Christmas Every Day

1809

The curious case of a cask of wine

A case was tried at the end of December 1809, between the crown and Mr. Constable, lord of the manor of Holdernesse, in Yorkshire. It was a struggle who should obtain a cask of wine, thrown ashore on the coast of that particular manor. The lord’s bailiff, and some custom-house officers, hearing of the circumstance, hastened to the spot, striving which should get there first. The officers laid hold of one end of the cask, saying: ‘This belongs to the king.’ The bailiff laid hold of the other end, and claimed it for the lord of the manor. An argumentative dispute arose. The officers declared that it was smuggled, ‘not having paid the port duty.’ The bailiff retorted that he believed the wine to be Madeira, not port. The officers, smiling, said that they meant port of entry, not port wine—a fact that possibly the bailiff knew already, but chose to ignore. The bailiff replied: ‘It has been in no port, it has come by itself on the beach.’ The officers resolved to go for further instructions to the custom-house. But here arose a dilemma: what to do with the cask of wine in the interim  As the bailiff could not very well drink the wine while they were gone, they proposed to place it in a small hut hard by. They did so; but during their absence, the bailiff removed it to the cellar of the lord of the manor. The officers, when they returned, said: ‘ Oh, ho! now we have you; the wine is the king’s now, under any supposition; for it has been removed without a permit.’ To which the bailiff responded: ‘If I had not removed the wine without a permit, the sea would have done so the next tide.’ The attorney-general afterwards filed an information against the lord of the manor; and the case came on at York—on the question whether the bailiff was right in removing the wine without a custom-house “permit”.

The arguments pro and con were very lengthy and very learned; for although the cask of wine could not possibly be worth so much as the costs of the case, each party attached importance to the decision as a precedent. The decision of the court at York was a special verdict, which transferred the case to the court of Exchequer. The judgment finally announced was in favour of the lord of the manor — on the grounds that no permit is required for the removal of wine unless it has paid duty; that wine to be liable to duty, must be imported; that wine cannot be imported by ‘itself, but requires the agency of some one else to do so; and that therefore wine wrecked, having come on shore by itself, or without human volition or intention, was not ‘imported,’ and was not subject to duty, and did not require a permit for its removal.

The trial virtually admitted the right of the lord of the manor to the wine, as having been thrown ashore on his estate; the only question was whether he had forfeited it by the act of his servant in removing it from the spot without a permit from the custom-house officers; and the decision of the court was in his favour on this point. But it proved to be by far the most costly cask of wine he ever possessed; for by a strange arrangement in these Exchequer matters, even though the verdict be with the defendant, he does not get his costs.

1066 Granada Massacre

The occupation of Spain by Muslims during the Middle Ages is said to have produced a brilliant civilization marked by religious tolerance. Though we rightly celebrate the art, architecture and literature of Moorish Andalusia, the story of toleration has definitely been overplayed. The fact is that Jews and Christians under Islamic rule were always considered inferiors and subject to humiliating social and legal disabilities. They were protected, in the public mind, by a pact that reflected this enforced inferiority and when an individual “dhimmi”, or a community of Jews or Christians, seemed to have too much influence there could often be a backlash.

On this date in 1066 mobs of Muslims in Granada, in southern Spain, rose up against their ruler’s Jewish adviser Joseph ibn Naghrela whom they accused of controlling and plotting against their king. They stormed the palace, crucified Joseph on the city’s main gate, and massacred much of the city’s Jewish population. This poem is believed to have inspired the violence and makes clear the resentment felt when one of the inferior races achieves prominence:

Do not consider it a breach of faith to kill them,

the breach of faith would be to let them carry on.

They have violated our covenant with them,

so how can you be held guilty against the violators?

How can they have any pact when we are obscure and they are prominent?

Now we are humble, beside them, as if we were wrong and they were right.

1834

The death of Thomas Malthus

Thomas Malthus (1766-1834) was an English clergyman and political scientist whose theories still generate controversy today. The following is a 19th-century reflection on his life:

This celebrated writer, whose theory on population has been the subject of so much unmerited abuse, was the son of a gentleman of independent fortune, who possessed a small estate in the county of Surrey. Young Malthus received his early education mainly from a private tutor, and subsequently entered Jesus’ College, Cambridge, where he studied for the church, and obtained a fellow-ship in 1797. For a time, he held the incumbency of a small parish in Surrey near his native place.

It was not in the church, however, that Mr. Malthus was to become famous. Through life, the bent of his genius seems to have led him in the direction of political economy and statistics; and in pursuit of information on this subject, he made extensive journeys and inquiries through various countries of Europe. The first edition of the work, which has conferred on him such notoriety, appeared in 1798, under the title of An Essay on the Principle of Population, as it affects the Future Improvement of Society, with Remarks on the Speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other Writers. In subsequent issues, the title of the work was changed to its present form: An Essay on the Principle of Population; or a View of its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness, with an Inquiry into our Prospects respecting the Future Removal or Mitigation of the Evils which it occasions.

The leading principle in this work is, that population, when unchecked, doubles itself at the end of every period of twenty-five years, and thus increases, in a geometrical progression, or the ratio of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32; whilst the means of subsistence increases only, in an arithmetical progression, or the ratio of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. The author discusses the question of the various restrictions, physical and moral, which tend to keep population from increasing, and thus prevent it outstripping the means of subsistence in the race of life. A misapprehension of the writer’s views, combined with his apparent tendency to pessimism in the regarding of misery and suffering as the normal condition of humanity, has contributed, notwithstanding the philosophical soundness of many of his theories, to invest the name of Malthus with much opprobrium.

When the common or vulgar impression regarding Mr. Malthus’s celebrated essay is considered, it is surprising to find that the man was one of the most humane and amiable of mortals. His biographer tells us, it would be difficult to overestimate the beauty of his private life and character. His life was:

‘a perpetual flow of enlightened benevolence, contentment, and peace;’ ‘his temper mild and placid, his allowances for others large and considerate, his desires moderate, and his command over his own passions complete.’ ‘No unkind or uncharitable expression respecting any one, either present or absent, ever fell from his lips All the members of his family loved and honoured him; his servants lived with him till their marriage or settlement in life; and the humble and poor within his influence always found him disposed, not only to assist and improve them, but to treat them with kindness and respect’ ‘To his intimate friends, his loss can rarely, if ever, be supplied; there was in him a union of truth, judgment, and warmth of heart, which at once invited confidence, and set at nought all fear of being ridiculed or betrayed. You were always sure of his sympathy; and wherever the case allowed it, his assistance was as prompt and effective as his advice was sound and good.’

Shortly after his marriage in 1805 to Miss Eckersall, Mr. Malthus was appointed professor of modern history and political economy at the East India College at Haileybury, and held this office till his death. He expired on 29^th December 1834, at Bath, at the age of sixty-eight, leaving behind him a son and daughter.

1166 The birth of a very bad king

King John was not a good man / —He had his little ways. / And sometimes no one spoke to him / For days and days and days. So wrote A.A. Milne about a monarch so universally despised that not a single English ruler in the 800 years since his rule has been named John.

John was the youngest son of King Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, rulers of England, Ireland and most of France: what is today called the Angevin Empire. His was a notoriously quarrelsome family with the sons and mother frequently combining to make war against the father or against each other. John was Henry’s favourite and stayed loyal to him longest but, in the end, he too turned on his aging father, siding with his brother Richard who would shortly inherit the throne.

Richard “Lionheart” became king in 1189 and immediately left on the Third Crusade. John had been bribed to keep him loyal in his brother’s absence but, predictably, he began conspiring with Philip of France who had treacherously returned early from the crusade intending to reduce Richard’s holdings in France. When Richard returned in 1194 he forgave his little brother but died in 1199 without clearly naming him as heir. John had to battle the forces of his nephew Arthur of Brittany before securing the English crown and his possessions in France. Unfortunately John was an incompetent and uninspiring leader who soon lost almost all of his continental holdings, earning the nickname “Softsword”.

Back in England John fared no better, quarrelling with the church and his nobility. He imposed his own candidate as the Archbishop of Canterbury, earning an excommunication from the pope, and alienated his political class with arrogance and greed. He was forced to accept the pope’s candidate for archbishop, turn England over as a papal fief, and sign the Magna Carta with his barons, promising in this founding constitutional document, to rule fairly or face a justified rebellion.

John died of dysentery in 1216, unwept, unhonoured and, mostly, unsung. With the exception of the 16th century when John was treated as a Protestant hero for having defied the pope, John’s historical reputation remained abysmally low.

1946

Premiere of It’s A Wonderful Life

“Merry Christmas, you beautiful old savings and loan!  Merry Christmas, you beautiful beat-up old house!” So shouts George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) who has just been saved from suicide by an apprentice angel who convinces him of the value that his life has had by showing what the town of Bedford Falls would have looked like without his influence.

Philip Van Doren Stern wrote a short story called “The Greatest Gift” but could not interest any publisher in his work so he printed up the story as a Christmas card and sent it to 200 friends. Among the recipients was a Hollywood agent who convinced RKO studio that it would make a great movie. And it did. It was shown in theatres under the title It’s a Wonderful Life for the first time on this date in 1946.

This enormously popular Christmas-time movie was not a success when it was first released in 1946 and when its copyright expired in 1974 no one bothered to renew it, allowing television stations to broadcast it without charge. This allowed new generations to discover this finely-crafted Frank Capra film which also featured Donna Reed as Mary Bailey, Lionel Barrymore as nasty Mr. Potter and Ward Bond and Frank Faylen as the original Bert and Ernie. (Republic Entertainment assumed control of the copyright in 1993 and broadcast fees are once again in effect.) Remakes of the film include It Happened One Christmas and Merry Christmas, George Bailey.

1833 First performance of the new Russian national anthem

Composed by Alexei Lvov, lyrics by court poet Vasily Zhukovsky, this song was the anthem of the Russian empire until the overthrow of the Romanovs in 1917.

God save the Tsar!

Strong, sovereign,

Reign for glory, For our glory!

Reign to foes’ fear,

Orthodox Tsar.

God, save the Tsar!

Though the words are less-than-inspired, the music was quoted several times by Tchaikovsky, including in “The 1812 Overture”, Glinka, Gounod, and in the score to the film Dr Zhivago. A number of American institutions haved used the tune. It is the alma mater song of Macalester College, in St Paul, Minnesota, titled “Dear Old Macalester”.  The deathless lyrics of the latter are:

Dear Old Macalester, ever the same 
to those whose hearts are thrilled 
by thy dear name. 
Cherished by all thy sons 
loved by all thy daughters, 
Hail, hail to thee 
our college dear. 

Macalester students have an unofficial song which they are pleased to sing at sports matches against any of the local Christian colleges:

Drink blood!/ Smoke crack!/ Worship Satan!/ Go Mac!

1773 The Boston Tea Party

Relations between some of the British colonies in North America and the home country were getting a tad antsy by 1773. Tax-averse Americans were reluctant to pay for their own defense in the absence of representation in the UK Parliament. They wished, against British wishes, to penetrate the lands held by native tribes and they objected to the freedom of religion and social customs which had been permitted in the colony of Quebec. Violence and thuggery was the response of some of the more high-spirited American lads. Colonial officials were attacked, ships and homes burnt, and in December the focus was on obstructing the importation of tea from Britain.

The mercantilist system of economics employed by most European powers in the 18th century regarded colonies as territories to be exploited for the benefit of the metropolis. For example, colonies were forbidden to trade directly with other nations and all shipping had to be done by domestic carriers. In the case of America, colonists found it cheaper to resort to some goods, such as tea, smuggled in from non-British sources. However, when the British Tea Act worked to lower the price of legally imported tea, the colonists were outraged. Those merchants who had made a tidy living smuggling now found themselves undercut — greed and nativism combined to prompt action.

At a protest meeting chaired by John Adams, a breakaway group of vandals, calling themselves the Sons of Liberty, disguised themselves as Mohawks, boarded tea-laden vessels in Boston Harbour and dumped the valuable cargo into the water. Adams professed himself in awe of this deed:

This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire. The People should never rise, without doing something to be remembered—something notable And striking. This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History.

The British responded with a series of coercive measures that sped the outbreak of the American War of Independence and coffee rose to replace tea as the freedom-lover’s beverage of choice.

1937 Edward VIII’s abdication becomes official

There is a long history of antipathy between English monarchs and his heirs, particularly when the son has had to wait many years for their father to pass away. Henry II had to fight wars with three of his sons, and the mutual hatred between the Hanoverian dynasts George I, II, III and IV is legendary. Queen Victoria had little respect for her son (she said, “I never can, or shall, look at him without a shudder”) and so the future Edward VII led a long life of dissipation as the Prince of Wales (he was 60 years old when his mother died.) And so it was with Prince Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, the heir to George V.

“David”, as he was known to his family, was a very popular Prince of Wales, representing the royal family in world tours and visits to parts of Britain. He was a handsome young man and remained unmarried past an age where earlier princes had been advantageously wed. His association with women of ill-repute and his affairs with married women were notorious and troubling to his parents and the government. In 1931 he met an American woman, Wallis Simpson, whose previous husband was a navy pilot and who was still married to a shipping executive. They began a romance that would shake the British empire. To this day, historians still puzzle over the hold Wallis held over her lover with rumours of domination, sexual secrets of the mystic East, and physical deformity all considered.

In January 936 George V died and David became king, with the regnal title Edward VIII. He was uncomfortable with the restrictions that kingship placed on him, particularly where his love life was concerned. By this time his relationship with the twice-married American was a scandal in the press outside of Britain (where the newspapers still kept royal secrets) and a troubling constitutional question. As head of the Church of England, which did not allow remarriage after divorce, Edward would be jeopardising his relationship with the national church, and in any event, Simpson was still married and her first divorce was on shaky legal ground in the United Kingdom. Would the king be committing both adultery and bigamy?

It is quite likely that Simpson would have been happy to remain the King’s mistress (that sort of relationship was considered quite acceptable to the upper classes) but Edward was determined to make her his wife. His family was opposed, the British government and those of the Dominions, such as Canada, were also against such a union. Edward suggested a compromise — a “morganatic union” where Wallis would not be termed Queen and any children would not be considered in the line of succession but the politicians turned him down. He resolved then to abdicate.

On December 10, 1937 he signed the above document which became official the next day. His brother ascended the throne as George VI and Edward left the country as the Duke of Windsor. Wallis would join him later when her second divorce became final.

This love story had a long tawdry ending. The Windsors were courted by the German Nazis and there was talk of Edward being sympathetic to their cause. During the Second World War he was allowed no post of any importance and was humiliatingly posted as Governor of the Bahamas to get him out of the way. The couple lived a life of impoverished ostentation in a luxurious Paris house, forbidden for years to return to Britain. One historian summed up their end: “Denied dignity, and without anything useful to do, the new Duke of Windsor and his Duchess would be international society’s most notorious parasites for a generation, while they thoroughly bored each other”.

1907 Brown Dog Affair

The use of live animals in medical experiments has been a subject of controversy since the late 19th century, particularly when this vivisection is performed without anaesthesia. In Britain these experiments fell under the Cruelty to Animals Act of 1876 which encouraged anaesthesia and more humane treatment of the specimen. Even so, opposition to animal testing was intense.

In 1903 a pair of female anti-vivisectionists from Sweden infiltrated the lab in London where such experiments were performed for the benefit of medical students. Their detailed notes, particularly of one procedure carried out on a small brown dog, created a scandal when they were published. A libel suit vindicated the accused doctor but feelings continued to run high.

In 1907 a statue of a terrier like the one used in the vivisection was erected in a park in Battersea, bearing the following inscription.

In Memory of the Brown Terrier
Dog Done to Death in the Laboratories
of University College in February
1903 after having endured Vivisection
extending over more than Two Months
and having been handed over from
one Vivisector to Another
Till Death came to his Release.

Also in Memory of the 232 dogs Vivisected
at the same place during the year 1902.
Men and Women of England
how long shall these Things be?

This outraged London’s medical students who felt that they had been vilified. The statue was repeatedly attacked and the disorders continued for years with left-wing groups battling it out on the streets with future doctors. On December 10, 1907, students from University College, King’s College, Guy’s and the West Middlesex Hospitals carried out raucous demonstrations that turned into a riot with 1,000 students facing 400 policemen, backed by trade unionists and suffragettes. (Women radicals tied the campaign against vivisection into their struggle for votes.)

To spare the city future riot the Battersea Council eventually had the statute (pictured above) torn down and melted.

1941 The unfortunate events at Pearl Harbour

By late 1941, Japan had decided that war against the Western powers was the only way to secure the vital raw materials it would need to expand its empire, or what it called “The Greater East-Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”. Its politicians had considered the “Strike North” option which was to invade Siberia, but had decided on a “Strike South” plan that would gobble up southeast Asia and bring it into conflict with the British, Dutch, and Americans who held possessions in that area. Admiral Isoruko Yamamoto realized that for Japan to succeed it would need a year to consolidate its gains. “I shall run wild considerably for the first six months or a year, but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years,” he observed. He reckoned that if the American naval base at Pearl Harbour were destroyed, it would give the Japanese those necessary twelve months; therefore he ordered an attack on Hawaii along with coordinated attacks on the Dutch East Indies, Hong Kong and the Philippines.

At 7:02 a.m., on December 7, American radar operators on Oahu spotted large groups of aircraft in flight toward the island from the north, but, with a squadron of B-17s expected from the United States at the time, they were told to sound no alarm. Thus, the Japanese air assault achieved complete surprise. At 7:55 a.m. On December 7 a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its wings appeared out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. 360 Japanese warplanes descended on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbour while a fleet of midget submarines tried to penetrate the area.

At the cost of only 30 planes and 5 submarines, the Japanese destroyed most of the Pacific surface fleet. Five battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships were sunk or severely damaged, and more than 200 aircraft were destroyed. A total of 2,400 Americans were killed and 1,200 were wounded. Fortunately, the three American aircraft carriers were at sea and missed being sunk; these ships would lead the fightback that began with the June 1942 Battle of Midway. Yamamoto was not given his twelve months and is reported to have said of the missed opportunity, “I fear all we have done today is to awaken a great, sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”