Christmas Every Day

In 1879 Catholicism began spreading in Uganda when the White Fathers, a congregation of priests founded by Cardinal Lavigerie were peacefully received by King Mutesa of Uganda. The priests soon began preparing catechumens for baptism and before long a number of the young pages in the king’s court had become Catholics.

However, on the death of Mutesa, his son Mwanga, a corrupt man who ritually engaged in pedophilic practices with the younger pages, took the throne. When King Mwanga had a visiting Anglican Bishop murdered, his chief page, Joseph Mukasa, a Catholic who went to great length to protect the younger boys from the king’s lust, denounced the king’s actions and was beheaded on November 15, 1885.

The 25 year old Charles Lwanga, a man wholly dedicated to the Christian instruction of the younger boys, became the chief page, and just as forcibly protected them from the kings advances. On the night of the martyrdom of Joseph Mukasa, realizing that their own lives were in danger, Lwanga and some of the other pages went to the White Fathers to receive baptism. Another 100 catechumens were baptized in the week following Joseph Mukasa’s death.

The following May, King Mwanga learned that one of the boys was learning catechism. He was furious and ordered all the pages to be questioned to separate the Christians from the others.  The Christians, 15 in all, between the ages of 13 and 25, stepped forward. The King asked them if they were willing to keep their faith. They answered in unison, “Until death!”

They were bound together and taken on a two day walk to Namugongo where they were to be burned at the stake.  On the way, Matthias Kalemba, one of the eldest boys, exclaimed, “God will rescue me. But you will not see how he does it, because he will take my soul and leave you only my body.”  They executioners cut him to pieces and left him to die alone on the road. When they reached the site where they were to be burned, they were kept tied together for seven days while the executioners prepared the wood for the fire.

On June 3, 1886, the Feast of the Ascension, Charles Lwanga was separated from the others and burned at the stake. The executioners slowly burnt his feet until only the charred remained. Still alive, they promised him that they would let him go if he renounced his faith. He refused saying, “You are burning me, but it is as if you are pouring water over my body.”  He then continued to pray silently as they set him on fire. Just before the flames reached his heart, he looked up and said in a loud voice, “Katonda! – My God!,” and died. His companions, some Catholic, some Anglican, were all burned together the same day all the while praying and singing hymns until they died.

1956 The birth of an animated legend

According to an episode in season 4 of The Simpsons, Homer Jay Simpson was born on this date in 1956. His marriage to Marge Bouvier, his siring of three children and his employment at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant are chronicled in the longest-running animated sitcom in television history.

Here are a few of Homer’s priceless observations:

“To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

“Weaseling out of things is important to learn; it’s what separates us from the animals … except the weasel.”

“I saw this in a movie about a bus that had to SPEED around the city, keeping its SPEED over fifty, and if its SPEED dropped, the bus would explode! I think it was called The Bus That Couldn’t Slow Down.”

“Marge, it takes two to lie. One to lie and one to listen.”

“You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”

“Kids, just because I don’t care doesn’t mean I’m not listening.”

“I wish God were alive to see this.”

“I want to share something with you: The three little sentences that will get you through life. Number 1: Cover for me. Number 2: Oh, good idea, Boss! Number 3: It was like that when I got here.”

“Sleeping bags on the floor, a roaring fire. It’ll be just like the time they kicked me out of the sporting goods store.”

On May 10, 1915, in the tenth month of World War I, the Times of London published the first account of an Allied soldier crucified by the Germans. The article entitled “Torture of a Canadian Officer” said that its Paris correspondent had heard from front-line troops that they had recovered the body of a Canadian captain nailed to a wall by bayonets through his hands, feet, and throat, and riddled with bullets.

Questions were asked in the House of Commons about this incident and stories spread with different details — it wasn’t a captain, it was a sergeant; it wasn’t a single soldier, it was two, then three; the victim wasn’t Canadian, he was British, etc. Details were hard to pin down but the alleged incident was great fuel for anti-German propaganda, becoming the stuff of legend, posters, movies, and widespread public outrage.

In 1918, the British war artist Francis Derwent Wood created a sculpture entitled “Canadian Golgotha” showing a Christ-like crucified soldier surrounded by mocking Germans, but before it could be exhibited after the war, the German government demanded documentary proof of the atrocity and the art was never shown until the 1990s.

Over the years, the story came to be doubted and put down to war-time rumour and exaggeration but the latest research suggests that the tale is true and that the victim was Sergeant Harry Band of the Central Ontario Regiment, who went missing in action in late April near Ypres.

Paul Johnson, Intellectuals.

This is the kind of book that is either going to inspire or infuriate you, but it should provoke valuable discussion and thought in either case. Johnson’s thesis is quite simple: the revolutionary thinkers whose ideas have shaped intellectual history over the past 250 years were, for the most part, lousy human beings. These were not just common or garden variety jerks, but personalities whose flaws were so manifest that they must call into question the value of the theories they generated.

This is an interesting proposition. Does it matter that Peter Sellers, the world’s greatest comedic actor, was a vile neurotic, that Marilyn Monroe was a goddess on screen but a drug-addled manipulator in everyday life, that Winston Churchill, who saved civilization during World War II, was also an alcoholic egomaniac? Probably not. But Johnson asks a deeper question: if a thinker cannot live out his own principles, can these ideas have any real merit? His book convinces us that there is a real connection between the rancid lives lived by intellectuals and the disasters their ideas produced.

For example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is adored by educational theorists and his ideas are entrenched in the curricula of teachers’ colleges, despite the fact that he serially abandoned every one of his children. Karl Marx was bourgeois to the core and seems to have exploited the only working-class woman he ever knew: paying her starvation wages, impregnating her, and forcing her to abandon their child. Johnson lacerates the behaviour of these prominent figures but more importantly shows how their shabby personal values foreshadow the social harm their works engendered.

On November 20, 1979, at what was the beginning of a new century on the Islamic calendar, a gang of heavily-armed fundamentalists seized the Grand Mosque in Mecca, taking thousands of pilgrims hostage. They claimed that among their number was the Mahdi, the prophesied holy figure that would one day appear to defeat the forces of evil and inaugurate a reign of Islamic justice over the world. They easily rebuffed the first attempts to dislodge them and their successful resistance sparked off a crisis that threatened not only the existence of the Saudi monarchy but also the stability of the entire Muslim world.

Yaroslav Trofimov’s The Siege of Mecca tells the story that the Saudis have largely succeeded in suppressing: how disaffected Muslims came to believe that their corrupt governments ought to be overthrown and replaced by a purified desert creed; how they easily occupied the holiest site in the Muslim world and held out for weeks of bloody battle; and how, despite the death of the rebel forces, this siege contributed to the spread of Wahhabi ideas through the world since 1979.

This is a story that must be better known in the West because its lessons are still relevant today. The volatility of the “Muslim street”, where the flimsiest of rumors can spark anti-American mobs and murderous riots, remains as it was in 1979. The well-meaning but ultimately impotent and counter-productive attempts of the Carter regime seem mirrored by the Obama administration. The role of the Saudi government in spreading anti-Western varieties of Islam has accelerated after the siege as the rule of the corrupt princes sought to burnish their fundamentalist credentials.

There are lessons here to be learned and an interesting story to read.

The French Revolution which began in the summer of 1789 and continued in one form or another until the coronation of Napoleon in 1804 is one of those cataclysmic moments in history over which historians love to argue. In general, modern Europeans and leftists tend to treat it as a great movement for human liberation, while the English-speaking world and conservatives look at it with a jaundiced glance. Nowhere was this more evident than in the bicentenary celebrations of the Revolution in 1989. To Paris, in July of that year, came the leaders of the world to mark the fall of the Bastille prison which ignited the uprising whose consequences we still live with today.

To Paris, the leaders of other nations brought gifts and salutations, bowing before President François Mitterand and muttering words of admiration for the French example. Not so, Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister. In an interview with the newspaper Le Monde she blithely reminded the world that Britain had not needed a revolution to establish democracy and that its free parliament existed well before 1789. French history held no lessons for the English.

For this boldness (or perhaps, rudeness) the French exacted revenge, putting Thatcher way down the receiving line behind obscure leaders of former French colonies and sitting her in the back row of the official photo.

But Mrs Thatcher wasn’t finished making her statement on the French Revolution — her parting gift to Mitterand was a beautifully bound edition of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, an account of the Revolution that was not at all complimentary to the revolutionaries, emphasizing their bloodiness and cruelty.

Equally disenchanted with 1789 was what I think is the best history of the Revolution to come out of those years, Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution by Simon Schama. I am, by no means, a fan of Schama but for this book I will forgive him much. In a very readable style and with lavish illustrations, the book shows a dark side of the uprising and the cost it exacted on its opponents, supporters, and Europe as a whole.

On this date in history, a number of great artistic creators appeared or made their exits.

Born on this day were Johann Sebastian Bach (1685), Joseph Haydn (1732), Edward Fitzgerald (1809), and Nikolai Gogol (1809). Taking leave of this earthly plane on March 31 were John Donne (1631), John Constable (1837), and Charlotte Brontë (1855). We are all richer for their contributions.

But because it is also the birthday of William Orville “Lefty” Frizzell (1928) who penned “If You’ve Got the Money (I’ve Got the Time)” and “I Never Go Around Mirrors”, I wish to salute the lyricists of country music. They may lack the profundity of Donne and Bach but they are keen observers of the human condition and possess a sly wit. Consider the following genuine song titles:

She Got the Gold Mine (I Got the Shaft); I Gave Her The Ring, And She Gave Me The Finger; I May Be Used, But Baby I Ain’t Used Up; I’ve Got Hair Oil On My Ears And My Glasses Are Slipping Down, But Baby I Can See Thru You; If The Phone Don’t Ring, Baby, You’ll Know It’s Me; I’m Gonna Put A Bar In The Back Of My Car And Drive Myself To Drink; You Can’t Have Your Kate And Edith Too; and Run for the Roundhouse Nellie (He Can’t Corner You There).

And who could forget There Ain’t Enough Room In My Fruit Of The Looms To Hold All My Lovin’ For You; Thank God and Greyhound She’s Gone; Please Bypass This Heart; I Went Back To My Fourth Wife For The Third Time And Gave Her A Second Chance To Make A First Class Fool Out Of Me; and I Fell Into A Pile Of You And Got Love All Over Me?

I thought my vast readership might welcome an occasional break from the usual “this date in history” approach and so I will make so bold as to talk here every now and again about some of my favourite history books that might also appeal to a non-specialist. 

“Of the making of many books there is no end and much study is a weariness of the flesh.” So sayeth the Preacher in Ecclesiastes 12:12 and as one who has spent many decades in such an activity I can attest to its truth. Therefore, I will avoid tomes that are classics but snoozers (yes, I’m talking about you, Edward Gibbon, with your six-volume History of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire and you, Arnold Toynbee, with your interminable 12-volume A Study of History).

Let’s begin with a book that has so many virtues: it is short, argumentative, and deadly to its foes. It is The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins.

When I was a student at university, I was taught that the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century was violent and tragic, that it meant a collapse of civilization in western Europe that would take a thousand years to rebuild, that it ushered in a Dark Age.

Then along came postmodern historians in the 1980s and 1990s who shrank at the notion that there was a real distinction between civilization and barbarism — that was a racist idea that “othered” the Germanic peoples. Instead of a conquest of Roman forces and way of life, there was a vigorous intermingling — kind of like rough sex, after which the participants would share a cigarette and stare dreamily at the ceiling. Besides, the only sources testifying to violence were books written by the Romans and postmodernists knew how slippery and unreliable “the text” could be.

The late 20th century was also the time of growing European integration and the development of common history curricula in the European Union nations. Since Germany was the dominant power in the EU, it was felt that one mustn’t “mention the war”, either those periods of German nastiness in 1914-18 and 1939-45 or the sacks and pillaging of the 400s and 500s.

So, for a number of years I revised my lectures and taught that the fall of Rome wasn’t such a big deal after all. Then I read Bryan Ward-Perkins’ book which blew the doors off of the postmodern bus. OK, he said, you don’t trust texts: let’s just look at the physical evidence, the bits and pieces that archaeologists dig up. And using the comparative skeletal sizes of cattle in garbage pits of various era, the relative quality of mass-manufactured goods like dinner plates, the absence of graffiti or any other evidence of literacy, the remains of abandoned towns, he demonstrated that the Fall was nasty and produced a society that was incomparably poorer, less populated, more rural, illiterate, without a money economy or even (as was the case in Britain for a century) incapable of operating a potter’s wheel.

The postmodernists fled shrieking and a blow was struck for genuine and entertaining scholarship.

1801 Assassination of a Russian Emperor

Russia under the tsarist rule was an autocracy: the sole source of power, law, authority, and honour was the Emperor (or, occasionally, the Empress). There were no representative institutions or any other form of civil society that might mediate between the tsar and the people, and therefore, political change in Russia most often took the form of conspiracy or assassination. By murdering her lack-witted husband, Peter III, Catherine the Great took the throne in 1762. Her son Paul was dispatched to his own estate where he could indulge his obsession with military maneuvers and training soldiers in the Prussian style.

In 1796 Paul I succeeded his mother and began tinkering with reform. Life for the serfs became a little bit easier, the aristocracy lost some of their local power to royal bureaucrats, and the country was isolated from infection by the French Revolution by a ban on foreign travel and the import of foreign books. He thought that Russia was best served by a defensive, rather than an expansionist, foreign policy and pulled back his troops inside national borders.

An aristocratic conspiracy sought to replace him with his oldest son. On the evening of March 23, 1801, a gang of drunken nobles invaded the royal bedchamber waving a notice of abdication; when Paul refused to sign it, the tsar was beaten, strangled and kicked to death. The heir to the throne, Alexander I, was then told by one of the murderers, “Time to grow up! Go and rule!”

The Russians never lost their taste for assassination. Tsars Alexander II (1881) and Nicholas II (1918) would be murdered in their turn. Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader, would die of wounds inflicted by a female terrorist (1924) but, alas, no one could be found to rid the world of Joseph Stalin.

A devoted reader has asked me about the motto of this website: “The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.” The phrase comes from William Faulkner’s Requiem for a Nun and refers there to the weight of guilt and experience we carry with us, inescapably, through life.

For historians, particularly those interested in the history of culture and ideas, it takes on a slightly different meaning because we know how closely we are linked to events, artefacts, symbols, styles, stories, practices, and technologies of the past. They are all around us in our everyday lives though they are seldom noticed.

When I taught the history of Western Civilization I always played the following clip from Life of Brian in which the revolutionary Reg, leader of the People’s Front for Judea, learns that his culture owes a lot to the Romans. And so do we. As we have debts to the Greeks. And the Anglo-Saxons. And the Normans. And the Chinese. Even that murderous scabby crew, the Vikings influence us today. 

Our architecture, language, literature, art, music, religions, dress, etc., etc., etc., are saturated in the past. We plunder the stories told by our predecessors for our entertainments: Norse sagas, Greek myths, Germanic epics, Regency novels, Egyptian religion fill our screens. Our technologies are built on thousands of inventions and insights of our ancestors – Indian mathematicians, Polish astronomers, Cistercian monks, Franciscan scientists, Muslim physicians. The foods we eat come to us from around the world, first cultivated in the Andes, Persian orchards, Indonesian islands, Mexican jungles, or the Ganges delta. 

In our political systems, why do we speak of republics? Why is the American upper house called a Senate? Why did Charlemagne (a Germanic king originally named Karl) and Napoleon dress like a Roman emperor? Why did Hitler and Mussolini adopt Roman symbols? Why did the Turkish sultan call himself the Kayser-i-Rum, the Roman Emperor? Why was the Canadian Parliament built to resemble a medieval cathedral? Why were our banks, libraries and public buildings built to resemble Greek temples?

Because the past matters. We breathe it in every day; we wear it, eat it, read it, watch it, work in it, and hang it on our walls. That’s why being a historian is so much fun.