Christmas Every Day

By now every high school and college teacher has read one of the collections of student bloopers that circulate relentlessly on the Internet. “Francis Drake,” we are told, “circumcised the world with a hundred-foot clipper.” “Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife”. “Socrates died from an overdose of wedlock”, etc. It behooves me, therefore, to salute some of my University of Manitoba students who in their essays and exams contributed these gems.

• Who defeated the Spartans at Thermopylae? “The Persian emperor Xerox”.

• Aristotle was one of the “Immorals of Science”.

• Emperor Charles V “abolished Luther at the Doctrine of Worms”.

• Clovis, king of the Franks was a “barbaric worrier”.

• Define “buboes”: “The black plaque that hid Europe.”

• Define hedonism: “Geek pleasure”.

• One of Luther’s doctrines? “The just shall live by fate.”

• One of the contributions of medieval philosophy? “Ockham’s Raisin”.

• At what point did the French Revolution become less radical? “The 1794 Thermodynamic Reaction”.

• Who were the Flagellants? “The people who wiped themselves”.

Season’s greetings from Adolf Hitler. The first card is from 1939, the first Christmas of the Second World War; the other is from 1942 when the fate of the doomed German troops at Stalingrad was being decided.

Advent does not begin with a fixed date because the period can begin anywhere from November 27 to December 3. Consequently there is no one common custom to kick off the season. In Honduras there is a masked dancer called the Warini or Christmas Herald who goes door to door accompanied by singers and drummers to announce the season. And in Twente in Holland long wooden horns, carved out of saplings are sounded over a well to produce a deep foghorn like tone. In Oldenzaal trumpeters blow in Advent from the four corners of a medieval tower. Moravian churches will make the occasion by the erection of their famous multi-pointed stars.

Almost everywhere there is the compulsion to clean the house.  In fifteenth century Florence a religious revival led by the monk Savonarola resulted in the famous “Bonfire of the Vanities”, a public burning of luxuries that were deemed to keep the minds of believers off of God and salvation. A similar spectacle occurs every year at the beginning of the Christmas season in Guatemala. On December 7 (also the day to celebrate the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary) Guatemalans haul out of their homes the things they think they don’t need anymore and set them on fire in a ceremony called “The Burning of the Evil” — with their homes thus purged of unnecessary encumbrances their souls can prepare for the coming of Christmas. In Trinidad and Tobago the house must be given a thorough cleaning and decorated; a portion of the Christmas budget always goes to buying something new for the house at this time of year. New curtains are hung, windows are washed, furniture is recovered, long-delayed repairs are made, a new piece of linoleum is laid and the paint brush is busy. In northern Europe Advent is also a time to tend to the graves of the family dead as well as sprucing up the house. In Moravian settlements in Labrador a common expression or question heard in December is “Is you ready yet?” This means basically, “Do you have your house thoroughly cleaned?”

For such a momentous occasion as the birth of the baby-god Jesus, one might think that the first Christians would be quick to celebrate the event. Christmas is the second-highest festival on the Christian calendar and the most widely-celebrated holy day in history, but the fact is that it was an after-thought to the early church. The first generations of believers concentrated on the death and resurrection of Jesus and lived in profound expectation of his imminent return. What need was there to make a fuss over his humble origins when he would soon return again in glory to judge the living and the dead and to usher in a new heaven and a new earth?

As the years went by, and Christ seemed to be tarrying, the circumstances of his birth attracted more interest. Pagan critics of the new religion, such as Celsus, made mock of the claims of a virgin birth and asserted that Jesus was the illegitimate product of an adulterous union. Certain 2^nd-century Christians, influenced by Greek Gnosticism, were skeptical of the idea of a god dwelling in human flesh – this was a repellent notion to the philosophers; the very purpose of the soul was not to become trapped in a body but to escape its earthly prison of meat and bone. These criticisms prompted the second-century Church to emphasize the truth of the nativity stories told in the gospels of Matthew and Luke and even to add to them in pious fictions such as The Protoevangelium of James which invented details about the youth of Mary and introduced the character of Salome, a midwife, to the events in Bethlehem.

By the year 200 Christian writers had begun to speculate about when the birth of Jesus had taken place and numerous dates were bandied about. This does not mean that Christians were seeking to know the date of the birth of Jesus in order to celebrate it. The theologian Origen declared that only pagan rulers had their birthdays trumpeted and, indeed, King Herod Antipas had given birthdays a bad name in the Christian community when he had used the occasion of his to order the execution of John the Baptist. Despite such a view, believers were growing fonder of recounting the story of the birth of Jesus. In Rome, where Christians gathered to worship in the funeral caves outside the city, they decorated a wall with a picture of the Nativity scene. The catacomb of St Priscilla bears an image of three Magi advancing toward the seated Virgin and child while a man standing beside her (probably meant to represent an Old Testament prophet) points to the guiding star in the heavens. Second and third-century pseudo-gospels such as The Revelation of the Magi were particularly interested in the appearance of the wise men who, guided by this miraculous star, became the first Gentiles to worship the Christ Child.

With the accession of the emperor Constantine in 312, Christianity became a legal religion, free to marks its holy days publicly, and the celebration of the Nativity soon was celebrated joyfully. During the 300s and 400s Christmas grew in importance on the church calendar as music, drama and liturgy were added in spectacular fashion. And then it occurred to someone – we know not who or where – that Christmas deserved a period of preparation such as Easter had with Lent. By the 500s there seems to have been a formally recognized fast beginning in mid-November on St Martin’s Day, a custom starting first in the Frankish church and then spreading in the West; other restrictions include a ban on matrimony, feasting  and games. In Rome itself the Advent period, as it was now known, named for the Latin “coming”,  was shorter, less penitential and more joyful and by the high Middle Ages the contrary tendencies had merged – the season had become shortened to a four-week fast with Lenten-type behaviour required.  These restrictions, however, were abolished in the twentieth century and the season is now one of reflection and spiritual preparation.

For liturgical churches of the West it marks the beginning of the Christian year. It is reckoned as a period of four Sundays beginning with the one closest to St Andrew’s Day on November 30. The faithful are to use this time to prepare themselves worthily to celebrate the anniversary of the Lord’s coming into the world as the incarnate God of love and also to make themselves ready for His final coming as judge, at death and at the end of the world. In church services, there are glorious hymns and lessons that point us to the prophecies and promises of coming redemption and the importance of heeding the injunction “prepare ye the way of the Lord.” 

Jon Ted Wynne reads. Click on the link.

In Flanders Fields – Small

In these days when journalism is in so much disrepute and disrespect, it is useful to remember an earlier time when journalists might behave well. From Chambers’ Book of Days:

A remarkable instance was afforded, a few years ago, of the power of an English newspaper, and its appreciation by the commercial men of Europe. It is known to most readers at the present day, that the proprietors and editors of the daily papers make strenuous exertions to obtain the earliest possible information of events likely to interest the public, and take pride in insuring for this information all available accuracy and fulness; but it is not equally well known how large is the cost incurred by so doing. None but wealthy proprietors could venture so much, for an object, whose importance and interest may be limited to a single day’s issue of the paper.

In 1841, Mr. O’Reilly, the Times correspondent at Paris, received secret information of an enormous fraud that was said to be in course of perpetration on the continent. There were fourteen persons—English, French, and Italian—concerned, headed by a French baron, who possessed great talent, great knowledge of the continental world, and a most polished exterior. His plan was one by which European bankers would have been robbed of at least a million sterling; the conspirators having reaped about £10,000, when they were discovered. The grand coup was to have been this—to prepare a number of forged letters of credit, to present them simultaneously at the houses of all the chief bankers in Europe, and to divide the plunder at once. How Mr. O’Reilly obtained his information, is one of the secrets of newspaper management; but as he knew that the chief conspirator was a man who would not scruple to send a pistol-shot into any one who frustrated him, he wisely determined to date his letter to the Times from Brussels instead of Paris, to give a false scent. This precaution, it is believed, saved his life. The letter appeared in the Times on 26^th May. It produced a profound sensation, for it revealed to the commercial world a conspiracy of startling magnitude.

One of the parties implicated, a partner in an English house at Florence, applied to the Times for the name of its informant; but the proprietors resolved to bear all the consequences. Hence the famous action, Bogle v. Lawson, brought against the printer of the Times for libel, the proprietors, of course, being the parties who bore the brunt of the matter. As the article appeared on 26^th May, and as the trial did not come on till 16^thAugust, there was ample time to collect evidence. The Times made immense exertions, and spent a large sum of money, in unravelling the conspiracy throughout. The verdict was virtually an acquittal, but under such circumstances that each party had to pay his own costs.

The signal service thus rendered to the commercial world, the undaunted manner in which the Times had carried through the whole matter from beginning to end, and the liberal way in which many thousands of pounds had been spent in so doing, attracted much public attention. A meeting was called, and a subscription commenced, to defray the cost of the trial, as a testimonial to the proprietors. This money was nobly declined in a few dignified and grateful words; and then the committee determined to perpetuate the memory of the transaction in another way. They had in their hands £2700, which had been subscribed by 38 public companies, 64 members of the city corporation, 58 London bankers, 120 London merchants and manufacturers, 116 county bankers and merchants, and 21 foreign bankers and merchants. In November, the committee made public their mode of appropriating this sum: namely, £1000 for a ‘Times Scholarship’ at Oxford, for boys in Christ’s Hospital; £1000 for a similar scholarship at Cambridge, for boys of the city of London School; and the remainder of the money for four tablets, to bear suitable inscriptions—one to be put up at the Royal Exchange, one at Christ’s Hospital, one at the City of London School, and one at the Times printing-office.

1972 Death of Ezra Pound

We’re going to go all-Canada in our post today.

1535 – French explorer Jacques Cartier visits the Iroquois town of Hochelaga, a town of 1500 people living in 50 longhouses; “It was fine land with large fields covered with the corn of that country, which resembles Brazil millet, and is about as large or larger than a pea… They live on this as we do on wheat. And in the middle of these fields is situated and stands the village of Hochelaga, near and adjacent to a mountain, the slopes of which are fertile and are cultivated, and from the top of which one can see a long distance. We named this mountain Mount Royal. The village is circular and is completely enclosed by a wooden palisade in three tiers like a pyramid.” He visits the rapids at the head of navigation and calls them La Chine (China). Hochelaga will later become the French settlement of Ville Marie and then Montreal.

1906 – Canadian Tommy Burns (born Noah Brusso in Hanover, Ontario)  KOs Jim Burns in 15 rounds for the World heavyweight boxing championship. Burns will lose the to the remarkable black American boxer Jack Johnson.

1926 – One of the quirky joys of Canadian football rules is the “rouge” or the single point gained when a punter kicks the ball through the end zone or an opposing player fields the ball in the end zone and fails to run it out. Bert Gibb of the Hamilton Tigers sets a record by kicking 9 singles in a football game against Montreal. 

1944 –  World War II – First Canadian Army begins the drive to clear the Scheldt estuary of Germany army resistance  and open the port of Antwerp to shipping; bloody fighting ends with the Canadians victorious on November 8.