THE MERRY CHRIST
Mayer, Milton
Of Men and of Angels The Merry Christ By MILTON MAYER Silent night, holy night. (Prices Up, Stores Jammed.) All is still, (Says Sales Top '48.) All is bright. (Last-minute Gift Rush.) 'Round yon...
...But will there be a next Christmas...
...The Russians do not believe in God, but blasphemy is worse than disbelief...
...No," said Mommy, "not that...
...Round yon Virgin Mother and Child...
...The Christmas Gift was the gift of substance, and not of surplus...
...The Federal Council of Churches in Christ is agitating for the de-commercialization of Christmas...
...Gosh," I said...
...Sleep in heavenly peace, (Xmas Biz Turns '49 Tide...
...The neighbors...
...I'll sing it to you," said Dicken, "it's a song on the radio...
...And everyone else celebrates Christmas...
...In the zeal of the Lord of hosts...
...But for those who believe that it was the only event of its kind in history, as for those who believe that the greatest of rabbis, was born that day, the joy is in men's hearts, overflowing in prayer, in song, in giving, and in love...
...Mommy has a penchant for things like that...
...Christ was not born for any of this, and we mock Him on His birthday as the Romans mocked Him on His death day...
...The evergreen boughs symbolized the continuing life of the ground...
...It is, to be sure, an occasion of joy, of "great joy," as it says in the Book...
...Holy Infant, (Toy Counters Cleaned Out...
...And then I told Mommy, and Mommy and I sat and thought it over...
...And may God have mercy on my soul and give little four-year-old Dicken his two front teeth...
...Fourteen centuries earlier, to the day, Origen denounced the idea of keeping the birthday of Christ "as if he were a king Pharaoh...
...But when we give them presents, they grow up with a sense of guilt anyway...
...so week and so mild, (Slays Hubby...
...Christmas buying shows confidence that there will be still more Christmas buying next Christmas, and still more the one after that...
...Confidence...
...Condemned as we are, we Jews, to become paganized along with the Christians, we still decline to mock our Holy Days...
...Because they were wont to sacrifice oxen to devils," says the Venerable Bede, telling of Pope Gregory the Great's instructions to his missionaries, "some celebration should be given in exchange for this . . . they should celebrate a religious feast and worship God by their feasting, so that still keeping outward pleasures, they may more readily receive spiritual joys...
...The Christmas Gift was a sacrifice, and Christ was not a Merry Man...
...We have the confidence of a Chinese gong, and a Nationalist Chinese gong at that...
...And will they be happy if their stockings are filled...
...We forgot it was Christmas," said Mommy...
...Ill In Holland, St...
...The Christmas Tree was planted at Calvary and is all men's for the asking, and it doesn't cost six dollars or six-tenths of a CARE package...
...Or are they...
...And then Mommy said, "We forgot, too...
...America's own peculiar contribution to the merriment, not all the lights of Fifth Avenue, State Street, and Market are bright enough to illuminate the poor little Stranger, Naked in the manger...
...Kelly doesn't need what we have left over...
...should mock His birthday...
...And in any case we have no right to impose our own sense of guilt on our little ones...
...And what do you want for next Christmas...
...btt was the only begotten Son of God...
...If the Russians conquer America within the next year, they may succeed in saving us from Communism by saving us from celebrating Christmas...
...How, I wondered, will we ever save Dicken now...
...a God Who needed nothing that men could give except their love of one another...
...The Chamber of Commerce wouldn't stand for it...
...The world...
...And as Christmas Biz has gone up, Christian Biz has gone down, and when you look far enough beneath the Christian Biz of a Marshall Plan, you will find a little Christmas Biz even under that one...
...And then: "What did He give me this Christmas...
...The trees get bigger and more expensive—the Mayers got a nice one for six dollars, or six-tenths of a CARE package— and the decorations get gaudier and more expensive, and the candle that lit the way to the manger gives way to bulbs at 45 cents apiece for the new neon nifties...
...Right through to the glorious morning itself, which we celebrate, dragging our little ones down along with us, with our hands outstretched to snatch a present from the Christ-child...
...Leaves Him Under Yule Tree...
...Our Feast of Lights, our Passover, our New Year's Day, and our Day of Atonement may not mean anything more to us now than an empty ceremony, but, by golly, it's a quiet empty ceremony, and the Christians have converted the birth of Christ into a debauch...
...Nicholas Day, on December 6, is a day of merriment and feasting and the giving of presents, and the birthday of Jesus Christ on December 25 is a day of worship...
...What we forgot was a Christmas present for Mrs...
...In the coming of the Messiah...
...Christmas is a blasphemy...
...she needs what we haven't got to spare...
...The old folks...
...The Christmas tree was, a la Gregory, devised by Boniface as a substitute for sacrifices to Odin's sacred oak...
...Give—so that you won't get bombed...
...All the old standbys, the standard alibis for crucifying Christ in season and out, on His birthday and on ours...
...The blasphemy will creep back as long as men are pagans, just as sin will, but that is no reason why the Christians should not denounce it and disengage themselves from its practice...
...I asked...
...As individuals—unless, like me, we remember ourselves and forget Mrs...
...What would we do if we had no children to sin for, or no old folks or neighbors or world to sin for...
...The mockery of Christ is a Christian affair...
...The cause of Communism is the Christmas of a false and faithless people...
...Christmas is a racket, a hissing and abomination...
...The Christmas Gift was not to our past or future allies, but to all men, to the just and the unjust, because all men were needy...
...What is given to us on Christmas, we can give, if it is Jesus Christ's birthday we celebrate, to Mrs...
...Kelly, the scrublady...
...I know," I said, knowing Mommy's penchant for things like that...
...so that cases of whiskey should be given to customers by way of rebate...
...We Jews, we string along with the Christians in their mockery, just as we string along with them in all their vilenesses...
...Christmas without Christ can not be decommercialized...
...The Christians who now give for a quid pro quo once believed that Christmas was the birth of the beloved Son Whom God gave to the world, to the thankless as well as the thankful, without a quid pro quo...
...The perversion of joy to merriment was a purely pagan instinct, as is everything else that is left of Christmas...
...6-Year-Old Shot in Xmas Eve Tavern Holdup...
...We did forget, didn't we...
...It has often been suggested that if we can't civilize ourselves in America, we can at least separate our pagan from our Christian ritual, like the Dutch, the French, and the Scotch...
...So we celebrate the birth of Christ without hearing the herald angels sing, and the mummery and superstition from which Christian civilization saved the world is all that is left of Christmas, and in the howling wilderness of commercialism...
...When the birth of Christ was fixed on December 25—though it probably occurred in January, March, or October—it coincided with the winter solstice, when the pagans of Egypt, Persia, and Rome threw their saturnalias as a tribute to the god of plenty and the northern pagans lit their great fires to revive the waning strength of the sun-god...
...But Christmas came back, and Charles Lamb was able to write in 1827, "Old Christmas is coming, to the confusion of Puritans, Muggleton-ians, Anabaptists, Quakers, and that unwassailing crew...
...What other children all get presents...
...I forget...
...Give—so that they won't turn Communist...
...Biggest Christmas in History...
...His articles appear in Harper's, Life, Negro Digest, and other magazines...
...They are too young to understand...
...A civilization which does not believe that a Son was begotten by a non-existent God will not come and adore Him...
...Christ is good for Biz...
...The glad tidings of plenty for everybody with plenty of money begin now immediately after Thanksgiving—which we pagans celebrate on our stomachs instead of our kneel —and ring out right through to the cutting of the price on the last misshapen Christmas tree and the last midnight prayer against the January inventory in the executive offices of Macy's, Field's, and the Emporium...
...so that stores should double their detective forces for a month...
...On Christmas night I was putting little Dicken to bed...
...The blasphemy has now reached —and passed—the point where the Puritans forbade its celebration in 1644...
...My friends, there is one thing worse than Communism, and that is the cause of Communism...
...In France and in Scotland, they work off their merriment and feasting and giving of presents on New Year's Day, which no one pretends has any significance, and the birthday of Jesus Christ on December 25 is a day of worship...
...Xmas Biz Turns '49 Tide...
...Christmas buying shows confidence in what...
...But in our hearts we are horrified that the Christians, who believe that this Rabbi of RabMILTON MAYER, special representative of the Great Books Foundation and visiting lecturer at Cleveland College, Is also a lecturer for the American Friends Service Committee, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the lewish Peace Foundation...
...In man's redemption...
...The other children all get presents...
...so that the poor should be remembered once a year, or forgotten even then...
...The Puritan complaint was that Christmas merriment, no evil in itself, had driven Christmas worship out of men's hearts...
...and sin no more...
...And she's the one who needs things so badly...
...so that children should ask Santa Claus, and not God, for their blessings, and talk and think about nothing but getting something from someone else, and then get more than is good for them, and then squawk because the kid next door got even more...
...If we are Jews, we can celebrate the birthday of the Rabbi Jesus by listening to His words on His birthday, and, on the other 364 days of the year, by denying ourselves, taking up our cross, and following Him...
...All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.' " I had one last laugh left in me that night, and I laughed it...
...Oh," said Dicken, all of four...
...sleep in heavenly peace...
...But they are good alibis, all of them, and how well we know them all, and how fondly we caress them...
...Dicken, all of four now and full of beans, was going to bed like the good little boy he is...
...It is not succeeding, and it will not succeed...
...There is war on earth and bad will toward men, because men have confidence in Christmas Biz...
...Kelly, not when it is old and broken and frayed and patched, but on Christmas day, when it is new...
...Give—so that they can buy...
...so that the outlay for Christmas cards should exceed the outlay for CARE packages...
...Abolition is the only answer to the blasphemy of Christmas, as the Puritans discovered...
...But you get those from God," I said...
...it has got to be abolished...
...Like all other sins, it can not be reformed...
...The children...
...Christ was not a merry Man, and the Mass of Christ is not a merry occasion...
...As for our children— Ay, there's the rub...
...If blasphemers are going to celebrate it, they ought to celebrate it on Good Friday, when they have reason to...
...Gregory was nobody's fool, but he seems to have supposed that, in the end, the spiritual joys would outweigh the outward pleasures and the pagans, once they were Christians, would worship God with or without an ox joint under their belts...
...But it took 20th Century America to drive the merriment along with the worship out of men's hearts, and substitute greed for the gluttony that shocked the Puritans...
...Ours won't be happy if their stockings are left empty...
...If it will join me in demanding the abolition of Christmas, I will abolish Christmas in my home in 1950...
...I will make a deal with the Federal Council of Churches...
...We can, as individuals, still give at Christmas, but, if it is the birth of Jesus Christ we are celebrating, we must give of ourselves, of our life and of our blood, and not of our surplus...
...The Christmas greenery was pagan, originating with the Romans, the Druids, and the Saxons...
...I went downstairs saying sadly, "I forget what He gave me this Christmas...
...II In the end the pagans have overcome the Christians, and what is left of Christmas is the pagan rites with which it was inadvertently associated in the beginning...
...But Christ was not a Merry Man, but what Santa Claus brings is just what Christ said we could best do without...
...Christ was not born so that we might live like this, so that a church-going friend of mine might summarize his Christmas Eve-Christmas Day activities by saying, "Got drunk, went to Mass, went to sleep, got up, went to Mass, got drunk, went to sleep...
...We would go...
...Kelly, the scrublady—we can any of us extricate ourselves from the blasphemy any time we want to...
...Christmas Buying Shows Confidence...
...Christ was not born so that we should buy and sell...
...If we are Christians, we can be filled with the joy of knowing that as the world was lost through one man's sin it is saved by one man's grace...
...There isn't a chance...
...The Christmas Gift was the gift of love, and not of habit, reciprocation, or even duty...
Vol. 14 • February 1950 • No. 2
