Ghosts of Christmas Past

[Ya Sam]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wt1WT_yK52M





>From: Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
>To: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Ghosts of Christmas Past
>Date: Mon, 25 Dec 2006 10:31:54 -0800 (PST)
>
>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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