Long before I became a believer, I loved Christmas. The Christian part came late in life after my marriage.
That’s why I get so angry with people like Bill O’Reilly, who have done their best to tarnish the Christmas spirit. Christmas doesn’t belong to just people of one faith. Christmas belongs to all people.
Take a look at Irving Berlin.
Washington Post columnist Harold Meyerson had a terrific piece earlier this week about Irving Berlin and the so-called War on Christmas.
The white Christmases that Irving Berlin dreamed of weren’t the earliest ones he used to know. He spent his first five Christmases in czarist Russia, and his only recollection of that time, at least the only one he’d acknowledge as an adult, was that of watching his neighbors burn his family’s house to the ground in a good old-fashioned, Jew-hating pogrom.
So it’s no surprise that when Berlin got around to writing his great Christmas song in 1941, nearly half a century after his family had fled the shtetl of Mohilev for New York’s Lower East Side, it was flatly devoid of Christian imagery. It is, for all that, a religious song. It’s just that Berlin’s religion was America.
“White Christmas” is an achingly nostalgic ballad, evoking a rural America where treetops glisten and sleigh bells ring. This was Currier and Ives country, an idealized winter landscape created for an urban nation that was busily shipping its young men overseas to fight Hitler and Japan. Amid the unprecedented disruptions of the war, “White Christmas,” with its implicit assertion that we can somehow get back to this innocent Eden, found a ready audience.
snip
Many of those Christmas songwriters, of course, were Jewish and the children of immigrants; their deepest drive was to demonstrate beyond all doubt that they were assimilated, cosmopolitan, American. Berlin’s father had been a cantor, but Berlin himself, unlike the hero of “The Jazz Singer,” wasn’t torn between the Jewish piety of liturgical music and the American secularism of ragtime. When he left home at 14 to sing in the saloons of the Bowery, he never looked back.
My love of Christmas has little to do with faith either. For most of Christianity, Christmas wasn’t celebrated by Christians. That came much later.
And Bill O’Reilly’s effort is really nothing but old-fashioned anti-semitism. If he ever put down his loofah and attended a church regularly, he’d see the main holiday of the Christian faith is Easter.
Christmas is not about shouting anyone down to condemn them for saying a generous and inclusive “happy holidays.” Christmas is not to be used as a fundraiser for intolerant and unloving causes.
No, Christmas is for all of us.
And it’s that Currier & Ives ideal that Berlin helped create even though it might be unattainable it’s something bright and beautiful to reach for because sometimes the striving is better than the arriving.
It’s about gathering with family. It’s about standing alone in a dark cold night listening to snow flakes so big and the night so silent you can hear them fall. It’s about sitting up with a neighbor recently widowed so she wouldn’t have to spend her first Christmas Eve alone in 55 years. It’s about drinking egg nog. It’s about cookies hot from the oven with a cold glass of milk. It’s about Santa and bright lights on a white artificial tree when you always swore you’d have live trees but the girls sent by heaven to live with you thought the white was “pretty.” It’s about giving to the women’s shelter and to the homeless. It’s about picking up hitchhikers and adding three hours to your already six hour trip so that you can get strangers home to their family. It’s about watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” through misty eyes at the end and it’s kissing a loved one under the mistle toe.
Listen if you thought tonight’s happy story would be about a specific memory, I’ve got to tell you there are too many to choose from for me to pick just one.
So a toast to Tribbers everywhere: Merry Christmas and God bless us every one.
Santa Carnacki wishes you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
Peace – Longfellow hoped for it during the Civil War – we all pray for it this year as well.
Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year to you Carnacki. Thank you for reminding us that there are always happy stories waiting to be told.
I went with other cuz in recent years I’ve really liked Oh Night Divine. But of the listed choices Silent Night is probably the one for me.
O’Reilly is such a putz. Anyone whose Christmas is threatened by someone saying Happy Holidays hasn’t got much Christmas in them to begin with. Anyone whose Christianity is threatened by it hasn’t got any to begin with.
We buried my brother-in-law yesterday at Saratoga National Cemetery with a full Marine Honor Guard. It meant a lot to his father to have that.
This years Christmas is a very sad time but we will have our family gathering at my sisters house as planned and the following day everyone will come down to my place to celebrate my sons 20th birthday. I’d share a happy story but… family… that’s my happy story right now. Though it doesn’t feel very happy I know that it is.
Peace,
Andrew
to your family at this time of sorrow…I will hold you and yours in my prayers tomorrow evening…
Andrew C White,
Peace to you and your family.
wishing anyone a “Merry Christmas” prior to this weekend is extremely out of place for Christians…it would be like someone wishing me “Happy Birthday” in February (my birthday is early March — monetary gifts of any denomination gratefully accepted)…or even wishing someone a “Happy Easter” in the middle of Lent.
To me, the term “Happy Holidays” does not just encompass non-Christian traditions such as Chanukah, Kwanzaa, and others, but includes the very Christian tradition of Advent…with my holiday ambivalence, I sort of neglected Advent as a period of reflection and preparation…which probably contributed to the holiday ambivalence. ๐
So, as we finally leave Advent behind and approach Christmas Eve, let me be one of the first to wish you and yours a very blessed and peaceful Merry Christmas… ๐
that bring up the memories and this opportunity to share.
I too am a Christmas lover- and sorry Jesus, it has nothing to do with you-I never go to church.
I grew up in a big catholic family-7 siblings. Both parents worked full time and being the oldest daughter I had lots of responsibilities. But I always look on my childhood with delight. I had a great upbringing. Lots of fun, great memories and stability. My sister-14 months younger, thinks we grew up poor. We were not poor. We just had to share everything.
Anyways, my parents always gave their 8 children the best Christmas. The tree was FULL-with bikes, sleds, skates, toys clothes. Christmas was when we got our new underwear allotment for the year LOL! and most other clothing necessities, but it was also when we got that gift we most wanted-each of us. One of my best gifts ever was a turquoise radio-all mine. I think I was 12-so grown up and the Beatles were the rave, so I could now listen to the radio in the bedroom I shared with my 3 sisters.
We were fortunate that my mom knew how to save and budget. She always had a Christmas Club bank account. We always went on a two week summer vacation and she and my dad retired comfortably. She always earned more than my dad so to keep him the bread winner she would have funds taken out and put in various savings accounts so that her take home pay check registered less than my dad’s. His ego stayed intact and my mom stayed in control.
Another christmas I remember was when my older brother and I were just at the starting to not believe in Santa and with 6 younger siblings my folks were worried that we’d ruin it for them so my dad got up on the roof on that one christmas eve after us kids had gone to bed- and he stomped around while us kids laid in bed ‘listening’ to santa. My brother and I believed in santa for another couple of years.
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Remembrance from childhood: “Oh Tannenbaum” and the Dutch carol “de herdertjes lagen bij nachte“.
Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum,
wie grün sind deine Blätter!
Du grünst nicht nur zur Sommerszeit,
nein auch im Winter, wenn es schneit
Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum,
wie grün sind deine Blätter!
Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum,
du kannst mir sehr gefallen!
Wie oft hat nicht zur Weihnachtszeit,
ein Baum von dir mich hoch erfreut.
Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum,
du kannst mir sehr gefallen!
Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum,
dein Kleid will mich was lehren:
Die Hoffnung und Beständigkeit
gibt Trost und Kraft zu jeder Zeit.
Oh Tannenbaum, oh Tannenbaum,
dein Kleid will mich was lehren.
Wiener Sängerknaben
Have a Joyous and Inspiring Christmas day with all your loved ones nearby. We need to come together in our own circle of friends and family, to find the strength and faith to attack all evil in a very important NEW YEAR 2006!
Each and every candle I will light during the holidays, will be a reminder of all friends and other frogs here in the pond.
PEACE be to all!
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Some excerpts from “Oh Holy Night”
Long lay the world in sin and error pining
Till he appear’d and the soul felt its worth.
A thrill of hope the weary world rejoices
For yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!
Truly He taught us to love one another
His law is love and His gospel is peace
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His name all oppression shall cease.
This is my Christmas wish for all of you and for our family of humankind.
After much thought, I had to give up on your request for a happy story, but I wanted to mention that you neglected to include my all-time favorite Christmas carol: Little Drummer Boy.
I’ve heard so many complaints over the years that the Bing Crosby/David Bowie duet is in constant rotation during the holidays and people can’t stand to hear it one more time. Since I only listen to talk radio, my life isn’t touched by the frequency of song rotations, and I still treasure each time I hear Bing and Dave singing that lovely song that never fails to bring tears to my eyes.
I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,
Then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum
Me and my drum
Wishing peace, comfort, blessings and joy to all.
Good night . . .