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.

SANTA SENDS US A CITY

Not having the gift of total recall like some other Christmas reminiscers I rely on flashes of memory that break through the darkness here and there which I can patch together to make a montage if not a full-length double feature with an intermission in the middle.

I think my earliest recollection of the present-giving side of Christmas is of a visit we had from a neighbor who was wearing a new leather jacket that he’d been given. We all greatly admired it, I know. It might not have cut much ice on Park Avenue, but this was the Bronx, in the Depression, and in 1936 or whenever it was a good leather jacket was a handy thing to have around. It kept out the cold, which was pervasive then, showing no regard for the need to stimulate morale in the face of hard times.

It did save us a little electricity, though, because every apartment had a window box perched outside on a window sill, in which the family groceries were kept cold without using a refrigerator. We had a good big one, which was also safe, since we lived on a ground floor, meaning that no one could get hurt if it came unattached from the sill and dropped off. The boxes higher up on the building were more of a menace and could have easily brained one of the alley singers who patrolled between the buildings singing requests in return for contributions thrown down to them. I never heard of a window box falling, though, and the singers could never have been injured by the weight of the coins wrapped up and tossed to them from the windows.

Under these conditions the presents we kids got tended to run in the direction of foul-weather gear suitable for arctic exploration. (Since those days I’ve never worn a scarf or gloves). Once the need for this equipment was met, though, there was room for more frivolous stuff, like tommy guns for instance. These enabled kids to get in touch with their inner Pretty Boy Floyd or Baby Face Nelson, which was never far below the surface in any of us. Our preferred rod was the one with the drum type magazine which emitted showers of sparks when fired -- on the first day. After that there was still noise but no more sparks. Our gang wars persisted anyway.

While I enjoyed the chewing gum cards which carried the stories of heroes like those above I was also branching out into other boys’ literature. Sea stories, Indian stories, cowboys, West Point, detectives, explorers, bring ‘em on. Andersen’s stories, I bet I could read them again. The family made sure to give me at least one major work each Christmas. One of them, which I still have, was Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi. When Hurricane Katrina struck a couple of years ago, I was ready. Mark Twain had been predicting such a disaster back in 1883. He had whole chapters about New Orleans and its levees and its overflows and generally soggy character. He included in his book a fourteen-page account of a survey of the New Orleans flood of 1882, written by an engineer who toured the area in a steamboat, rescuing families from rooftops and cattle from rafts. It all made me Mississippi-conscious at a young age, so that I was ready for Hurricane Katrina when it came. Mark had prepared me -- according to him the topsoil being washed out of the country into the Gulf of Mexico by the river was enough to turn America into a Sahara eventually. I didn’t lie awake nights thinking about this, but I didn’t forget it either. I saw it all come through when all Mark’s scenes from 123 years ago were repeated, this time on TV. Does he know that New Orleans is still there but sinking lower every year? And the Mardi Gras is still going on anyway?

Kids eventually reach an age when they get the urge to give up the role of receiver of Christmas presents with no obligation to reciprocate with presents of their own and we were no exceptions. Our neighborhood, though, wasn’t exactly rich in shopping opportunities where something worthy of being given to one’s parents could be found. The local ‘dry goods’ stores or drugstores didn’t have anything fancy on hand, just pots and pans and packages of clothespins or dishtowels.

This ended when Parkchester opened in 1940. All of a sudden we were in the World of Tomorrow as shown at the World’s Fair. Parkchester was a huge apartment development for 40,000 people built by the Metropolitan Life Co. and planted down on our doorstep. It had lawns and curved drives lined with trees, playgrounds for all ages and on top of all this. shopping such as we had never seen before without taking a long ride to Manhattan .

It wasn’t Fifth Avenue of course, but it was still a big step up for the East Bronx. The showplace was the first Macy’s branch ever built (still going). A few levels below there was a Woolworth’s, a Thom McAn’s, a Fanny Farmer confectionary store, a Hanscom’s bakery, places for women’s clothes, men’s clothes, and children’s clothes, along with banks, a post office, bars, restaurants and a movie theater. The consumer culture had arrived.

Macy’s was the biggest attraction for kids. Everything was up-to-date and a pleasure to look at, but it had one disadvantage -- prices. We could pick out items for ourselves to be brought to the attention of parents, but we’d have to go elsewhere for our own shopping. Rexall’s drug store was the solution. It didn’t confine itself to drugs like the neighborhood pharmacies we knew, but offered a lot of items like packages of after-shave lotions for dads and bath powders for moms in Christmas packages which solved all juvenile shopping needs. A kid could hold his own in the family with valuable presents like these. Kids are still giving them. I know.

Happy Kwanzaa, everyone.