by A. A. Milne
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Later on, far in the night, the person, or the influence, or whatever it is called Santa Claus, took all the presents and placed them in the people's stockings.
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And, being blind as he always has been, he gave the wrong things to the wrong people — in fact, he gave them just as indicated above.
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But the next day, in the course of Christmas morning, the situation straightened itself out, just as it always does.
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Indeed, by ten o'clock, Brown and Jones were playing the with train, and Mrs. Brown and Mrs. Jones were making dolls' clothes, and the boys were smoking cigarettes, and Clarisse and Ulvina were playing cards for their pocket-money.
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And upstairs — away up — Grandfather was drinking whisky and playing the Jew's harp.
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And so Christmas, just as it always does, turned out right after all.
The Two Christmas Celebrations, A.D. I. and MDCCCLV
Theodore Parker
The Two Christmas Celebrations, A.D. I. and MDCCCLV
A great many years ago, Augustus Cæsar, then Emperor of Rome, ordered his mighty realm to be taxed; and so, in Judea, it is said, men went to the towns where their families belonged, to be registered for assessment. From Nazareth, a little town in the north of Judea, to Bethlehem, another little but more famous town in the south, there went one Joseph, the carpenter, and his wife Mary,— obscure and poor people, both of them, as the story goes. At Bethlehem they lodged in a stable; for there were many persons in the town, and the tavern was full. Then and there a little boy was born, the son of this Joseph and Mary; they named him JEHOSHUA, a common Hebrew name, which we commonly call Joshua; but, in his case, we pronounce it Jesus. They laid him in the crib of the cattle, which was his first cradle. That was the first Christmas, kept thus in a barn, 1856 years ago. Nobody knows the day or the month; nay, the year itself is not certain.
After a while the parents went home to Nazareth, where they had other sons,—James, Joses, Simon, and Judas,— and daughters also; nobody knows how many. There the boy Jesus grew up, and it seems followed the calling of his father; it is said, in special, that he made yokes, ploughs, and other farm-tools. Little is known about his early life and means of education. His outside advantages were, no doubt, small and poor; but he learned to read and write, and it seems became familiar with the chief religious books of his nation, which are still preserved in the Old Testament.
At that time there were three languages used in Judea, beside the Latin, which was confined to a few officials: 1. The Syro-Chaldaic,— the language of business and daily life, the spoken language of the common people. 2. The Greek,— the language of the courts of justice and official documents; the spoken and written language of the foreign traders, the aristocracy, and most of the more cultivated people in the great towns. 3. The old Hebrew,— the written and spoken language of the learned, of theological schools, of the priests; the language of the Old Testament. It seems Jesus understood all three.
At that time the thinking people had outgrown the old forms of religion, inherited from their fathers, just as a little girl becomes too stout and tall for the clothes which once fitted her babyhood; or as the people of New England have now become too rich and refined to live in the rough log-cabins, and to wear the coarse, uncomfortable clothes, which were the best that could be got two hundred years ago. For mankind continually grows wiser and better,— and so the old forms of religion are always getting passed by; and the religious doctrines and ceremonies of a rude age cannot satisfy the people of an enlightened age, any more than the wigwams of the Pequod Indians in 1656 would satisfy the white gentlemen and ladies of Boston and Worcester in 1856. The same thing happens with the clothes, the tools, and the laws of all advancing nations. The human race is at school, and learns through one book after another,— going up to higher and higher studies continually. But at that time cultivated men had outgrown their old forms of religion,— much of the doctrine, many of the ceremonies; and yet they did not quite dare to break away from them,— at least in public. So there was a great deal of pretended belief, and of secret denial of the popular form of religion. The best and most religious men, it seems likely, were those who had least faith in what was preached and practised as the authorized religion of the land.
In the time of David, many years before the birth of Jesus, the Hebrew nation had been very powerful and prosperous; afterwards there followed long periods of trouble and of war, civil and domestic; the union of the tribes was dissolved, and many calamities befell the people. In their times of trouble, religious men said, “God will raise us up a great king like David, to defend and deliver us from our enemies. He will set all things right.” For the Hebrews looked on David as the Americans on Washington, calling him a “man after God’s own heart,”— that is, thinking him “first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.” Sometimes they called this expected Deliverer, the messiah, that is the anointed one,— a term often applied to a king or other great man. Sometimes it was thought this or that special man, a king, or general, would be the Messiah, and deliver the nation from its trouble. Thus, it seems, that once it was declared that King Hezekiah would perform this duty; and indeed CRYUS, a foreigner, a king of Persia, was declared to be the messiah, the Anointed One. But, at other times, they, who declared the Deliverer would come, seem to have had no particular man in their mind, but felt sure that somebody would come. At length the expectation of a Messiah became quite common; it was a fixed fact in the public opinion. But some thought the Deliverer, the Redeemer, the second David, would be one thing, some another; just as men now call their favorite candidate for the presidency a second Washington; but some think he will be a Whig, and support the Fugitive Slave Bill; some, a Democrat, and favor the enslavement of Kansas; while others are sure he will be a Republican, and prohibit the extension of Slavery; while yet others look for some Anointed Politician to abolish that wicked institution clear out of the land.
When the nation was in great peril, the people said, “the Messiah will soon come and restore all things;” but probably they had no very definite notion about the Deliverer or the work he was to do.
When Jesus was about thirty years old, he began to speak in public. He sometimes preached in the Meeting-Houses, which were called Synagogues,— but often out of doors, wherever he could gather the people about him. He broke away from the old established doctrines and forms. He was a come-outer from the Hebrew church. He told men that religion did not consist in opinions or ceremonies, but in right feelings and right actions; that goodness shown to men was worth more than sacrifice offered to God. In short he made Religion consist in Piety, which is Love to God, and Benevolence, which is Love to Men. He utterly forbid all vengeance, and told his followers “love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.” He taught that the soul was immortal,— a common opinion at that time,— and declared that men who had been good and kind here would be eternally happy hereafter, but the unkind and wicked would be cast “into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” He did not represent religion as a mysterious affair, the mere business of the priesthood, limited to the temple and the Sabbath, and the ceremonies thereof; it was the business of every day,— a great manly and womanly life.
Men were looking for the anointed, the Messiah, and waiting for him to come. Jesus said, “I am the Messiah; follow me in the religious life, and all will be well. God is just as near to us now, as of old time to Moses and Elias. A greater than Solomon is here. The Kingdom of Heaven, a good time coming, is close at hand!”
No doubt he made mistakes. He taught that there is a devil,— a being absolutely evil, who seeks to ruin all men; that the world would soon come to an end, and a new and extraordinary state would miraculously take place, in which his followers would be abundantly
rewarded, and his twelve most conspicuous friends would sit “sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Strange things were to happen in this good time which was coming. But spite of that, his main doctrine, which he laid most stress upon, was, that religion is piety and benevolence; for he made these the chief commandments,— “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
He went about in various part of the country, talking, preaching, lecturing, making speeches, and exhorting the people to love each other and live a noble, manly life,— each doing to all as he would wish them to do to him. He recommended the most entire trust in God. The people came to him in great crowds, and loved to hear him speak; for in those days nobody preached such doctrines,— or indeed any doctrines with such power to convince and persuade earnest men. The people heard him gladly, and followed him from place to place, and could not hear enough of him and his new form of religion,— so much did it commend itself to simple-hearted women and men. Some of them wanted to make him their king.
But while the people loved him, the great men of his time— the great Ministers in the Hebrew church, and the great Politicians in the Hebrew state— hated him, and were afraid of him. No doubt some of these ministers did not understand him, but yet meant well in their opposition; for if a man had all his life been thinking about the “best manner of circumcision,” or about “the mode of kneeling in prayer,” he would be wholly unable to understand what Jesus said about love to God and to man. But no doubt some of them knew he was right, and hated him all the more for that very reason. When they talked in their libraries, they admitted that they had no faith in the old forms of religion; but when they appeared in public they made broad their phylacteries, and enlarged the borders of their garments; and when they preached in their pulpits, they laid heavy burdens on men’s shoulders, and grievous to be borne. The same thing probably took place then which has happened ever since; and they who had no faith in God or man, were the first to accuse this religious genius with being an infidel!
So, one night they seized Jesus, tried him before daylight next morning, condemned him, and put him to death. The seizure, the trial, the execution, were not effected in the regular legal form,— they did not occupy more than twelve hours of time,— but were done in the same wicked way that evil men also used in Boston when they made Mr. Simms and Mr. Burns slaves for life. But Jesus made no resistance; at the “trial” there was no “defence;” nay, he did not even feel angry with those wicked men; but, as he hung on the cross, almost the last words he uttered were these,— “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Such wicked men killed Jesus, just as in Old England, three hundred years ago, the Catholics used to burn Protestants alive; or as in New England, two hundred years ago, our Protestant fathers hung the Quakers and whipped the Baptists; or as the Slaveholders in the South now beat an Abolitionist, or whip a man to death who insists on working for himself and his family, and not merely for men who only steal what he earns; or as some in Massachusetts, a few years ago, sought to put in jail such as speak against the wickedness of Slavery.
After Jesus was dead and buried, some of his followers thought that he rose from the dead and came back to life again within three days, and showed himself to a few persons here and there,— coming suddenly and then vanishing, as a “ghost” is said to appear all at once and then vanish, or as the souls of other dead men are thought to “appear” to the spiritualists, who do not, however, see the ghosts, but only hear and feel them. Very strange stories were told about his coming to men through closed doors, and talking with them,— just as in our time the “mediums” say the soul of Dr. Franklin, or Dr. Channing, or some great man comes and makes “spiritual communication.” They say, that at last, he “was parted from them, and carried up into heaven,” and “sat on the right hand of God.”
His friends and followers went about from place to place, and preached his doctrines; but gradually added many more of their own. They said that he was the Anointed, the Messiah, the Christ, who was foretold in the Old Testament, and that did strange things called Miracles; that at a marriage feast, where wine was wanted, he changed several barrels of water into wine of excellent quality; that he fed five thousand men with five loaves, walked on the water, opened the eyes, ears, and mouths of men born blind, deaf, and dumb, and at a touch or a word brought back a maimed limb. They called him a saviour, sent from God to redeem the Jews, and them only, from eternal damnation; next, said that he was the Saviour of all mankind,— Jews and Gentiles too; that he was a Sacrifice offered to appease the wrath of God, who had become so angry with his children that he intended to torment them all forever in hell. By and by his followers were calledChristians,— that is, men who took Jesus for the Christ of the Old Testament; and in their preaching they did not make much account of the noble ideas Jesus taught about man, God, and religion, or of his own great manly life; but they thought his death was the great thing,— and that was the means to save men from eternal torment. Then they went further, and declared that Jesus was not the son of Joseph and Mary, but the son of god and Mary,— miraculously born; next, that he was god’s only son, who had never had any child before, and never would have another; again, that he was a god who had lived long before Jesus was born, but for the then first time took the human form; and at last, that he was the only god, the Creator and Providence of all the universe; but was man also, thegod-man. Thus, gradually, the actual facts of his history were lost out of sight, overgrown with a great mass of fictions, poetic and other stories, which make him a mythological character; the Jesus of fact was well-nigh forgot,— the Christ of fiction took his place.
Well, after the death of Jesus, his followers went from town to town, from country to country, preaching “Christ and him crucified;” they taught that the world would soon end, for Jesus would come back and “judge the world,” raising the dead,— and then all who had believed in him would be “saved,” but the rest would be “lost forever;” a new world would take the place of the old, and the Christians would have a good time in that Kingdom of Heaven. This new “spiritual world” would contain some extraordinary things; thus, “every grape-vine would have ten thousand trunks, every trunk ten thousand branches, every branch ten thousand twigs, every twig ten thousand clusters, every cluster ten thousand grapes, and every grape would yield twenty-five kilderkins of wine.”
But everywhere they recommended a life of sobriety and self-denial, of industry and of kind deeds,— a life of religion. Everywhere the Christians were distinguished for their charity and general moral excellence. But the Jews hated them, and drove them away; the Heathens hated them, and put many to death with dreadful tortures; all the magistrates were hostile. But when the common people saw a man or a woman come out and die rather than be false to a religious emotion or idea, there were always some who said, “That is a strange thing,— a man dying for his God. There must be something in that religion! Let us also become Christians.” So the new doctrine spread wide; not the simple religion of Jesus,— piety and morality; but what his followers called Christianity,— a mixture of good and evil. In two or three hundred years it had gone round the civilized world. Other forms of religion fell to pieces, one by one. Judaism went down with the Hebrew people, Heathenism went down, and Christianity took heir place. The son of Joseph and Mary, born in a stable, and killed by the Jews, was worshipped as the only god all round the civilized world. The new form of religion spread very much as spiritualism has done in our time, only in the midst of worse persecution than the Mormons have suffered. At this day there are some two hundred and sixty millions of people who worship Jesus of Nazareth; most of them think he was God, the only God. But a small number of men believe that he was no God, no miraculous person, but a good man with a genius for religion. All the Christians think he was full of all manner of loving kindness and tender mercy. So all over the world to-day, among the two hundred
and sixty millions of Christians, there is great rejoicing on account of his birth, which it is erroneously supposed took place on the 25th of December, in the year one. They sing psalms, and preach sermons, and offer prayers, and make a famous holiday. But the greater part of the people think only of the festival, and very little of the noble boy who was born so long ago in a tavern-barn in Judea. And of all the ministers who talk so much about the old Christ, there are not many who would welcome a new man who should come and do for this age the great service which Jesus did for his own time. But, as on the Fourth of July, slaveholders, and border ruffians, and kidnappers, and men who believe there is no higher law, ring their bells, and fire their cannons, and let off their rockets, making more noise than all those who honor and defend the great Principles of Humanity which make Independence Day famous,— so on Christmas, not only religious people, but Scribes, and Pharisees, and Hypocrites make a great talk about “Christ and him crucified;” when, if a man of genius for religion were now to appear, they would be the first to call out “Infidel!” “Infidel!” and would kill him if it were possible or safe.
Well, one rainy Sunday evening, in 1855, just twelve days before Christmas, in the little town of Soitgoes, in Worcester County, Mass., Aunt Kindly and Uncle Nathan were sitting in their comfortable parlor before a bright wood-fire. It was about eight o’clock, a stormy night; now it snowed a little, then it rained, then snowed again, seeming as if the weather was determined on some kind of storm, but had not yet made up its mind for snow, rain, or hail. Now the wind roared in the chimney, and started out of her sleep a great tortoise-shell cat, that lay on the rug which Aunt Kindly had made for her. Tabby opened her yellow eyes suddenly, and erected her smellers, but finding it was only the wind and not a mouse that made the noise, she stretched out a great paw and yawned, and then cuddled her head down so as to show her white throat, and went to sleep again.