Christmas Every Day

1884 The cremation of Jesus Christ

Every society has taboos surrounding the treatment of the bodies of the dead. Herodotus, in making his point on the strength of national customs, spoke of an experiment by Persian king Darius:

He called together some Greeks who were present and asked them how much money they would wish to be paid to devour the corpses of their fathers – to which the Greeks replied that no amount of money would suffice for that. Next, Darius summoned some Indians called Callantians, who do eat their parents, and asked them in the presence of the Greeks (who were able to follow what was being said by means of an interpreter) how much money it would take to buy their consent to the cremation of their dead fathers – at which the Callantians cried out in horror and told him that his words were a desecration of silence.

For centuries, the predominant custom in Christian lands was the interment of the dead. The Catholic Church had opposed the practice of cremation as being offensive to the notion of the physical resurrection and this belief was maintained by most Protestant denominations. In 1884 the eccentric Welsh physician and neo-Druid William Price (1800-1893) cremated the body of his son Jesus Christ Price and was arrested for this shocking deed. He was acquitted after showing that there was no law banning the practice, a decision that led to the 1902 Cremation Act.

395 A bad day for the Roman Empire

The death of the Roman emperor Theodosius I (347-395) meant the permanent separation of the eastern and western halves of the realm and his succession by a pair of nitwit sons unable to deal with the barbarian incursions.

Theodosius was a general and politician who emerged as emperor out of the civil wars that followed the death of Valens, who had died in 378 battling the Visigoths. His reign was extremely consequential. On the positive side he summoned the First Council of Constantinople which established Trinitarian orthodoxy; he suppressed pagan sacrifices, gladiatorial battles, child slavery, and the Olympic Games. His massacre of civilians in Thessalonika led to his excommunication by Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. Theodosius was forced (above) to repent and beg forgiveness before being allowed the sacraments, an act which clergy over the centuries used as an example of the supremacy of the Church over the State.

His death in 395 led to the empire being split between incompetent sons, Honorius in the West and Arcadius in the East.

1920 The Prohibition Era begins in the United States

The American struggle against the evils of the alcohol trade was a long and hard one, waged at first largely by women who were seen as the chief victims of drunkenness. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Anti-Saloon League did much in the 19th and early 20th centuries to bring the issue before the public. Kansas became the first dry state with an amendment to its constitution in 1881 but the movement aroused deep opposition along ethnic, political and religious lines. Protestants tended to be for prohibition and Catholics (and Episcopalians) against; the labour movement, smaller cities and Progressive reformers were for it, and the bigger cities and establishment politicians were against.

The Eighteenth Amendment to the American Constitution was passed by Congress in late 1917 and had to be ratified by 3/4 of the states for it to come into effect. This ratification occurred in January 1919 and took effect a year later. The federal Volstead Act was passed to outline methods of enforcing the ban on the manufacture, importation and sale of alcohol (though consumption remained legal).

The benefits of Prohibition were as predicted — dramatic decreases in alcoholism, industrial accidents, cirrhosis of the liver, drunken family abuse — but it also produced a nation of scoff-laws who resisted the alcohol ban. There were also negative impacts on the agricultural economy, a drop in tax revenue, and a benefit to criminal gangs who continued the illicit trade in booze. Franklin Roosevelt was elected in 1932 on a platform of abolishing Prohibition and this was accomplished in December, 1933 with the Twenty-First Amendment.

1919 The murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht

The collapse of the armies of the German Empire in November, 1918 led to the end of Word War I and the beginning of a period of chaos and instability in Germany. The Kaiser, Wilhelm II, abdicated and fled to Holland; a new national republic dominated by Social Democrats had been announced in Berlin; and numerous uprisings on the left and right sought to impose a new order on the country.

Marxist lawyer Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919) had declared a Free Socialist Republic, founded the Spartakasbund (the origins of the Communist Party of Germany, the KPD) and plotted how to achieve power in the anarchic few months after the war’s end. With his associate Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) he participated in an ill-fated revolution of Spartacists which was crushed by right-wing militia groups, the Freikorps. Luxemburg and Liebknecht were arrested, tortured and murdered but became martyrs of the Left. Their opposition to Leninism was overlooked by later Communists in East Germany (the DDR) who venerated the slain pair in numerous ways.

2004

Georgia adopts the “Five-Cross” flag

Georgia was one of the first nations to adopt Christianity and has fought hard over the centuries to maintain the faith despite the efforts of hostile neighbours. In the fifth century their armies were led by a white flag with a red St George’s cross (identical to England’s national banner). In the Middle Ages, supposedly in the reign of Giorgi V “the Magnificent” (1286-1346) who drove out Mongol overlords, four Jerusalem crosses were added. This flag was forgotten when Georgia became a Russian province and then a Soviet republic. After the collapse of the USSR, a newly-independent Georgia chose a drab tricolour flag briefly used after World War I but finally decided on the five crosses as a symbol of the nation’s long Christian tradition.

1507 Birth of a brutal duke

Fernando Álvarez de Toledo y Pimentel, Duke of Alva (or Alba) (1507-82) was an illustrious Spanish general during the many wars waged by King Charles I (known better as Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire) and his son Philip II. He won victories against the corsair pirates of the Barbary Coast, rebellious Dutch Protestants and rebellious German Protestant princes. Of him Chamber’s Book of Days says:

This great general of the Imperial army and Minister of State of Charles V, was educated both for the field and the cabinet, though he owed his promotion in the former service rather to the caprice than the perception of his sovereign, who promoted him to the first rank in the army more as a mark of favour than from any consideration of his military talents. He was undoubtedly the ablest general of his age. He was principally distinguished for his skill and prudence in choosing his positions, and for maintaining strict discipline in his troops. He often obtained, by patient stratagem, those advantages which would have been thrown away or dearly acquired by a precipitate encounter with the enemy. On the Emperor wishing to know his opinion about attacking the Turks, he advised him rather to build them a golden bridge than offer them a decisive battle. Being at Cologne, and avoiding, as he always did, an engagement with the Dutch troops, the Archbishop urged him to fight. ‘The object of a general,’ answered the Duke, ‘is not to fight, but to conquer; he fights enough who obtains the victory.’ During a career of so many years, he never lost a battle.

While we admire the astute commander, we can never hear the name of Alva without horror for the cruelties of which he was guilty in his endeavours to preserve the Low Countries for Spain. During his government in Holland, he is reckoned to have put 18,000 of the citizens to death. Such were the extremities to which fanaticism could carry men generally not deficient in estimable qualities, during the great controversies which rose in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Pieter Brueghel’s masterpiece “The Massacre of the Innocents” sets Herod’s Biblical slaughter of the boy babies of Bethlehem in a Dutch village overrun by Spanish troops. The black-armoured figure on horse-back is said to be based on the Duke of Alva.

525 Constantinople burns

Christian emperors of Rome banned the homicidal gladiator games in the arenas, leaving chariot racing to become the most popular spectator sport. As in today’s professional soccer, supporters of the various teams (especially the Blues and the Greens) could become violent, warring against each other and against the forces of order. In 6th-century Constantinople, the Blues and the Greens also represented differing views on politics and religion, so they often acted as goon squads for various factions.

In January 525, the usual rioting broke out and the usual arrests were made. Some of the malefactors were hanged but some of the leaders of both groups took refuge in the same church; there they decided to unite and turn their fury on the emperor, Justinian. Their battle cry was “Nike! Nike! (Victory!) Blues and Greens together!” For the next week, their mobs ruled the streets, arson and looting ran unchecked and much of the city was burnt down including the Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom. A  hapless member of the ruling elite, Hypatius, was crowned emperor against his will.

Justinian’s first thought was to flee but his formidable wife Theodora stiffened his spine and plans were laid to regain control. Leaders of the Blue faction were bribed to abandon the disorder and the army massacred thousands of dissidents inside the Hippodrome race track. Hypatius was duly executed, his high-ranking supporters were exiled and Justinian began the task of rebuilding the city.

49 BC

Julius Caesar crosses the Rubicon

In the last days of the Roman republic, politics had degenerated into a series of struggles between the armies of various politicians of the senatorial rank. Civil war had been waged on and off for decades when three faction leaders agreed on kind of a truce known as the First Triumvirate in 60 BC. To keep their rivalries at a safe distance from Rome, Julius Caesar was alloted Gaul for his ambitions, Pompey was given Spain, and Crassus the Middle East. In 53 BC, Crassus died in battle against the Persians, leaving Caesar and Pompey to maneuver against each other. While Caesar was completing a genocidal conquest of Gaul, Pompey was securing his position in the capital; in 50 BC the Senate, at Pompey’s direction, summoned Caesar home.

Fearing a rigged trial, Caesar decided to come back, but with his army. It was illegal for him to cross the border into Italy, the Rubicon River, with such a force but on this day in 49 BC he did so, at the head of the XIIIth Legion. As he crossed the Rubicon, he is said to have remarked, Alea iacta est, “the die is cast.” Caesar’s invasion forced Pompey to flee but Caesar followed and defeated him at the Battle of Pharsalus, paving the way for his dictatorship, and, eventually, his own assassination.