A Christmas video from Andy Rooney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AejW5MGX_DY
Like Mr. Rooney, I’m wondering what I can say about Christmas that I haven’t yet said in the ten years of writing this column.
I’ve written about the origins of some of our favorite seasonal music; about the holiday traditions that have roots in secular and Pagan practices; about how Christmas was not celebrated by the Pilgrims in Plymouth, and how the holiday evolved in the U.S. over the years. I’ve shared personal memories as well as some your stories. I’ve also written about Christmas during the dark times of World War I and about the celebrations in 1945 after the end of World War II.
So, following Andy Rooney’s lead, I present you with a selection from those past Christmases.
MUSIC (2017):
Any guesses as to what is still the best-selling Christmas single of all time (according to the Guinness Book of World Records)?
"White Christmas" was first performed publicly
by Bing Crosby on NBC’s radio program The Kraft Music Hall on Christmas Day,
1941 – just a few weeks after Pearl Harbor. The song was written by
Irving Berlin in January of 1940. ….
The song went on to
become a favorite the following year when Armed Forces Radio played it for
American troops during World War II. We associate “White
Christmas” with the movie of the same name, but in fact the song first appeared
in the 1942 film “Holiday Inn”, and it’s that version that tops the
charts.
CHRISTMAS TRADITIONS (2012 & 2016):
There's been much speculation about the date of the first
Christmas. One theory is that Christ's birth actually took place in the
springtime -- lambing season, when shepherds tended to their flocks outdoors.
December 25 was chosen as the official date by Christians some four hundred
years later, but the reason is unknown. My favorite theories are that it may
have been a convenient way for early Christians to avoid persecution by masking
celebrations of Christ's birth amidst the general carousing of the Pagan winter
solstice festivals, or it may have even been a way to recruit converts by
showing the Pagans that they didn't have to give up the season's carousing if
they became Christians.
Fast forward about 16
centuries and to some of the earliest settlers of this part of our continent,
the Pilgrims. They pretty much ignored the day and regarded any
celebration of Christmas as sinful -- a profanity against Christ's birth
influenced by those misguided fourth century "Papists" (Catholics).
In 1620, just weeks after arriving in the New World, they spent December 25 framing their first structure in Plymouth and returned back to the Mayflower at night -- not to drink eggnog and sing carols, but to huddle against a rainstorm as they worried about rations, disease and Native Americans. So dogmatic were they that when the English ship "Fortune" landed in Plymouth the following November, bringing with it an apparently raucous non-Pilgrim bunch who not only refused to work on Christmas Day 1621 but actually wanted to have FUN that day by playing stick ball games in the street, the scandalized Pilgrim Governor William Bradford confiscated their balls and bats with the declaration that there'd be "no gaming or reveling in the streets".
By 1659, the celebration of Christmas was outlawed in Massachusetts, a law that remained in place for the next 22 years.
17th Century Christmas: No Office Parties
It's hard to imagine what life would be like now if the ways of the Pilgrims had prevailed. We can thank the more progressive Southern colonies as well as the influx of more diverse European groups for saving us from that fate.
Jamestown, Virginia was settled 13 years before the
Pilgrim's arrival, but the settlers there were mostly Anglican and regarded the
period from Christmas to Twelfth Night on January 6 as a special time for
celebration. As early as the mid 1600's, Dutch immigrants to New Amsterdam
brought with them the legend of "Sinterklaas", later morphed to
"Santa Claus". Even so, it would be years before Christmas was to
become a nationwide celebration .
In the 1830's,
Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana were the first states to declare December 25
as an official holiday -- likely influenced by early French and Spanish
settlers (those partying Papists again!). In those pre-Civil War years, the
Southern states outdid the North in their celebrations of the day.
The White House saw its first Christmas Tree in 1856 during the term of President Franklin Pierce. Finally, in June of 1870, President Ulysses Grant made Christmas a national holiday, along with several others, with a proclamation "...making the first Day of January, the twenty-fifth Day of December, the fourth Day of July, and Thanksgiving Day, Holidays, within the District of Columbia".
YOUR CHRISTMAS STORIES (2013):
Maybe my favorite - in 2013, I asked for your Christmas stories. They’re too beautiful to summarize and condense, so click on the link to read that column in its entirety. It includes stories from Deborah Barlock, Dottie Walczak Duncan, Nancy Zima Famiglietti, and Hal:
nfthcolumnbychris.blogspot.com/2013/11/2013-december-christmas-stories.html
WORLD WARS (2011 & 2019):
The Western Front in Europe in December 1914, where British/French/Belgian troops faced their German and Austrian counterparts:
The opposing trenches were in many cases within shouting distance of each other, and the ravaged space in between was aptly called No Man’s Land.
It started as Christmas Eve approached: German soldiers lit small Christmas trees in their dugouts, and troops on both sides sang carols and opened small gift parcels sent to the front lines from their families at home. What ensued at many points along the Western Front line was an unofficial and spontaneous Christmas Day cease fire: to the dismay of generals on both sides, soldiers greeted their enemies in No Man’s Land, exchanging gifts and snacks, playing games, taking photographs, and even participating in mutual religious services.
In some quarters, the truce lasted several days and even weeks as soldiers on both sides were reluctant to return to fighting – but orders from higher ranks eventually prevailed. “Truce” by Jim Murphy (2009), a book for young adults, is just one of a number of books on the subject. A 2005 French film, “Joyeux Noel”, takes some license with the story, but provides uplifting alternative Christmas-season viewing if you need to take a break from the glut of occasionally sappy Hallmark channel movies.
Jump ahead forty one years to a more lasting truce : Christmas 1945 saw the reinstatement of some traditions of the season that had been suspended for four years:
In New York City, Santa Clause again kicked off the holiday season with his arrival at the Macy’s Day Thanksgiving Parade. In Rockefeller Center, the Christmas tree “was again America’s tree…standing more than five and a half stories tall [glowing] with a brilliance that seemed to compensate for the blackouts of the wartime Christmases”. New York’s Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia offered these words in his last ever Christmas time radio address:
“It’s a happier Christmas because it is the first peacetime Christmas since 1940. The war is over, but we must continue to pray for peace”.
CHRISTMAS 2020:
There's no doubt that this Christmas will be, well, "different" for most of us. It won't be as raucous as some others we've known, but neither will it (at least I hope it won't) be as stark as that of the Pilgrims and Puritans of 400 years ago. John Winthrop, the leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, may not have celebrated the season, but to me, the following quote from one of his sermons summarizes the sentiment of Christmas 2020:
“We must delight in each other, make others' conditions our own, rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our community as members of the same body.”
With that, I'm hoping that my column next December will be about the return to Christmas celebrations after the end of the pandemic.
* * * * *
* Picture credit: The picture in the header - "Solstice Gathering" - was taken from a note card designed by artist Michael Wolski of Becket, Massachusetts. His website, with more examples of his artwork, is at www.michaelwolski.com
