Christmas Every Day

1631 The Sack of Magdeburg

One of the comedic gems of the late 20th century was Ripping Yarns, a BBC production written by two ex-Pythons, Michael Palin and Terry Jones. The series made sport of English boys’ adventure books. Episodes such as “Across the Andes by Frog” and “The Curse of the Claw” are hilarious but my favourite is “Roger of the Raj”, a tale of a young British officer in India. The colonel of the regiment is a kindly old duffer but his wife is a fierce colonialist, as is evidenced by this bedtime conversation:

Lord Bartelsham: You know, I often think that if people had been a little more kind to each other, we could have avoided many of the wars which have plagued society through the ages.
Lady Bartelsham: Rubbish, dear.
Lord Bartelsham: Well… maybe.. but just suppose for a minute that when Wallenstein reached the gates of Magdeburg in 1631, instead of razing the city to the ground and putting its inhabitants to the sword, he’d said… “What a lovely place! How lucky you are to live here. I live in Sweden.. you must come and see me some time.” Just think what a difference it would have made he’d have gone down in history as a nice chap, instead of the Butcher of Magdeburg.
Lady Bartelsham: Eat up dear, and stop talking piffle.

Lord Bartelsham may have had his heart in the right place but he got some facts wrong about the destruction of Magdeburg which took place on this date in 1631. First of all, Count Wallenstein was not the Imperial general besieging Magdeburg — the title of Butcher of Magdeburg is held jointly by Count Tilly and Graf Pappenheim. None of those generals was Swedish. Bartlesham was doubtless thinking of Tilly and Wallenstein’s opponent Gustavus Adolphus.

Regardless of who was in charge of the Catholic forces who stormed Magdeburg, the ensuing massacres and atrocities were the low point of the Thirty Years War. Tilly was proud of himself. He wrote to the Habsburg emperor Ferdinand II, “Never was such a victory since the storming of Troy or of Jerusalem. I am sorry that you and the ladies of the court were not there to enjoy the spectacle.” Pope Urban VIII thought it a fine deed, telling Tilly “You have washed your victorious hands in the blood of sinners.” 

1903 Birth of “Cool Papa” Bell

James Thomas “Cool Papa” Bell, a Negro League outfielder was reputed to have been the fastest player in baseball. How fast was he?

He was so fast that he could turn off the light and be under the covers before the room got dark.

He was so fast that he once hit a pitch up the middle of the field and he was struck by the ball as he slid into second base.

He was so fast that he stole home on an infield bunt. (True story).

1944 Birth of Jesse Winchester

One of the greatest singer-songwriters of his generation was born in Louisiana and migrated to Canada in 1967 in order to avoid the Vietnam draft. In Montreal he began to compose songs that could rock but were usually marked by a kind of sweet melancholy. He became a Canadian citizen in 1973 but returned to the USA after Jimmy Carter’s amnesty, becoming better-known among fellow performers than the general musical public. Winchester died of cancer in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2014.

Here is a selection of his music that I hope will encourage readers to investigate him.

“Rhumba Man”

“The Brand New Tennessee Waltz”

“Just So Much”

“Lay Down the Burden of Your Heart”

“Sham-A- Ling-Dong”

1525 Millennialist dreams are shattered at Frankenhausen

 The Protestant Reformation quickly brought to the fore a question that had been vexing Western Civilization since the time of the Greeks: is it ever legitimate to use violence to oppose tyranny?

Martin Luther and his followers initially opposed the notion of violent resistance but it was cautiously endorsed by Swiss theologian Huldreich Zwingli. The next expressions on resistance in the mid-1520s were far more intemperate and violent, coming out of the millennialist tradition formerly represented by the Bohemian Taborites. Thomas Müntzer, once an admirer of Luther’s, turned his back on much the Wittenberg preacher taught, especially his non-violence. Müntzer had come into contact with radicals who sought the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit and who poured scorn on Luther’s biblicism; God, he said, still comes in dreams to His beloved, as he had to the prophets of old. He began to style himself “Destroyer of the Unbelievers” and to speak of the imminent end of the old era and the dawn of a new age of social justice. Müntzer preached to the Saxon princes in May 1524 and warned them that if they refused to use the sword against the godless it would be taken from them but his appeal to German princes to lead his crusade fell on deaf ears. Müntzer turned to the lower orders to be the new Elect, a covenanted people of God; he seems to have been the first in Reformation Europe to make political use of the concept of the covenant, a notion that will prove especially useful to later persecuted Protestants.

When the great German Peasant Rebellion broke out in 1524 he urged his poor followers on to violence and a liberating slaughter that would open the way to the new age of godliness and peace. “On! On! On!”, he told the peasant soldiers at Mülhausen, “Spare not. Pity not the godless when they cry. Remember the command of God to Moses to destroy utterly and show no mercy. The whole countryside is in commotion. Strike! Clang! Clang! On! On!”

The climax of the struggle came outside the town of Frankenhausen in May, 1525. An army of poorly-armed peasants flying their rainbow flag met deadly Landsknecht mercenaries hired by Hessian and Saxon nobles. The peasants, entrenched in a wagon fortress of the sort that had been so effectively used by the Hussites in the 15th century, were able to repel the first enemy sorties but the next day they broke under an artillery barrage and a cavalry charge. The rebels were cut down in their thousands, bringing their uprising to an end.

Thomas Müntzer had told the peasants that he would precede them and catch their enemies’ bullets in his sleeves but in fact he ran away and was hiding in bed when he was captured by the forces of the triumphant princes. He was executed shortly thereafter as bloody recriminations against the peasantry were taken across Germany.

2019 Death of Tardar Sauce

Let it not be said that we live in a frivolous era. One has only to compare the deep philosophical ponderings of Kim Kardashian to those of Marcus Aurelius, or the story-lines of Spiderman films with King Lear, or the lyrics of rap sensation Ski Mask the Slump God with those of Cole Porter to see that the 21st century is indeed a Golden Age of culture.

That is why so many wept when news of the death of Tardar Sauce reached the internet. Since her birth in 2012, Tardar, working under her stage name “Grumpy Cat”, had been amusing millions and her passing clearly subtracted from the sum of human felicity.

Born to a single-parent household — her mother was a calico cat; her father may have been a blue-and-white tabby – she came to the attention of the world as a result of a genetic malformation which gave her a look of perpetual dysphoria. Soon her portrait graced a myriad of computer screens and generated countless memes. Her owners were not slow in accumulating pelf by producing lines of Grumpy Cat licensed merch and featuring her in public appearances and commercials – she was named the Official Spokescat of Friskies. She achieved cinematic immortality by starring in 2014’s made-for-tv movie  Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever. A Madame Tussaud waxwork of the fabulous feline was commissioned.

Could an Oscar and a Nobel Prize be far behind? Sadly, those heights were not to be scaled. Stricken by a urinary tract infection, Tardar Sauce passed from this vale of tears on May 14, 2019. When shall we see her like again?

1940 Blood, toil, tears, and sweat

In the late spring of 1940 things were going very badly for the good guys. Poland, Holland, Belgium, and Norway had been overrun by Nazi armies and France was on the point of collapse. The British Parliament had just replaced Neville Chamberlain, who saw the danger of Hitler too late, with Winston Churchill, who had been warning about the fascist menace for years. Churchill hastily assembled a War Cabinet with the cooperation of the Opposition Labour and Liberal parties and rose to speak in the House of Commons, giving his first address as Prime Minister. His words may serve as a standard against which to measure the rhetorical abilities of our North American politicians in these squalid times.

I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make allowance, all allowance, for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this government: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.”

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I can say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal. But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, “come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”