Christmas Every Day

1497 

Vasco da Gama rounds the Cape of Good Hope

The disintegration of the Mongol Empire and the conquest of Constantinople and the Middle East by the Turks meant that European trade with Asia was in the hands of Muslim and Italian middle-men, making commerce both more expensive and less reliable. A number of states, particularly on the Atlantic coast, sought a direct sea-borne route to Asia; the Spanish, taking the advice of Christopher Columbus, tried sailing west, while the Portuguese sought a long-rumoured passage around Africa. Columbus, of course, bumped into the Americas (which he mistook for Asia) but expedition after expedition from Lisbon kept pushing farther and father down Africa’s inhospitable shoreline.

In 1486 Bartolomeu Diaz reached the southern tip of Africa and in 1497 a three-ship flotilla led by Vasco da Gama finally rounded the Cape to begin the long voyage north and on to India. His trip shocked the Arab world which had long had the monopoly of trade and intruded European sea-power into Asia. Soon the technologically-advanced ships of other western countries ventured into those waters and joined the Portuguese and Spanish in establishing trading empires that persisted until the 20th century.

1863 Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address

The second-greatest short speech in history.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

 

1885

Death of a Canadian rebel

Louis David Riel (1844-1885) was born into a family of Métis businessmen in the Red River colony of Rupert’s Land, what is now Winnipeg, Manitoba. Showing early promise he was given a French-language education in hopes that he might be the first Catholic priest from his community but, though intelligent, he dropped out of his studies and worked in the United States before returning to his home in 1868.

Rupert’s Land was at that moment under the control of the Hudson’s Bay Company but it was soon to be transferred to the new nation of Canada. A flood of Ontario Protestant settlers had created tensions with the native, Métis and French-Canadian population and a nationalist sentiment arose. This was put to the test when a party from Canada attempted to make a survey of Red River land, threatening the locals who had no written title and whose traditional seigneurial river-lot land division would not easily fit the Canadian model. Riel led an armed group to oppose the Canadian interlopers and to assert that Métis concerns would have to be taken into account. When a pro-Canadian party armed in resistance the Métis imprisoned them and set up a Provisional Government to negotiate with Ottawa. While negotiations were going on in 1871 Riel foolishly ordered the execution of an obstinate Canadian, Thomas Scott, a deed that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

Negotiations resulted in the creation of a new province of Manitoba, and settlement of land claims but a military expedition from Ontario forced Riel to flee to the United States to avoid arrest. Though elected to the Canadian Parliament in subsequent years he was never able to take his seat. He obtained a pardon for his actions but at the price of a 5-year exile. During his time in the United States Riel’s mental condition weakened; today he might be diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia characterized by a religious mania and delusions of grandeur. He was institutionalized for two years; on his release he headed to the American West, settling in Montana and becoming an American citizen.

When Métis and native grievances in Saskatchewan grew intolerable in the 1880s, a delegation was sent to Riel to ask him to return to Canada and resume a leadership role. He did so but much of the white support he had initially won dissolved when his religious obsessions turned into megalomania and he began favouring armed resistance to the Canadian government. Open warfare broke out in 1885 with a number of native tribes and a faction of the Métis took up arms, seized hostages and clashed with local troops. Though the rebels achieved some fleeting victories a Canadian force under General Middleton crushed the rising at the Battle of Batoche in May.

Riel was put on trial for treason in Regina and was found guilty with a jury recommending mercy, given Riel’s shaky mental state. John A. Macdonald ordered the execution to go through. “Riel shall hang,” he proclaimed, “though every dog in Quebec bark in his favour.” He was dispatched on  this date in 1885.

1908

Death of the Dragon Lady

Cixi (1835-1908) was the Dowager Empress of China during that empire’s last dynasty, the Qing (or Manchu). She effectively ruled that country for 47 years attempting to hold back the tides of change and to limit the power of foreigners.

A concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor, she gave birth to the royal heir and upon the death of her husband in 1861 she ruled as a regent for her son. When he died in 1875, she placed her nephew on the throne and ruled through him. This was all contrary to dynastic tradition but she was a ruthless infighter and shrewd politician who outmaneuvered ministers and royal family members to keep her grip on power.

In the 19th century China was a shaky and tottering empire, forced by European and American governments to accept the opium trade and foreign domination of much of the Chinese economy. Cixi at first approved of, and then undermined, attempts to modernize China. By the 1890s the growing threat from a modernized Japan compelled many officials and the emperor to press for drastic reform, the Hundred Days’ Movement, to which Cixi responded by launching a coup, ending the reforms and exiling the emperor.

In 1900 the Boxer Rebellion broke out, an anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising, that saw the massacre of thousands of foreigners, especially missionaries, and Chinese converts. The rebel armies moved on to Beijing where they laid siege to the diplomatic compound, drawing the world’s attention to the matter. Cixi, at first, secretly, and then openly, sided with the Boxers, which proved a mistake as foreign military forces invaded China and crushed the rebellion, levying heavy penalties on her government. She lived long enough to see her choice, Prince Puyi, ascend the throne but shortly after her death, a revolution overthrew the Qing and set up a Chinese Republic.

 

1989

The Fall of the Berlin Wall

Erected in 1961 as a way of keeping citizens of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from fleeing Communist rule by entering West Berlin, the “anti-fascist protective rampart” was a symbol of the repression needed to maintain Marxist-Leninist societies. Though originally billed as a barrier to Western aggression, it was obvious to all that it had been built to keep young, educated East Germans in. As a government document explained:

Both from the moral standpoint as well as in terms of the interests of the whole German nation, leaving the GDR is an act of political and moral backwardness and depravity.

Those who let themselves be recruited objectively serve West German Reaction and militarism, whether they know it or not. Is it not despicable when for the sake of a few alluring job offers or other false promises about a “guaranteed future” one leaves a country in which the seed for a new and more beautiful life is sprouting, and is already showing the first fruits, for the place that favours a new war and destruction?

Is it not an act of political depravity when citizens, whether young people, workers, or members of the intelligentsia, leave and betray what our people have created through common labour in our republic to offer themselves to the American or British secret services or work for the West German factory owners, Junkers, or militarists? Does not leaving the land of progress for the morass of an historically outdated social order demonstrate political backwardness and blindness? …

[W]orkers throughout Germany will demand punishment for those who today leave the German Democratic Republic, the strong bastion of the fight for peace, to serve the deadly enemy of the German people, the imperialists and militarists.

Punishment was deadly at times. Though 5,000 East Germans managed to escape, perhaps as many as 200 were killed in the attempt with thousands more caught and arrested.

In 1987 Ronald Reagan challenged the legitimacy of such a barrier in his famous speech on the 750th anniversary of Berlin:

We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause of freedom and peace. General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization, come here to this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this Wall!

The disintegration of the Eastern bloc was becoming clear in 1989. Hungary opened its borders, allowing East Germans to defect through that country. The will of the GDR government to use deadly force evaporated and guards began to allow thousands through. This event led directly to the collapse of the GDR and German reunification.

 

1965

Roger Allen Laporte, a 22-year-old former seminarian, protesting against American participation in the war in Vietnam, sets himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in New York.  Inspired by the examples of Vietnamese Buddhist monks, American pacifist Alice Herz, and the Quaker Norman Morrison who had committed self-immolation earlier, LaPorte drenched himself with gasoline, and set himself alight, dying the next day from his burns. When asked why he had done this, La Porte replied, “I’m a Catholic Worker. I’m against war, all wars. I did this as a religious action.” The Catholic Worker movement, founded by Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin in the 1930s, stresses charity, non-violence and a counter-cultural Christianity.

Laporte’s suicide by fire would not be last such death in protest against American participation in the Vietnamese war. Two others would follow by 1970.

1342

Julian of Norwich, English mystic is born. The author of Revelations of Divine Love, the first published book in English written by a woman, was a religious recluse whose true name is still unknown. In the 1370s she began to experience visions whose meanings she explored in a series of books. Her view of God focused primarily on His loving nature: “God loved us before he made us; and his love has never diminished and never shall.” Recent scholarship (Denys Turner’s Julian of Norwich, Theologian) takes her seriously as a thinker.

1431

The birth of Vlad III, aka Vlad the Impaler, aka Vlad Drakul, aka Dracula, prince of Wallachia. Though known in folklore for his extreme cruelty and for his inspiration for Bram Stoker’s literary villain, Vlad is renowned in the Balkans for his defence of Christian lands against Turkish Islamic expansion. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Ottoman emperor Mehmet the Conqueror attempted to complete the Muslim conquest of southeastern Europe. Vlad refused to acknowledge Turkish overlordship or pay the jizya tax imposed on Christian subjects. His armies inflicted a number of defeats on the Turks before he died in battle in 1476.

1674

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit/Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal tast/ Brought Death into the World, and all our woe,/With loss of Eden, till one greater Man/Restore us, and regain the blissful Seat, Sing Heav’nly Muse . . .

John Milton, English writer, dies. Though his reputation as a poet had been in the making before the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642, his work during the Puritan Commonwealth was of a polemical nature. He argued for the legitimacy of Christian divorce, for free speech (Areopagitica) and for the right of a people to overthrow a tyrannical ruler (On the Tenure of Kings and Magistrates). His blindness, which became total in 1654 did not prevent him from continuing his political writings or his poetry (see his sonnet “On My Blindness”). The restoration of the monarchy forced him into hiding for a time but he managed to live peacefully until his death. In 1667 he published Paradise Lost, the epic poem on the Fall of mankind. Milton’s standing as a literary figure has always been controversial. C.S. Lewis was a fan; T.S. Eliot was not. Curious readers unwilling to attempt an ascent on the summit of Paradise Lost might try his Christmas poem “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity”: “See how from far upon the Eastern road/ The Star-led Wizards haste with odours sweet”.

1605 The Gunpowder Plot exposed.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November:
Gunpowder, treason and plot!
I can think of no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

The open practice of Roman Catholicism had been banned since 1559 but many English families remained loyal to the Catholic church. They had hoped that the accession of King James to the throne in 1603 would lead to religious toleration. James was, after all, the son of Mary Queen of Scots the Catholic martyr, and a man known to be in favour of peace. But both extreme Protestants, the Puritans, and Catholics were to be disappointed by the king’s religious policies. It was the opinion of William Cecil, the advisor to James, that “the state would never be in safety, where there was toleration of two religions. For there is no enmity so great as that of religion, and they that differ in the service of God can never agree in service of their country”.

A group of disappointed Catholics decided that violence was the answer. They planned to blow up the opening of the 1605 Parliament and, at a stroke, wipe out the leadership of Protestant England. The king, his sons, the English aristocracy, and all of the bishops of the Anglican Church were expected to die in the explosion. Princess Elizabeth (age 9) would be abducted and made a figure-head queen while a general uprising of Catholics would seize the nation’s strong points. Barrels of gunpowder had been placed under the Houses of Parliament but one of the conspirators foolishly warned a Catholic nobleman to stay away from the opening and he alerted the authorities. Explosives expect Guy Fawkes was arrested at the site and his fellow conspirators were rounded up; they were all tried and gruesomely executed.

November 5 became known as Guy Fawkes Day and the date became a national, patriotic, anti-Catholic holiday for centuries.

361 The Christian emperor Constantius II dies, leaving the throne of the Roman Empire to his cousin Julian, a born-again pagan. Julian, known to history as the Apostate, will die in battle less than two years later, the last ruler of the Constantinian dynasty. The Roman empire will thereafter always be ruled by a Christian.

1534 Henry VIII establishes the Church of England. Needing to abandon the jurisdiction of the pope to gain legitimacy for his divorce to Katherine of Aragon and marriage to Anne Boleyn, Henry has his Parliament pass the Act of Supremacy, naming the king “the only supreme head on Earth of the Church of England”.

1793 The execution of Olympe de Gouges. Born Marie Gouze in 1748 Olympe lived a life of scandal and radicalism. She advocated sexual freedom, easy divorce, an end to slavery, and political rights for women. An early supporter of the French Revolution, she was arrested by the Jacobin faction who were beginning their Reign of Terror. On this date she was executed by the Paris guillotine.

1917 The Balfour Declaration. A letter from Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Walter Rothschild and the Zionist Federation declares British support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for Jewish people” providing “that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities”.

1917 The Military Revolutionary Committee of the Petrograd Soviet (under control of V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks) meets to lay the groundwork for a rebellion against the democratic government of Russia.

1947 The Flight of the Spruce Goose. The largest fixed-wing aircraft ever built takes its first, and only, flight with designer Howard Hughes at the controls. Despite the nickname the H-4 seaplane was built from fir.

1963 The assassination of the Diem brothers. An American-backed coup by elements of the South Vietnamese Army deposes President Ngo Dinh Diem, murdering him and his brother Ngo Dihn Nhu.