1016 - Merry Christm.... read this first

The Post-Dispatch ran an editorial back in 2004. They reran it a few days ago. It's about the history of Christmas and the Christmas tree. But before we get to the editorial, here's a few words from dictionary.com.

Cultural Dictionary

Christmas

A festival commemorating the birth of Jesus, traditionally celebrated on December 25 by most Western Christian churches. Although dating to probably as early as a.d. 200, the feast of Christmas did not become widespread until the Middle Ages. Today, Christmas is largely secularized and dominated by gifts, decorated trees, and a jolly Santa Claus.

So now with that bit of knowledge, here's the editorial. I copied it here so that if it becomes inaccessible later it won't disappear from the blog. But if you want to see all the politicized comments, you can go to THIS LINK to read everything. (I waited until after Christmas to post this. I didn't want to be scrooge. Until now)


There’s a heavy load of irony under America’s Christmas tree this year. In this season of peace on Earth and good will toward men, some Americans are wasting a lot of breath arguing about Christmas itself.

On one side of the room are conservative Christians, perhaps newly emboldened by last month’s election results, who are taking a stand against what they see as society’s efforts to “take Christ out of Christmas.”Christian talk radio and Web sites are buzzing with such talk. Conservative columnists and commentators lash out against the dark forces of liberalism who want to get rid of Christmas by turning it into generic “holidays” or “winter festivals.”

On the other side of the room are the ever-vigilant defenders of inclusiveness, who would not see anyone’s feelings be bruised. “Happy Holidays,’’ they say, lest anyone be offended by religious implications of Christmas’ first syllable.

Some mayors and school officials, in panicky fear of lawsuits, impose restrictions on Christmas carols and civic creches. “Silent Night,’’ bad. “Jingle Bell Rock,’’ good. Baby-in-manger with donkey, bad. Baby-in-manger with reindeer, good.

Examples from both sides pop up all around the country. The Wichita Eagle ran a correction, apologizing for referring to the city “Christmas tree” rather than the city “community tree.” The mayor then apologized for unwarranted political correctness.

In Maplewood, N.J., the school district banned carols that mentioned the “C” word, even “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, “ who swung into action “one foggy C—–mas Eve.” In Chicago, one school choir serenaded parents with the traditional favorite, “We Wish You a Swingin’ Holiday.”

And on Fox News, commentator Bill O’Reilly, who never met an issue he couldn’t exaggerate, proclaimed that when store clerks eschew “Merry Christmas” for “Happy Holidays, “ it means that gay marriage, partial-birth abortion and legalized drugs are just around the corner.
We’re inclined to believe that both sides should just calm down. The majority of Americans, blue-state and red-state, Christian and non-Christian, have enough good sense to respect each other’s beliefs — although those beliefs haven’t always been what you might think.

Christmas was illegal for America’s first Christians. Historian Stephen Nissenbaum, in “The Battle for Christmas, “ writes that “the holiday was systematically suppressed by Puritans during the colonial period and largely ignored by their descendants. It was actually illegal to celebrate Christmas in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681. (The fine was five shillings.)”

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Christmas was celebrated much as Mardi Gras is celebrated today: Young people used it as an excuse to get stinking drunk. “The Feast of Christ’s Nativity is spent in Reveling, Dicing, Carding, Masking and in all Licentious Liberty,’’ thundered the Rev. Cotton Mather of Boston in 1712, “by Mad Mirth, by long Eating, by hard Drinking, by lewd Gaming, by rude Reveling.”

The early church had set up this problem by scheduling the feast of the Nativity on Dec. 25 to counter the pagan solar feast of Natalis Invicti. In agrarian societies of northern Europe, Dec. 25 happened to coincide with long nights and the end of the harvest. There was lots of wine around and plenty of time to drink it.

Among the pious, a few people celebrated the Nativity as a quiet religious observance. But Christmas per se had a bad name. In England, the “mummers” originated Christmas carols by switching clothes between men and women, staggering from house to house and singing “in the midst of Rioting, Chambering (fornicating) and Wantonness, “ as the Rev. Henry Bourne put it. And Mr. O’Reilly thinks things are bad today.

It took commerce and poetry to change this. By the early 19th century, merchants in Philadelphia seized upon the idea of exchanging Christmas presents rather than passing out “wassails” — spiced ale or liquor and accompanying salutations — to drunken revelers. This brought Christmas indoors and took it out of the hands of the loutish lower classes.

In 1822, Clement Clarke Moore wrote his immortal “The Night Before Christmas, “ which quickly began to domesticate the holiday. The German tradition of the Christmas tree was imported as part of the new child-centric philosophy that grew up along with the Industrial Revolution. By the mid-19th century, Charles Dickens had written “A Christmas Carol” as part of his crusade to improve conditions for the poor and working classes.

That change happened more slowly in America — and more slowly in slave states than free ones. Missouri was one of the last states to make Christmas a secular holiday, wanting to squeeze as much labor as possible out of the poor.

By the end of the 1800s, Christmas had been established as a secular holiday, one complete with the exchange of gifts and its own mythology: St. Nicholas, trees, reindeer and “God bless us every one.” Only then, after Christmas had been tamed, did churches feel safe to expand the religious observances.

In some ways, then, Christ was an late addition to Christmas — not that he would have wanted much part of earlier celebrations. Dec. 25 was a pagan holiday before it was a Christian feast day, and Christmas was a wine-soaked secular and commercial holiday before it was a major religious holiday. Not until 1884 was Christmas decreed as a Holy Day of Obligation (obligatory Mass attendance) by Catholic bishops in the United States.

It is a day that can simultaneously bring out the best and worst instincts in all who celebrate it: grasping greed and profound acts of charity. Christmas is what we make of it.

It can be a battleground in the culture war. It can be a chance for religious conservatives to blast the American Civil Liberties Union (which, by the way, defends students’ right to pass out Christmas cards with religious symbols). It can be a chance for the overly earnest to mock the beliefs and practices of others.

Or it can be, in fact, a chance to practice a little kindness and a little tolerance, a chance to bring great tidings of comfort and joy, a little peace on Earth, good will to men. Dickens called it “keeping Christmas.”