompted by the Industrial Revolution and the quick acceptance by Americans of the ideals of the Romantic movement (especially the importance of children as children). Personally, I think it was a combination of Romanticism and the Pietistic movement of the 17th century, which effects lingered long in a Protestant dominated culture, but Restad makes clear the connections between the desires for domestic values and the importance of a uniting holiday, one everyone could gather into despite cultural ("Germany" as we know it, for example, didn't exist in the 19th century. We often overlook how many cultural differences there were between Europeans, differences that carried over into America) and doctrinal differences. In this sense, Christmas was the first truly "American" holiday. Grafted onto European roots, without doubt; but made a holiday both observant Christians and non-Christians (and yes, there were some, even in the 19th century!) could engage in. It's not at all insignificant that Christmas in America began almost as a religious observance almost anyone could join, and quickly became a public holiday everyone could revel in. And aside from the Puritan's objections to the holiday's Catholic roots, it was the revelry they objected to almost as much.





Where were we then? Oh, yes: Christmas has always been two things at once, especially in America. It's never been a particularly religious holiday, so much as it's been a holiday named for and celebrated around a religious observance (which is still more honored in the breach than in the keeping). Christmas became, almost as soon as it was universally celebrated, a celebration of hearth and home, of domesticity (to this day, does a Christmas tree remind you first of Rockefeller Center, or of your childhood home?) Restad shows us that the Christmas tree itself became an American custom because it came with stories of German families gathered around a small tree on a table top, revealed in all its decorations and offerings of presents by the parents to the excited children. It was the American twist that the tree got bigger and bigger until it had to scrape whatever ceiling it was placed under from the floor on which it had to sit. Some things truly never change.

And I have to add here:  that's a problem in its own right, though probably not the one you are thinking of right now:

In their comprehension of poverty and its solutions, most Americans moved little beyond Dickens. They believed their Christmas generosity praiseworthy. Charles Dudley Warner thought the present American Christmas to be "fuller of real charity and brotherly love, and nearer the Divine intention" than earlier Christmases. The New York Tribune found the holiday "hearty and generous-minded, [full of] good-cheer and open-handed hospitality." "Nowhere in Christendom," it contended, "are the poor remembered at Christmas-tide so generously as they are in American cities, especially in our own."

In this show of self-congratulation, Americans persisted in seeing poor relief as a matter of individual action to be undertaken on much the same terms as gift-giving within the circle of family. That is, Christmas was the time to give. The best and largest gifts went to those closest to the circle's center. The lesser gifts, in descending order of value, went out to relatives and acquaintances of decreasing importance. The worthy poor, as the outermost members of the larger community family, received gifts too, though the least valuable of all the gifts given.

Penne L. Restad, Christmas in America, p. 139, 140

Perhaps I should explain who the "worthy poor" were:

A sense that there were those who were worthy of relief and those who were not qualified the attention devoted to poverty relief [after the Civil War], though. Children almost always deserved aid, as did honest women. Seldom did the same plea go out for men. A seasonal article on the New York Tribune implored the public to provide for poor children. In 1877, it reminded readers that most Americans were "Christian people," and advised them to try their best to keep children from being deprived at this time "when they think that all good gifts and gladness come straight from Him whose birthday it is." At the same time, the paper advised the sympathetic to ignore plain street beggars.

As Restad notes:

The sentimentalization of "worthy paupers" at Christmas time, whether in fact or in fiction, did not bring into question the essential structure of the market economy that had, if only indirectly, produced their poverty. Instead, it imbued destitute women and vagabond children with admirable qualities that existed apart from materialism, perhaps even as substitues for tangible wealth. It also aroused the sympathies of readers by giving a face to poverty, and placed the means of solving the problems of hunger and homelessness in the hands of individuals.(p. 135)

I've learned to look to history for lessons in how we got here, and to understand culture as a genetic inheritance (metaphorically speaking) almost as pre-determined as eye color or gender. we think what we think and act the way we act in part because of who our ancestors were, and what they passed on as important and valuable. The "worthy poor" is an interesting category, especially at this season of the year, when even the most unbelieving among us is encouraged to reflect on the lessons of the man who grew up from the Christchild. Well, perhaps lessons is not the right word. As Bob Cratchit puts it to his wife, speaking of his youngest son:

"Somehow he gets thoughtful sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see."

We don't, after all, want to be reminded that Jesus never put a faith test before someone before Jesus would speak to them, and the one time it is recorded that he did, the Syro-Phoenician woman rebukes him quite accurately. We still prefer our Jesus be more like us, and to start him up from childhood that way, every new year.

I'm well aware of the John Cheever story  about Christmas being a sad season for the poor. First it crossed my mind as just a good post title; then I reflected on how much it represents that American ideal that individual actions can alleviate poverty for the "worthy poor." I can't think of a story that illustrates that better than Cheever's. It's not really a question of generosity, even, because that question gets down to the issue of ownership in the first place. Restad notes in her history of Christmas in America that it was the affluence and abundance produced after the Civil War that led people to think of widening the circle of their gift-giving, to begin to include at all the "worthy poor." Hard to condemn such compassion, and any critique of it looks just like that: condemnation. But there were other voices, even in the 19th century, even in America:

People nowadays interchange gifts and favors out of friendship, but buying and selling is considered absolutely inconsistent with the mutual benevolence which should prevail between citizens and the sense of community of interest which supports our social system. According to our ideas, buying and selling is essentially anti-social in all its tendencies. It is an education in self-seeking at the expense of others, and no society whose citizens are trained in such a school can possibly rise above a very low grade of civilization
-- Edward Bellamy

The ultimate aim of production is not production of goods but the production of free human beings associated with one another on terms of equality.
-- John Dewey

I confess that I am not charmed with the ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human beings
-- John Stuart Mill

The gross national product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for the people who break them ... It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of thier education, or the joy of their play.
-- Robert F. Kennedy

We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power....[What is required is] a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr

There was a story about a Christmas yard display in Detroit that was too political for some of the neighbors. And generally that's our line on Christmas: we want to reserve it "for the children," and of course, that's still how we think of the "worthy poor," as children. Hard to think of men as children, so they get excluded from the "worthy poor" very easily. We also don't like quotes like those above associated with our Christmas revels. Fair enough. But perhaps even at Christmas we could look again at the ideas of scarcity and abundance, and consider again whether charity really means merely scraping the crumbs off our tables, or if it means something more.

Christmas is a sad season for the poor; but that doesn't mean it has to be; or that our charity has to be based on sorrow, either.

So is our Christmas ruined by all this commercialism? Depends on whether or not you agree with Linus about "what Christmas is all about." I like his answer, personally. But that's the answer for some of us; it isn't, and doesn't have to be, the answer for all of us. Let it be unto you according to your...well, faith, is how the German E&R Church concluded that blessing. But this isn't necessarily a matter of faith. So let it be unto you according to your best interest. Keep Christmas as it best suits you. And may it be a blessing unto you. Now, and into the ages.

Truce On Xmas

War on Christmas update: we're now demanding Santa's unconditional surrender pic.twitter.com/lnGKbTkhe5

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 13, 2021

I have mentioned before, more than once, that I make things for people for Xmas.  I've been making and sending out fruitcakes (rum soaked and tasty, not the kind apparently assembled by a pile driver where fruits are pressed together so tightly they’re held by an atomic bond) for over 30 years (!).  I used to make cookies, but they don't ship so well, so I make breads instead.  Stollen, pannetone, pandoro, and other Christmas breads, mostly.

I frequently have recommended Bill McKibben's Hundred Dollar Holiday.  I'm a big advocate for simple Christmas celebrations with family and friends, and food and drink and maybe even games, the way Dickens described it (and before Clement Clark Moore got ahold of it).

And so now we come to Fauci, or Biden, or the Grinch, stealing Christmas.  Did nobody learn the moral of that story?

It's not like this is going to happen on Xmas morning and we're going to wake up to empty trees with nothing but lights and baubles to show it's Xmas Day.  Hallowe'en is still 18 days away (as I type).  We see this coming, to the extent that it is. We can prepare for a Xmas without store-bought items and, dare I say it, without massive post-Xmas debt.

Who needs that?

This is Striketober, after all.

'Striketober' in full swing as nearly 100,000 workers authorize work stoppageshttps://t.co/faUoavdh9t

— Raw Story (@RawStory) October 14, 2021

If we're going to strike a blow for fairness and equity in the job market, we might as well strike one for Christmas Day, too.  Are we so pitiful that if the ships from China grinch our Christmas, we'll wake up and boo-hoo around the Xmas tree?  Will Christmas not come if the stores don't provide us with everything we are desperate to buy and pile on the floor?

I think we're a little better than this, and a low-key, family oriented Christmas, even if you can't get a turkey after Thanksgiving, won't be a disaster.  The Grinch took everything, after all, right down to the last tree bauble and even the Roast Beast.  The Whos down in Whoville didn't care.  They had Christmas anyway.

Can we learn nothing from that?

Sure we can.  Make your plans accordingly, and look forward to a festive season even if the shipping is delayed and packages don't reach their destinations. Here's an idea, if you're anxious:  mail before Thanksgiving.  Or just makes lots of phone calls on Xmas Day.

If the Grinch couldn't cancel Christmas, who are we to do so?

From the messaging wizards at the @HouseGOP: pic.twitter.com/nIhC3FTP38

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) October 13, 2021

Yeah, that’s how this works.

White House Warns Supply Chain Shortages Could Lead Americans To Discover True Meaning Of Christmas https://t.co/jaz4599uI7 pic.twitter.com/xJnUF9UOir

— The Onion (@TheOnion) October 13, 2021

Well, we wouldn’t want that to happen!

Twelfth Night as a Spectre

The great unintended irony of Shakespeare's comedy is that Malvolio is a Puritan and a prig and the butt of the jokes of the comic characters in the play.  Shakespeare is absolutely merciless towards him.  Why is that ironic?  Well, because it was the Puritans who nearly killed Christmas for us, and left it to our mercantilism (another vestige of Yankee Puritanism) to recover, not with the generosity of spirit exemplified by the reformed Scrooge (Dickens "invented Christmas"?  Then why are there no Christmas trees in "A Christmas Carol," no Santa Claus, no exchange of presents or even expectation of presents in the Cratchit house?  Bob doesn't even apologize for having nothing to give the children; all they expect is a meal and the family together for at least one day.), but with the retail heart of "A Night Before Christmas" where the peddler opens his pack to leave delights for the sleeping children.

As I have mentioned before, modern American Christmas celebrations have nothing to do with the traditions of the holiday, which used to focus solely on giving to others and sharing abundance and putting on a feast for friends.  Scrooge's nephew keeps that alive, and the same spirit is portrayed earlier in Dickens in The Pickwick Papers.  None of the Christmas stories Dickens wrote have anything to do with Santa Claus and shopping.  Dickens didn't invent Christmas, Clement Clark Moore did.  And he wanted it to be "happy," not "merry."  Before Clark Moore, Christmas  was always more like this:

Or this:

Or Good King Wenceslas looking out on the feast of St. Stephen (Dec. 26; a day preserved in Catholic Ireland, but known as "Boxing Day," or the servants one official day off a year, in Protestant England); or the origin story of St. Nicholas, throwing bags of gold in a window so a poor father can provide a dowry for his three daughters.  We never let that take root in this country.  We only let the German paradeisbaum in because of Victorian England (and the fact both Victoria and Albert were German), and we made gift giving all about giving to our dependents, not to peers, and Christmas so much an affair of the family that when it falls on a Sunday the mega-churches that catch everyone's religious attention close to allow family to be put before God, as it was meant to be.

Don't get me started.

It was the Puritans who killed Christmas in this country, outlawing it for as long as they could (it actually survived better in the Anglican South until the spiritual heirs of the Puritans, the Southern Baptists, rose to cultural prominence and hegemony.  Some of my best friends are Southern Baptists, but let's be honest here.).   We lost even the idea of Twelfth Night, and reduced the 12 Days of Christmas to an annoying song nobody likes but everyone has to hear at least once a year.  Epiphany, or Twelfth Night, was the bookend celebration to the Christmas Day feast, and like Christmas before trees and chimneys and Father Christmas, was a time of games and play and pleasure and festivity.  When Shakespeare posted the title of his newest play at the theater, everyone knew it was a comedy from the title alone.  What else did "Twelfth Night" signify, even though the play doesn't take place in January at all.

Yeah, we lost all of that.  Our festivities happen frantically in early December, and by the 25th we're exhausted and anticipating only the cleaning up of wrapping paper and dishes.  The days after Christmas are sometimes joyful; the days after New Years are just sad.  Too much celebrating and back to work the morning after the morning after.  Even our winter songs like "Jingle Bells" or "Winter Wonderland" don't sound anymore.  We used them up at Christmas, though by January 2 winter is barely underway and we could use something to lighten the mood.  But the only respite is Valentine's Day, which everyone hates or loves in equal measure, with the haters dominating the conversation for reasons that have a lot to do with the way we observe Christmas, so maybe there's still something Puritanical in us that we can't remove.

Games and play and pleasure and festivity, after all, are so frivolous.  We are more adult.  We prefer drinking; and jokes about hangovers. Such things are much more "adult." As children we are so anxious to be adult; as adults we are so anxious to be children again.

Sad!

I still advocate, in my small way, for a return to more joyous celebrations.  May it be unto you according to your faith, and may you find some joy to steer you into the year to come.  And may it be better than our culture allows it to be.

Po-Mo Christmas History

So a new book pops up in a review at Slate, all about the controversies of Christmas since at least the 5th century.  Or maybe not.

I can't blame the book, because I haven't read it, so I have to blame the reviewer.  The review opens with a seemingly inflammatory quote from a sermon from 400 C.E.:

“This festival teaches even the little children, artless and simple, to be greedy,” as one critic put it. “The tender minds of the young begin to be impressed with that which is commercial and sordid.”

But in context, the complaint is really just about disorder and license, and has nothing to do with a Christian feast that is not yet widely observed:

Of a public feast, this, then, should be the rule and law: first, that the festival have a distinct object; and then that the mirth be common to all; not that a part enjoy themselves and the rest be left in dejection and pain. For this latter condition is characteristic of war rather than of a feast, since it is inevitable that the victors parade in their victory, while the conquered bewail their misfortune. Now in these days, first, it is not clear for what object this festival is celebrated. For the many legends current concerning it are mutually subversive and disclose nothing certain. Then I see only a few making merry, while the mass of the people are melancholy, even though they try to conceal their dejection by a cheerful demeanor; while all is noise and tumult, the multitude heedlessly jostling one another.

It is a recollection of, and a rejoicing over, the new year. What kind of rejoicing, sir? First, then, I observe the manner of meeting, of what a sort it is, and how suspicious and unfriendly! With a voice feeble and faint the salutation drops  from the lips. Then follows the kiss, as a prelude to the New Year's present. The mouth indeed is kissed, but it is the coin that is loved,----the form of a sale and the deed of covetousness! But where there is pure and frank friendship, kindnesses are freely bestowed with no expectation of gain. So, while on this New Year's festival many things are carried about everywhere, and money is given, there is no pretext of legitimate barter, nor does any one claim it. It is not a wedding, so that one might call it the prodigality of a haughty bridegroom. Nor am I able to call the expenditure almsgiving, since no poor man is relieved of his misfortune. One cannot call what takes place exchange, for the multitude exchange nothing with one another. But to call it a free gift is still more inappropriate, since the giving is by necessity. What, then, are we to call the festival, or the money spent in it? I cannot make out. But tell me, you who have been wearing yourselves out in preparing for it. Give an account of it, as we do of the festivals which are genuine and according to the will of God. We celebrate the birth of Christ, since at this time God manifested himself in the flesh. We celebrate the Feast of Lights (Epiphany), since by the forgiveness of our sins we are led forth from the dark prison of our former life into a life of light and uprightness. Again, on the day of the resurrection we adorn ourselves and march through the streets with joy, because that day reveals to us immortality and the transformation into a higher existence. Thus we keep these feasts and the rest of them in orderly succession. For every human event there is a reason, but that which lacks reasonable explanation and purpose is stuff and nonsense.

Oh, the absurdity of it! All stalk about open-mouthed, hoping to receive something from one another. Those who have given are dejected; those who have received a gift do not retain it, for the present is handed on from one to another, and he who received it from an inferior gives it to a superior. The money of this festival is as unstable as the ball of boys at play, for it is passed quickly on from me to my neighbor. It is but a new form of bribery and servility, having inevitably linked with it the element of necessity. For the more eminent and respectable man shames one into giving. A person of lower rank asks outright, and it all moves by degrees toward the pockets of the most eminent men. And you may see just such a thing as happens in the confluence of waters. There a streamlet melts into and mingles its waters with one larger than itself, and it in turn loses itself in one still more copious, and many small streams joined together become part of the neighboring river; this again, of another greater still, and so on, one joining another, until the last one brings the waters to rest in the depth and breadth of the sea.

This is misnamed a feast, being full of annoyance; since going out-of-doors is burdensome, and staying within doors is not undisturbed. For the common vagrants and the jugglers of the stage, dividing themselves into squads and hordes, hang about every house. The gates of public officials they besiege with especial persistence, actually shouting and clapping their hands until he that is beleaguered within, exhausted, throws out to them whatever money he has and even what is not his own. And these mendicants going from door to door follow one after another, and, until late in the  evening, there is no relief from this nuisance. For crowd succeeds crowd, and shout, shout, and loss, loss.
Such is this delectable feast, the source of debt and usury, the occasion of poverty, the beginning of misfortunes. And if a man become prosperous by honest industry, incredible as that may seem, and not by the craft of the usurer, even he is dragged along as one who has failed to pay the royal taxes; he weeps like one whose goods are confiscated, and he laments like a man who falls among thieves. He is dogged, he is flogged, and if there be in the house any little thing for the support of his wife and wretched children, this he lets go, and sits him down hungry with his whole family on this glorious feast-day. A new law this, of evil custom, that annoyance be celebrated as a feast, and man's want be called a festival!

This festival teaches even the little children, artless and simple, to be greedy, and accustoms them to go from house to house and to offer novel gifts, fruits covered with silver tinsel. For these they receive in return gifts double their value, and thus the tender minds of the young begin to be impressed with that which is commercial and sordid.

But as to the sturdy and honest farmers! What things this feast-day brings to them! It renders the city a place to be shunned rather than visited, and they fly from it more timidly than hares from nets. Such as are found within it are flogged, treated with drunken violence, what they have in their hands is snatched from them; they are warred upon in time of peace, are jeered at, and mocked with words and deeds. Even our most excellent and guileless prophets, the unmistakable representatives of God, who when unhindered in their work are our faithful ministers, are treated with insolence. Thus it is, then, with those in office, thus with the poor, thus with the children, thus with the rustics. For some are distressed, some murmur, and some learn what it were better not to know.

Yeah, been there, done that.  The sermon is actually directed, not at Christmas celebrations (which were unknown in 400 C.E., certainly in northern Turkey), but rather at the Festival of the Kalends, "Kalends" being the Roman term for the first day of the month.  This is about a raucous New Year's celebration, in other words.  Maybe somebody is confusing Saturnalia with Christmas; but again, been there, done that.

And I just gotta say, I don't know where this comes from:

St. Augustine was pleading with people to give alms instead of holiday gifts in the early fifth century.

Except this:

CHAPTER XIX.  Almsgiving and Forgiveness

70. We must beware, however, lest anyone suppose that unspeakable crimes such as they commit who "will not possess the Kingdom of God" can be perpetrated daily and then daily redeemed by almsgiving. Of course, life must be changed for the better, and alms should be offered as propitiation to God for our past sins. But he is not somehow to be bought off, as if we always had a license to commit crimes with impunity. For, "he has given no man a license to sin" --although, in his mercy, he does blot out sins already committed, if due satisfaction for them is not neglected.

71. For the passing and trivial sins of every day, from which no life is free, the everyday prayer of the faithful makes satisfaction. For they can say, "Our Father who art in heaven," who have already been reborn to such a Father "by water and the Spirit." This prayer completely blots out our minor and everyday sins. It also blots out those sins which once made the life of the faithful wicked, but from which, now that they have changed for the better by repentance, they have departed. The condition of this is that just as they truly say, "Forgive us our debts" (since there is no lack of debts to be forgiven), so also they truly say, "As we forgive our debtors" ; that is, if what is said is also done. For to forgive a man who seeks forgiveness is indeed to give alms.

72. Accordingly, what our Lord says--"Give alms and, behold, all things are clean to you" --applies to all useful acts of mercy. Therefore, not only the man who gives food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing to the naked, hospitality to the wayfarer, refuge to the fugitive; who visits the sick and the prisoner, redeems the captive, bears the burdens of the weak, leads the blind, comforts the sorrowful, heals the sick, shows the errant the right way, gives advice to the perplexed, and does whatever is needful for the needy --not only does this man give alms, but the man who forgives the trespasser also gives alms as well. He is also a giver of alms who, by blows or other discipline, corrects and restrains those under his command, if at the same time he forgives from the heart the sin by which he has been wronged or offended, or prays that it be forgiven the offender. Such a man gives alms, not only in that he forgives and prays, but also in that he rebukes and administers corrective punishment, since in this he shows mercy.

Now, many benefits are bestowed on the unwilling, when their interests and not their preferences are consulted. And men frequently are found to be their own enemies, while those they suppose to be their enemies are their true friends. And then, by mistake, they return evil for good, when a Christian ought not to return evil even for evil. Thus, there are many kinds of alms, by which, when we do them, we are helped in obtaining forgiveness of our own sins.

73. But none of these alms is greater than the forgiveness from the heart of a sin committed against us by someone else. It is a smaller thing to wish well or even to do well to one who has done you no evil. It is far greater--a sort of magnificent goodness--to love your enemy, and always to wish him well and, as you can, do well to him who wishes you ill and who does you harm when he can. Thus one heeds God's command: "Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute you."

Such counsels are for the perfect sons of God. And although all the faithful should strive toward them and through prayer to God and earnest endeavor bring their souls up to this level, still so high a degree of goodness is not possible for so great a multitude as we believe are heard when, in prayer, they say, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Accordingly, it cannot be doubted that the terms of this pledge are fulfilled if a man, not yet so perfect that he already loves his enemies, still forgives from the heart one who has sinned against him and who now asks his forgiveness. For he surely seeks forgiveness when he asks for it when he prays, saying, "As we forgive our debtors." For this means, "Forgive us our debts when we ask for forgiveness, as we also forgive our debtors when they ask for forgiveness."

74. Again, if one seeks forgiveness from a man against whom he sinned--moved by his sin to seek it--he should no longer be regarded as an enemy, and it should not now be as difficult to love him as it was when he was actively hostile.

Now, a man who does not forgive from the heart one who asks forgiveness and is repentant of his sins can in no way suppose that his own sins are forgiven by the Lord, since the Truth cannot lie, and what hearer and reader of the gospel has not noted who it was who said, "I am the Truth"? It is, of course, the One who, when he was teaching the prayer, strongly emphasized this sentence which he put in it, saying: "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you your trespasses. But if you will not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your offenses." He who is not awakened by such great thundering is not asleep, but dead. And yet such a word has power to awaken even the dead.

CHAPTER XX.  Spiritual Almsgiving

75. Now, surely, those who live in gross wickedness and take no care to correct their lives and habits, who yet, amid their crimes and misdeeds, continue to multiply their alms, flatter themselves in vain with the Lord's words, "Give alms; and, behold, all things are clean to you." They do not understand how far this saying reaches. In order for them to understand, let them notice to whom it was that he said it. For this is the context of it in the Gospel: "As he was speaking, a certain Pharisee asked him to dine with him. And he went in and reclined at the table. And the Pharisee began to wonder and ask himself why He had not washed himself before dinner. But the Lord said to him: 'Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but within you are still full of extortion and wickedness. Foolish ones! Did not He who made the outside make the inside too? Nevertheless, give for alms what remains within; and, behold, all things are clean to you.'"162 Should we interpret this to mean that to the Pharisees, who had not the faith of Christ, all things are clean if only they give alms, as they deem it right to give them, even if they have not believed in him, nor been reborn of water and the Spirit? But all are unclean who are not made clean by the faith of Christ, of whom it is written, "Cleansing their hearts by faith." And as the apostle said, "But to them that are unclean and unbelieving nothing is clean; both their minds and consciences are unclean." How, then, should all things be clean to the Pharisees, even if they gave alms, but were not believers? Or, how could they be believers, if they were unwilling to believe in Christ and to be born again in his grace? And yet, what they heard is true: "Give alms; and behold, all things are clean to you."

76. He who would give alms as a set plan of his life should begin with himself and give them to himself. For almsgiving is a work of mercy, and the saying is most true: "Have mercy upon your own soul, pleasing God."  The purpose of the new birth is that we should become pleasing to God, who is justly displeased with the sin we contracted in birth. This is the first almsgiving, which we give to ourselves--when through the mercy of a merciful God we come to inquire about our wretchedness and come to acknowledge the just verdict by which we were put in need of that mercy, of which the apostle says, "Judgment came by that one trespass to condemnation." And the same herald of grace then adds (in a word of thanksgiving for God's great love), "But God commendeth his love toward us in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." Thus, when we come to a valid estimate of our wretchedness and begin to love God with the love he himself giveth us, we then begin to live piously and righteously.

But the Pharisees, while they gave as alms a tithing of even the least of their fruits, disregarded this "judgment and love of God." Therefore, they did not begin their almsgiving with themselves, nor did they, first of all, show mercy toward themselves. In reference to this right order of self-love, it was said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."

Therefore, when the Lord had reproved the Pharisees for washing themselves on the outside while inwardly they were still full of extortion and wickedness, he then admonished them also to give those alms which a man owes first to himself--to make clean the inner man: "However," he said, "give what remains as alms, and, behold, all things are clean to you." Then, to make plain the import of his admonition, which they had ignored, and to show them that he was not ignorant of their kind of almsgiving, he adds, "But woe to you, Pharisees" --as if to say, "I am advising you to give the kind of alms which shall make all things clean to you." "But woe to you, for you tithe mint and rue and every herb"--"I know these alms of yours and you need not think I am admonishing you to give them up"--"and then neglect justice and the love of God." "This kind of almsgiving would make you clean from all inward defilement, just as the bodies which you wash are made clean by you." For the word "all" here means both "inward" and "outward"--as elsewhere we read, "Make clean the inside, and the outside will become clean."

But, lest it appear that he was rejecting the kind of alms we give of the earth's bounty, he adds, "These things you should do"--that is, pay heed to the judgment and love of God--and "not omit the others"--that is, alms done with the earth's bounty.

77. Therefore, let them not deceive themselves who suppose that by giving alms--however profusely, and whether of their fruits or money or anything else--they purchase impunity to continue in the enormity of their crimes and the grossness of their wickedness. For not only do they do such things, but they also love them so much that they would always choose to continue in them--if they could do so with impunity. "But he who loves iniquity hates his own soul." And he who hates his own soul is not merciful but cruel to it. For by loving it after the world's way he hates it according to God's way of judging. Therefore, if one really wished to give alms to himself, that all things might become clean to him, he would hate his soul after the world's way and love it according to God's way. No one, however, gives any alms at all unless he gives from the store of Him who needs not anything. "Accordingly," it is said, "His mercy shall go before me."

Yes, Augustine can be tedious, but I quote it in full in the certain knowledge nobody's gonna follow the link alone (and to be sure you get to the right passages).  Not much in there about "holiday gift giving," which, as I've said before, really wasn't much of a concept until Clement Clark Moore popularized it AFTER the Industrial Revolution (when there were spare objects to give, and everything made wasn't the work of hands.  One reason we prize handmade gifts today, of course.)  I have to assume the book is making these connections but, in that case, they are pretty dubious ones.

Besides, pleading with people to give alms to the poor was hardly unique to Augustine, the 5th century, or any connection to a religious feast that didn't exist outside of Rome itself, and then only barely.

Coincidentally, I was teaching memoir this morning, and telling my students that the past is changed by the present because the past is a construct we manufacture in our own time.  The world of Pepys, for example, would be completely unknown to us without his diaries, and whether we cast history as the results of "great men" or as the culmination of the efforts of those now under the sod in Grey's country churchyard, we change history by how we define and describe it.  So I can say these descriptions of Christmas are false and inaccurate, but I don't have the platform a Slate reviewer does, nor that a book's author does.  We prefer to imagine the past is just a continuation, backwards, of the present, only with different costumes and less technology.  I can tell you that isn't so at all, but in doing so, I require you to change the past in order to understand me.  It is a foolish thing to read the past as if it were only a few days ago, but ultimately it's just a matter of who gets to describe the past, and which description is taken as the "right" one.

So let's just say some descriptions are more worthy than others.  😇

Putting the Dog in the Manger

My scholarship on this is anything but perfect (or scholarly, for that matter).  If I confine myself to internet sources and my own blog entries, it's for convenience sake and a nod to the forum where these ideas are presented; it's not a very strong defense of said ideas.

Still, there is a lot of annual nonsense about Christmas "traditions" being stolen from "pagans."  And the silliest part about such claims is how ahistorical they are, all the while asserting a knowledge of history superior to those of us fooled by the "pagan" practices we perpetuate in the name of something holy.

So let's lay it out in careful fashion.  First:  Christmas was not observed by the Church (the "Roman" church, but at the time, the only church) until the 4th century C.E.  There was an observance of the birth day of the Christ in Egypt in the 3rd century, not surprising as the Egyptians observed the birthdays of their Pharoahs, whom they considered gods at birth (and so their birthdays were significant).* But Rome didn't pick up the practice until sometime in the mid 4th century.  To put that in historical context as far as "pagan" practices go:

In the late 4th century, persecution of pagans by newly Christian Romans had reached new levels of intensity. Temples and statues were destroyed throughout the Roman empire: pagan rituals became forbidden under punishment of death, and libraries were closed. In 391, Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all pagan temples, and the Patriarch Theophilus complied with his request. One theory has it that the great Library of Alexandria and the Serapeum were destroyed about this time.

Not, in other words, a lot of interest in taking up "pagan" (I used the word advisedly) practices at the time.  Certainly there were no Christmas trees in 4th century Rome, no holly and ivy, no boar's heads or even Santa Claus.

Then comes the medieval period, and Christmas feasts, which if "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is any evidence, were the common feature of Christmas celebrations (again, no holly and ivy, no Christmas tree, no jolly old St. Nick; just the boar's head and lots of hunting).  But I jump to medieval Europe because that's when the passion plays began, and in Germany (influenced by the "East," which is to say the Orthodox church, which observes the festal day of Adam and Eve), a feature of some of these plays became the Paradeisbaum, the tree of Paradise, because of the feast of Adam and Eve.

CHRISTMAS Eve is the feast day of our first parents, Adam and Eve. They are commemorated as saints in the calendars of the Eastern churches (Greeks, Syrians, Copts). Under the influence of this Oriental practice,  their veneration spread also to the West and became very popular toward the end of the first millennium of the Christian era. The Latin church has never officially introduced their feast, though it did not prohibit their popular veneration. In many old churches of Europe their statues may still be seen among the images of the saints. Boys and girls  who bore the names of Adam and Eve (quite popular in past centuries) celebrated their "Name Day" with great rejoicing. In Germany the custom began in the sixteenth century of putting up a "paradise tree" in the homes to honor the first parents. This was a fir tree laden with apples,  and from it developed the modern Christmas tree.

So the "Christmas Tree" began, not with tree-worshiping Druids in England (why would you cut down and kill what you worship?  That's a very modern idea, not a very ancient one.), but with Christian Germans in the 16th century.  It finally became a feature of Christmas observances in the home in the 19th century.  You don't see them in most churches (especially the older mainline churches), at least not in the worship space, and they have nothing to do with Christianity (in fact some try to blunt their secular connections with a nativity scene; I know my family did when I was a child.).  And what about gift giving?  For that, you can blame Clement Clark Moore.

The popular assertion is that gift giving at Christmas is connected to the Roman Saturnalia.   The problem is, that practice died out in Rome before the 4th century; and gift giving didn't become a part of Christmas until the 19th century.  The closest you get to that in Europe is the sharing of food with the peasants by the landowners, but that practice is more related to the Feast of Fools that allowed the repressed a brief respite from their oppression (probably enough to keep them happy in their servitude) and the quite reasonable function of not letting the serfs starve in the winter (again, just enough to keep them in their place).  The exchange of gifts between Gawain and the Green Knight is more typical.  They aren't gifts in our modern sense at all, and they are exchanged between peers, are in fact part of a game.**  Even today our gift giving is between peers (our friends and co-workers) or within family (especially to children, where we recapitulate the relationship of lord and serf), and only occasionally to the "poor" (whom we never go to Black Friday sales for).

If you follow all the links in this post, several will send you to my archives where you will find collected posts in categories that overlap several of them; so there's a lot of repetition and some tedious data-mining if you want to get down to the bedrock; which is, in places, still rather spongy.  Suffice it to say that Christmas is pretty much a modern invention, especially as we observe it in America.  I rather like the conclusion one of my posts drew, based on the work of real scholars and historians, that Christmas was one of the first holidays America had (thanks to the Puritans and the lack of a single Church, as well as a mixture of European cultures, we had no holidays of our own that all could observe from the beginning); it was open both to the religious and the secular.  You could observe the birth of Christ, or just observe a modern version of the Feast of Fools.  But it was all about celebrating and enjoying your family and friends, and that's still what it should be.

*Origen, glancing perhaps at the discreditable imperial Natalitia, asserts (in Lev. Hom. viii in Migne, P.G., XII, 495) that in the Scriptures sinners alone, not saints, celebrate their birthday; Arnobius (VII, 32 in P.L., V, 1264) can still ridicule the "birthdays" of the gods.  New Advent.

** Games were associated with Christmas celebrations down through Dicken's A Christmas Carol where Scrooge's nephew and friends play them on Christmas Day.  Sadly that is no longer an expected feature of our Christmas revels.