WHY THE WISE MEN CAME WEST

Having found that last week’s piece in this space was made easier to write by the expedient of using other people’s poetry to bulk up the content, I decided to explore what else was in print that might be available to use in a follow-up piece on the same subject, Christmas. A little research disclosed that Christmas has had a checkered past.

No one denied that it originated with the pagans of pre-history, who obviously thought that the end of the year was a natural time for a celebration and began the festivities in the sacred groves and the holy heights and other such locations where the clans could gather and raise their mead-horns in toasts and their voices in song, as described here last week by Walter Scott.

Christianity took over a lot of pagan traditions as it progressed in the fourth century after Christ. Christmas, its new name, became the most popular holiday; the end of the year continuing as the most logical time for such, also coinciding with the birth of Christ, which is now reckoned to have been in 8 B.C., the year when Emperor Augustus’s famous census took place. How Christ could have been born in B.C. and not A.D. is a question that hasn’t quite been resolved yet.

The celebration of Christmas flourished until the 17th century in England when the Puritans, the extreme Protestants, beheaded King Charles I, after which they took over the country, and then tried to suppress it because it not only had pagan origins, but also what was worse, Catholic ones. The British population had suffered itself to have its religion reformed out of recognition for the benefit of fanatics, both sincere and insincere, but wiping out Christmas was the last straw, and resistance rose up and stopped the suppression.

Germany, another center of the Reformation, had its share of “activists” also, but they don’t seem to have done much to eliminate Christmas, probably recognizing that it was just too deeply rooted in the customs of the country for any purge to succeed. So Germany continued to be known as the country of Christmas trees, Christmas music and also Christmas gifts. Eventually these German customs spread to the whole world.

The Puritans weren’t licked yet, though. They were a tough crowd, they had to be to pick out a beauty spot like New England for their first settlement in America after they had left England by mutual consent with the people of the country. They managed to survive the deep freeze here and set up a theocracy which specialized in cracking down on any human activity which might conceivably provide fun or entertainment for its participants.

Christmas was first on the hit list of course. It would be superfluous to list all the denunciations that were issued, now forgotten, but surprisingly persisting as late as 1935 when one church announced that “We would warn the young against giving countenance to such a Romanist practice as that of observing Christmas.”

Now this was a Scottish church, not an American one, but there were still American ones who cherished the same thoughts. For the cause we have to go back to the fifteenth century and the Reformation again. The Reformers had a problem. The Catholic church had about locked up the New Testament and more or less discarded the Old one. All the churches for instance were named after Christian, not Biblical personalities. There was no recognition for Esau or Ichabod or Ebenezer or even Adam and Eve for that matter. The Protestants recognized this and saw that at least they had a treasure house of names available to be used from the Good Book, although no one in centuries had thought of this. So we got Eliphalet and Ezekiel and Abinadab and an exceeding great host of others that the will of the Lord might be fulfilled.

Another problem between the Old Testament and the New is that the Old is full of blood and guts on one page and spiritual inspiration on the next, whereas the New is consistent all through and nobody in it dallies with concubines or slays eighteen thousand enemies in an afternoon or otherwise behaves in a way unworthy of a Christian gentleman. Christmas as a feast of reconciliation and good will to men just doesn’t fit in with the philosophy of the Old Book, although General Patton thought a lot of it and so did General Sherman.

A lot of the above ideas are old ones with me, but this time I’ve actually dipped into some sources to verify them. I’ve found Christianity and Christmas in close proximity to each other in these books and also found that quite a few of the comments included, a majority of them in fact, are inimical to both. Well, criticism is always more interesting than praise, but I think most of it misses the point. That is, that no matter how many chinks in the armor the critics find, Christianity is still the only religion that stands for fair dealing among men. (I could have said “peace” or “goodwill”, but I’m trying to avoid cliche¢ s).

America’s involvement in Asia has resulted in our going to war with no less than five Asian nations or at least with factions from among those nations. In the matter of religion they were divided as follows: Japanese, Shintoism; Chinese, Buddhism, Confucianism; Vietnamese, Koreans, same; Middle East, Moslemism. As soon as any of these had American prisoners in their hands, they began immediately to torture them, starve them and in many cases, murder them. Whatever religion they had or didn’t have, it obviously wasn’t one that ever said anything like ‘love they neighbor as thyself’ or ‘love those who hate you and despitefully use you.’

Were all Americans or all Westerners saintly characters who lived up literally to those commands? No, they weren’t. Some of them were a match for the Asians in brutality, some were brutal through indifference or ignorance. But most weren’t. Most lived up to the commands of their religion even if it was only theirs in the sense of influencing the atmosphere in which they grew up. This causes me to repeat what I said above about Christianity and what I call ‘fair dealing.’ Christmas stands for this.