Ti’s The Season

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Ti's the season for Billo the Clown and Faux News to light up its annual "War on Christmas" nonsense. And this year Arizona's Accidental Governor kicks off the festivities. Arizona Capitol Times » Brewer brings Christmas, Hanukkah back to Capitol displays

“I believe in calling something what it is, and it is a Christmas tree, just as a menorah is a menorah,” the governor said in a statement on Nov. 24.

Those symbols had generic names – holiday tree and candle holder – under former Gov. Janet Napolitano, who wanted to avoid singling out certain religions.

Deborah Sheasby, legal counsel for the conservative interest group Center for Arizona Policy, said the governor made a good decision.

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Since 1965 the governor’s office has put up a holiday display in the tower, with the official lighting a part of the governor’s duties. Under the Napolitano administration, a donated menorah joined the display. This year, Brewer used her own money to purchase a star to top the tree.

Whatever. This whole "War on Christmas" nonsense presumes that Americans celebrate Christmas today in the same way that the earliest American colonists did, and that we have somehow abandoned our American traditions for political correctness. This of course is completely detached from reality and historical fact.

The History Channel airs a program about the History of Christmas in the United States which is well done, and I recommend it if you have not seen it.

In the interim, you can peruse THE HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS:

Massachusetts Pilgrims (Congregationalists) passed a law forbidding Christmas celebration in New England in 1659 (repealed in 1681). Thanksgiving was the most important festivity for the Puritans. Wassailing (a door-to-door visiting of neighbors, drinking at each stop) was condemned as a source of public disorder.

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Although Christmas was not widely celebrated in New England until 1852, it was popular in the American South beginning with the Anglican settlement of Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.

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Dutch influence in the settlement of New York City (New Amsterdam) helped make New York a mostly pro-Christmas state, although there was still an anti-Christmas New England influence. In 1836 Alabama became the first State to recognize Christmas, which finally became a federal holiday in 1870.

I recalled reading this article by Marc McDonald from a few years back, How Did America's Founding Fathers Feel About Christmas?

Nor was Christmas particularly important to our Founding Fathers (or the nation as a whole). The U.S. government didn't even recognize Christmas as a holiday until 1870. Until then, Congress routinely met and conducted business on Christmas day. It was, in fact, just another workday.

Truth be told, Christmas was a totally different affair during the first century of America's history. It was far removed from today's holiday in which families gather and open presents around the Christmas tree.

So how did one celebrate Christmas back in those days? Well, typically, you might start off the day getting blindingly drunk. Then, you'd take to the streets and approach passer-by and demand money from them. If they refused, you'd beat them up. You might conclude the day by smashing some store windows or breaking into people's homes and stealing their food. Peruse a newspaper from the 1820s and you can routinely read of such chaotic yuletide lawlessness.

In the early part of the 19th century, Christmas was, as one historian once noted, "like a nightmarish cross between Halloween and a particularly violent, rowdy Mardi Gras." In fact, a massive Christmas riot in 1828 led to the formation of New York City's first police force.

Indeed, newspapers of the era are filled with disturbing accounts of what Christmas was really like in those days: widespread rioting, sexual assault, vandalism, drunkenness, street violence and general lawlessness. Most of these "traditions" were carried over from Europe, where, dating back to the Middle Ages, Christmas had been regarded by the wealthy classes as a safety valve for releasing the peasants' pent-up frustrations.

Christmas as we know it today didn't really take root until the 1870s. In fact, the holiday as we know it today was invented by middle-class merchants in the late 19th century, primarily as a gimmick to increase sales. In this respect, Christmas hasn't changed much since then.

More from THE HISTORY OF CHRISTMAS:

The transformation of Saint Nicholas to Santa Claus happened largely in America — with inspiration from the Dutch. In the early days of Dutch New York, Sinterklaas became known among the English-speaking as "Santa Claus" (or "Saint Nick"). In 1809 Washington Irving, a member of the New York Historical Society (which promoted a Dutch Saint Nicholas as its patron saint), created a tale of a chubby, pipe-smoking little Saint Nicholas who road a magic horse through the air visiting all houses in New York. The elfish figure was small enough to climb down chimneys with gifts for the good children and switches for the bad ones.

The 1823 poem "The Night Before Christmas" ("A Visit from Saint Nicholas", reputedly by Clement Moore) replaced the horse with a sleigh drawn by eight flying reindeer. (Moore may have been inspired by the Finnish legend of Old Man Winter, who drove reindeer down from the mountain, bringing the snow.) Following Irving's example, Moore's St. Nick was more an elf than a bishop. Unlike the earlier St. Nicks, this one brought no birch switches, only presents. And it was Moore who established that St. Nick brings presents on the night before Christmas rather than on Saint Nicholas Day or any other time.

Thomas Nast — head cartoonist for Harper's Weeklymagazine (the man who invented both the Democratic donkey and the Republican elephant) — depicted Santa Claus from 1863 to 1886 as an unaging, jolly, bearded fat man who lived at the North Pole and wore a furry suit & elfish sleeping cap. Nast transformed Santa into a full-sized human who somehow retained the ability to climb through chimneys, but who had a team of elf assistants. By 1881 Nast had drawn Santa as a large man with a white beard in a red suit trimmed with white fur. Although other artists continued to use more elfish depictions, red-suited Santas continued the long tradition inspired by the red & white bishop's robes of Saint Nicholas.

The standardization of Santa's image was probably due to Coca-Cola artist Haddon Sundblom who (in 1931) depicted Santa as a portly, jolly grandfatherly figure with a ruddy complexion and white-fur-trimmed red coat & cap — replacing the pipe with a bottle of Coke. Thirty-five years of annual advertising by the Coca-Cola company using Sundblom's Santa solidified the contemporary image of Santa Claus (but without the Coke). (It was a fortunate coincidence that the red & white colors matched those used by Coca-Cola.)

The first department store Santa Claus was at J.W. Parkinson's store in Philadelphia in 1881. Kriss Kringle dramatically came down a chimney for the children and Parkinson's became "Kriss Kringle Headquarters". The second department store to feature a Santa was in Massachusetts in 1890. By 1900 dozens of American department stores had Santas.

In 1905 Eaton's department store sponsored its first Santa Claus Parade in Toronto, Canada, which remains the largest in North America. In the 1920s Gimbel's department store in Philadelphia, Macy's in New York, Hudson's in Detroit and many other department stores sponsored Thanksgiving parades that featured Santa Claus. In response to lobbying by department stores President Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving from November 30 to November 23 in 1939 to extend the shopping season. "Franksgiving" was observed in about half the states. As a compromise, a 1941 act of Congress established Thanksgiving as the fourth Thursday in November.

Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer was invented in 1939 by a staff copywriter for Montgomery Ward. The story was patterned after The Ugly Duckling, turning a genetically defective glowing nose into a foggy-night navigation asset. Originally distributed to children as an illustrated story, a decade later it became the theme of a song which was sung by Gene Autry, the "Singing Cowboy".

The Christmas Americans celebrate today is largely a secularized commercial holiday. Ah, capitalism. It is far removed from the drunken bacchanals and riotous celebrations of America's early days. Or the holiday once banned by Massachusetts Puritans.

It was this secularized commercialization of Christmas that Charles M. Schulz addressed in A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965). Here Linus van Pelt explains the true meaning of Christmas.