Carnival as another Baby Jesus con game

[Keith Davis]

Thank you.

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> On Dec 21, 2017, at 8:38 AM, Krafft, John M. <krafftjm at miamioh.edu> wrote:
> 
> Chapter X of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American
> Slave, WRITTEN BY HIMSELF contains the following anecdote.
> 
> The days between Christmas and New Year's day are allowed as holidays;
> and, accordingly, we were not required to perform any labor, more than
> to feed and take care of the stock. This time we regarded as our own,
> by the grace of our masters; and we therefore used or abused it nearly
> as we pleased. Those of us who had families at a distance, were
> generally allowed to spend the whole six days in their society. This
> time, however, was spent in various ways. The staid, sober, thinking
> and industrious ones of our number would employ themselves in making
> corn-brooms, mats, horse-collars, and baskets; and another class of us
> would spend the time in hunting opossums, hares, and coons. But by far
> the larger part engaged in such sports and merriments as playing ball,
> wrestling, running foot-races, fiddling, dancing, and drinking whisky;
> and this latter mode of spending the time was by far the most
> agreeable to the feelings of our masters. A slave who would work
> during the holidays was considered by our masters as scarcely
> deserving them. He was regarded as one who rejected the favor of his
> master. It was deemed a disgrace not to get drunk at Christmas; and he
> was regarded as lazy indeed, who had not provided himself with the
> necessary means, during the year, to get whisky enough to last him
> through Christmas.
>    From what I know of the effect of these holidays upon the slave, I
> believe them to be among the most effective means in the hands of the
> slaveholder in keeping down the spirit of insurrection. Were the
> slaveholders at once to abandon this practice, I have not the
> slightest doubt it would lead to an immediate insurrection among the
> slaves. These holidays serve as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry
> off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity. But for these,
> the slave would be forced up to the wildest desperation; and woe
> betide the slaveholder, the day he ventures to remove or hinder the
> operation of those conductors! I warn him that, in such an event, a
> spirit will go forth in their midst, more to be dreaded than the most
> appalling earthquake.
>    The holidays are part and parcel of the gross fraud, wrong, and
> inhumanity of slavery. They are professedly a custom established by
> the benevolence of the slaveholders; but I undertake to say, it is the
> result of selfishness, and one of the grossest frauds committed upon
> the down-trodden slave. They do not give the slaves this time because
> they would not like to have their work during its continuance, but
> because they know it would be unsafe to deprive them of it. This will
> be seen by the fact, that the slaveholders like to have their slaves
> spend those days just in such a manner as to make them as glad of
> their ending as of their beginning. Their object seems to be, to
> disgust their slaves with freedom, by plunging them into the lowest
> depths of dissipation. For instance, the slaveholders not only like to
> see the slave drink of his own accord, but will adopt various plans to
> make him drunk. One plan is, to make bets on their slaves, as to who
> can drink the most whisky without getting drunk; and in this way they
> succeed in getting whole multitudes to drink to excess. Thus, when the
> slave asks for virtuous freedom, the cunning slaveholder, knowing his
> ignorance, cheats him with a dose of vicious dissipation, artfully
> labelled with the name of liberty. The most of us used to drink it
> down, and the result was just what might be supposed; many of us were
> led to think that there was little to choose between liberty and
> slavery. We felt, and very properly too, that we had almost as well be
> slaves to man as to rum. So, when the holidays ended, we staggered up
> from the filth of our wallowing, took a long breath, and marched to
> the field, -feeling, upon the whole, rather glad to go, from what our
> master had deceived us into a belief was freedom, back to the arms of
> slavery.
>    I have said that this mode of treatment is a part of the whole system
> of fraud and inhumanity of slavery. It is so. The mode here adopted to
> disgust the slave with freedom, by allowing him to see only the abuse
> of it, is carried out in other things. …
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