'TIS THE SEASON!

By Edwin Cooney

Deck the halls with boughs of holly, Fa la la la la, la la la la,
Tis the season to be jolly, Fa la la la la, la la la la
It’s that time again—and I love it. Perhaps a little of the magic dwindles over the years, but only the tiniest bit of it.

I don’t anticipate where Santa might be at any hour on Christmas eve anymore—but I know he’s surely somewhere.

Mary, Joseph and the Christ child, Christmas carols, Santa Claus, stockings, Christmas cookies with hot chocolate or fruit juice are as much a part of my boyhood as the turkey on Thanksgiving, Jack O’Lanterns, doughnuts and apple cider on Halloween, and the importance of the baseball World Series. So since I believe that the history of a nation is the sum of all of our life experiences, I thought it might be entertaining as well as instructive to visit, however sketchily, the history of Christmas in America.

Most of us like to think that Christmas is as American as Christopher Columbus, (who isn’t at all American), the Pilgrims, Ben Franklin and George Washington. However, such is not the case!

As you’ll recall, Massachusetts was settled first by the Pilgrims or Separatists -- who wanted to separate totally from the Anglican Church -- and then by the Puritans -- whose aim was to purify rather than leave the Anglican Church.

The Puritans, who became dominant in Massachusetts over the Separatists, eventually took over in England under Oliver Cromwell during the 1650s. They banned the celebration of Christmas partly because it was practiced by the former royalists and partly because they considered it a symbol of Popery, a leading characteristic of the much unreconstructed and therefore maligned Roman Catholic Church of that day.

By the 1660s, the Puritans had lost power in London and throughout the rest of England, but they were very much in power in Boston as well as throughout the rest of Massachusetts. Thus, Christmas was officially banned in Boston between 1659 and 1681. It should be noted however that while Christmas was banned in Massachusetts, it was celebrated in both the Virginia and the New York colonies.

After the British monarchy was restored, Christmas was once again celebrated in England although its restoration in Massachusetts took another twenty one years. Once William and Mary took over as more or less equal partners as British monarchs in 1688 and Catholicism was on the decline there, Christmas began to be practiced in a more secular way in Britain.

One of the casualties of our Revolutionary War at the hands of our founding fathers, incidentally, was Christmas. Christmas in the era of Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al, was considered an English holiday and was, publicly at least, unwelcome in the hallowed halls of liberty until the mid-nineteenth century.

Three writers, Washington Irving and Clement Clarke Moore -- both Americans -- and Charles Dickens -- an Englishman -- were primarily responsible for introducing Christmas as a family holiday to the American people.

Washington Irving, who traveled and wrote extensively from both Europe and Britain, published short Christmas stories in “The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon” as well as a story entitled “Old Christmas” during the late 1820s and early 1830s.

Most significant was the 1822 poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” attributed to Clement Clarke Moore and Charles Dickens’ 1842 story “A Christmas Carol”.

Americans, with their eternal love of the underdog and sympathy for the reformed, fell hard for Mr. Dickens’ Bob Crachit and the crippled Tiny Tim, and readily forgave old Ebenezer Scrooge once he’d seen the error of his ways and showered the Crachit family with gifts and plenty of Christmas cheer.

As for Clement Moore’s Santa Claus, everyone could identify with a little old white bearded man whose little round belly “shook when he laughed” and whose pipe smoke “encircled his head like a wreath” as he joyfully delivered toys to little children.

Santa was everyone’s idea of Grandpa!

By the 1850s, German and Irish immigration had changed the face of America’s largest cities and had, most notably, tapped the strongest American incentive: the profit motive.
Thus, Christmas was truly on its way in America—led, of course, by Santa Claus!

Information describing how American presidents historically have celebrated Christmas is a bit sketchy. Apparently, Thomas Jefferson, despite his contempt for Britain and all its institutions and traditions—including Christmas—did privately celebrate Christmas at the White House in 1805. Andrew Jackson was said to have held private family Christmas celebrations as well.

The first president to set up a Christmas tree in the White House was Franklin Pierce. Franklin Pierce, the once handsome and energetic Democratic presidential candidate known as “Young Hickory of the Granite Hills”—after the great Democrat Andrew Jackson—was by then a listless, defensive, melancholy and defeated incumbent President. The year was 1856. Franklin and Jane Pierce were spending their last unhappy months in the White House. Tragically childless by now--and heavily burdened by political and administrative misjudgments—President Pierce purchased the first White House Christmas tree for the children of his Sunday school class.

Christmas was declared a federal holiday in 1870. It would be hard to imagine that President Ulysses S. Grant didn’t have something to say about that, but so far I haven’t found any reference to President Grant in the accounts of the establishment of Christmas as a federal holiday.

In 1889, President Benjamin Harrison installed a tree lit with candles on the second floor of the White House. He also purchased turkeys and gloves for members of the White House staff.

In 1895, First Lady Frances Cleveland attached the first electric lights to the White House Christmas tree.

In 1923, President Calvin Coolidge began the tradition of a National Christmas tree on the White House lawn. The following year, sadness prevailed at the White House despite President Coolidge’s re-election, due to the death from blood poisoning of President and Mrs. Coolidge’s sixteen year old son Calvin Jr. the previous July. Nevertheless, the ceremony was held with the participation of Calvin and Grace Coolidge.

Jacqueline Kennedy began the Christmas theme for the National Christmas tree in 1961 by decorating it with figures from Tchaikovsky’s ballet “The Nutcracker”.

In 2001, Laura Bush’s theme was “Home For the Holidays” which used replicas of the homes of previous presidents.

What, do you suppose, this all means? What do the forces of religion, politics and commercialism say about what we do? Which one of these forces have had the greatest beneficial effect on our celebration of Christmas? Which one of these forces have had the most detrimental effect?

The answers to the above questions I’ll leave up to you. However, I’ll close this week’s effort with my favorite presidential Christmas story.

It was December of 1921 and President Warren G. Harding faced a dilemma, a struggle between his conscience and his need to be politically effective. A small town Republican, he was sensitive to and even shared the suspicions of his fellow townsmen of what might be called foreign ideologies.

As president, possessing the pardoning power as he did, Warren Harding had received pleas for the release of Socialist party presidential candidate Eugene V. Debs from federal prison. Debs had been convicted during the “Great War” of sedition for public opposition to the war once it had been declared by Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson.

Now the war was over. Since the League of Nations had been rejected by the Senate in 1919 and again in 1920, the U.S. government, under the direction of Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes had negotiated a separate peace treaty with Germany which President Harding had signed during a golf game the previous July.

Thus, Mr. Debs was no longer a threat to America’s national security. However, many of the president’s closest friends and political advisors were dead set against any sympathy for Debs whom they strongly believed had deliberately undermined the patriotic efforts of those who had made the “supreme sacrifice” in France during the war. To them, Debs as a labor leader, was little more than a life long trouble maker inspired lately by foreign ideologies and interests. One of those who drove home that point most vigorously was the president’s personal hometown buddy Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty. (Note: Mr. Daugherty himself would need presidential tolerance within a few years once he was indicted in the Teapot Dome scandal).

For President Harding, however, the question was whether or not justice would be further served by keeping a 66 year old pacifist in jail or whether the spirit of Christmas required him to be charitable. Earlier in 1921, outgoing President Woodrow Wilson had bitterly rejected pleas for Debs’ pardon.

Christmas was on a Sunday in 1921 thereby giving the celebration of the birth of Christ a special intensity. About the 20th of December, President Harding had made up his mind. Attorney General Daugherty was called in and told to prepare the necessary papers. They were prepared and sent to the federal prison in Atlanta.

By lunch time on Friday December 23rd, Eugene Victor Debs was in President Harding’s office. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Debs was home.

When asked why he had pardoned Debs, the President is said to have replied in words similar to these: “At Christmas time, a peaceful man ought to be home with his wife.”

While it is true that the pardon didn’t reinstate Mr. Debs’ citizenship to allow him to vote or seek public office as before, he could act as a political consultant, write, and lecture. Most significant, thanks to the conscience and humanity of Warren Gamaliel Harding, Eugene Victor Debs was once again a free man.

If any president has given a gift more noble and worthy of the spirit of Christmas, I haven’t heard of it.

Christmas, wow! What a season!!!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY