Ghosts of Christmas Past

[Dave Monroe]

From: FrodeauxB@[omitted]
Date: Tue, 21 Dec 1999 09:44:13 EST
Subject: Merry Christmas
To: pynchon-l@[omitted]

It is not necessary to understand things in order to
argue about them.--Pierre Augustin Caron de
Beaumarchais, French author and dramatist.

David

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9912&msg=43528

Date: Fri, 25 Dec 1998 13:02:21 -0500
From: "Terrance F. Flaherty" <Lycidas@[omitted]>
To: pynchon-l@[omitted]
Subject: Merry Christmas and Peace to All

Merry Christmas and Peace to ALL

This Christmastide of [1998],
with the War settled and the Nation bickering itself
into Fragments,
wounds bodily and ghostly, great and small, go aching
on,
not ev'ry one commemorated,-
nor, too often, even recounted....
for the Times are as impossible to calculate, this
Advent,
as the Distance to a Star.
                        -TRP-


Ich finde dich in allen diesen Dingen,
denen ich gut und wie ein Bruder bin;
als Samen sonnst du dich in den geringen
und in den groBen giebst du groB dich hin.

Das ist das wundersame Spiel der Krafte,
daB sie so dienend durch die Dinge gehn:
in Wurlzeln wachsend, schwindend in die Schafte
und in den Wipfeln wie ein Auferstehn.
                                    -RMR-

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all this way for
Birth or Death?  There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and
death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death...
I shoulf be glad of another death.
                            -TSE-

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=9812&msg=34737

Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2000 14:38:59 -0600
Subject: Santa Claus ain't coming ...
To: pynchon-l@[omitted]
From: Dave Monroe <monroe@[omitted]>

... to Puritan New England, at any rate.  From Stephen
Nissenbaum, The Battle for Christmas: A Cultural
History of America's Most Cherished Holiday (New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1996), Chapter 1, "New England's War
on Christmas," pp. 3-48 ...

In New England, for the first two centuries of white
settlement most people did not celbrate Christmas.  In
fact, the holiday was systematically suppressed by the
Puritans during the colonial period and largely
ignored by their descendents.  It was actually illegal
to
celebrate Christmas in Massachusetts between 1659 and
1681 ... (3)

Why?  What accounts for this strange hostility?  The
Puritans themselves had a plain reason for what they
tried to do, and it happens to be a perfectly good
one: There is no biblical or historical reason to
place
the birth of Jesus on December 25. (4)

It was only in the fourth century that the Church
officially decided to observe Christams on December
25.  And this date was chosen not for religious
reasons but simply because it ahppened to mark the
approximate arrival of the winter solstice, an event
that was celebrated long before the advent of
christianity.  The Puritans were correct when they
pointed out--and they pointed it out often--that
Christmas was nothing but a pagan festival covered
with a Christian veneer. (4)

But the Puriatns had another reason for suppressing
Christmas.  The holiday they suppressed was not what
we probably mean when we think of a traditional
Christmas.  As we shall see, it involved behavior that
most of us would find offensive and even shocking
today--rowdy public displays of excessive eating and
drinking, the mockery of established authority,
aggressive begging (often involving the threat of
doing harm), and even the invasion of wealthy homes.
(5)

[... actually, my guess would be that that is
precisely what many of us probably mean when we think
of our traditional Christmas, but ...]

CONT'D

http://waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l&month=0012&msg=51652

And see as well, e.g., ...

http://www.pitts.emory.edu/ResearchAssist/BIB/Christmas.html

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