Christmas at The New Yorker: Stories, Poems, Humor, and Art (Modern Library)

by New Yorker

  Who wouldn’t love the Norman coast for Christmas? Who hasn’t hoped for the Atlantic Wall, the impregnable? Here is the whole thing under the lighted tree. First the beaches (greetings from the Navy and the Coast Guard), then the cliffs, the fields behind the cliffs, the inland villages and towns, the key places, the hedgerows, the lanes, the houses, and the barns. Ste. Mère Eglise (with greetings from Omar Bradley and foot soldiers). This Norman cliff (best from the Rangers). St. Jacques de Nehou (from the 82nd Airborne Division, with its best). Cherbourg—street by street, and house by house. St. Remy des Landes, La Broquière, Baudreville, Neufmesnil, La Poterie, the railroad station at La Haye du Puits. And then St. Lô, and the whole vista of France. When have we received such presents? Saipan in the Marianas—only they forgot to take the price tag off. Saipan cost 9,752 in dead, wounded, and missing, but that includes a mountain called Tapotchau. Guam. “Merry Christmas from Conolly, Geiger, and the boys.” Tinian, across the way. Avranches, Gavray, Torigny-sur-Vire, a German army in full retreat under your tree. A bridge at Pontorson, a bridge at Ducey, with regards from those who take bridges. Rennes, capital of Brittany (our columns fan out). Merry Christmas, all! Brest, Nantes, St. Malo, a strategic fortress defended for two weeks by a madman. Toulon, Nice, St. Tropez, Cannes (it is very gay, the Riviera, very fashionable). And now (but you must close your eyes for this one) … Paris.

  Still the gifts come. You haven’t even noticed the gift of the rivers Marne and Aisne. Château-Thierry, Soissons (this is where you came in). Verdun, Sedan (greetings from the American First Army, greetings from the sons of the fathers). Here is a most unusual gift, a bit of German soil. Priceless. A German village, Roetgen. A forest south of Aachen. Liége, the Belfort Gap, Geilenkirchen, Crucifix Hill, Uebach. Morotai Island in the Halmaheras. An airport on Peleliu. Angaur (from the Wildcats). Nijmegen Bridge, across the Rhine. Cecina, Monteverdi, more towns, more villages on the Tyrrhenian coast. Leghorn. And, as a special remembrance, sixty-two ships of the Japanese Navy, all yours. Tacloban, Dulag, San Pablo … Ormoc. Valleys and villages in the Burmese jungle. Gifts in incredible profusion and all unwrapped, from old and new friends: gifts with a made-in-China label, gifts from Russians, Poles, British, French, gifts from Eisenhower, de Gaulle, Montgomery, Malinovsky, an umbrella from the Air Forces, gifts from engineers, rear gunners, privates first class … there isn’t time to look at them all. It will take years. This is a Christmas you will never forget, people have been so generous.

  1944

  To perceive Christmas through its wrapping becomes more difficult with every year. There was a little device we noticed in one of the sporting-goods stores—a trumpet that hunters hold to their ears so that they can hear the distant music of the hounds. Something of the sort is needed now to hear the incredibly distant sound of Christmas in these times, through the dark, material woods that surround it. “Silent Night,” canned and distributed in thundering repetition in the department stores, has become one of the greatest of all noisemakers, almost like the rattles and whistles of Election Night. We rode down on an escalator the other morning through the silent-nighting of the loudspeakers, and the man just in front of us was singing, “I’m gonna wash this store right outa my hair, I’m gonna wash this store …”

  The miracle of Christmas is that, like the distant and very musical voice of the hound, it penetrates finally and becomes heard in the heart—over so many years, through so many cheap curtain-raisers. It is not destroyed even by all the arts and craftiness of the destroyers, having an essential simplicity that is everlasting and triumphant, at the end of confusion. We once went out at night with coon-hunters and we were aware that it was not so much the promise of the kill that took the men away from their warm homes and sent them through the cold shadowy woods, it was something more human, more mystical—something even simpler. It was the night, and the excitement of the note of the hound, first heard, then not heard. It was the natural world, seen at its best and most haunting, unlit except by stars, impenetrable except to the knowing and the sympathetic.

  Christmas in 1949 must compete as never before with the dazzling complexity of man, whose tangential desires and ingenuities have created a world that gives any simple thing the look of obsolescence—as though there were something inherently foolish in what is simple, or natural. The human brain is about to turn certain functions over to an efficient substitute, and we hear of a robot that is now capable of handling the tedious details of psychoanalysis, so that the patient no longer need confide in a living doctor but can take his problems to a machine, which sifts everything and whose “brain” has selective power and the power of imagination. One thing leads to another. The machine that is imaginative will, we don’t doubt, be heir to the ills of the imagination; one can already predict that the machine itself may become sick emotionally, from strain and tension, and be compelled at last to consult a medical man, whether of flesh or of steel. We have tended to assume that the machine and the human brain are in conflict. Now the fear is that they are indistinguishable. Man not only is notably busy himself but insists that the other animals follow his example. A new bee has been bred artificially, busier than the old bee.

  So this day and this century proceed toward the absolutes of convenience, of complexity, and of speed, only occasionally holding up the little trumpet (as at Christmastime) to be reminded of the simplicities, and to hear the distant music of the hound. Man’s inventions, directed always onward and upward, have an odd way of leading back to man himself, as a rabbit track in snow leads eventually to the rabbit. It is one of his more endearing qualities that man should think his tracks lead outward, toward something else, instead of back around the hill to where he has already been; and it is one of his persistent ambitions to leave earth entirely and travel by rocket into space, beyond the pull of gravity, and perhaps try another planet, as a pleasant change. He knows that the atomic age is capable of delivering a new package of energy; what he doesn’t know is whether it will prove to be a blessing. This week, many will be reminded that no explosion of atoms generates so hopeful a light as the reflection of a star, seen appreciatively in a pasture pond. It is there we perceive Christmas—and the sheep quiet, and the world waiting.

  1949

  “Oh dear! And we didn’t send them a card!”

  (photo credit 23.2)

  THE SPIRIT

  A man we’ve heard of, an aging codger who is obviously bucking for the post of permanent honorary Santa Claus in his community (which shall be nameless here), sends one or two unsigned Christmas cards to a number of younger people there—the kind who are inclined to worry about whether they will receive Christmas greetings from their professional or social idols. “They sent this card and forgot to sign it,” he pictures them telling themselves happily.

  —CARROLL NEWMAN AND ST. CLAIR McKELWAY, 1961

  From this high midtown hall, undecked with boughs, unfortified with mistletoe, we send forth our tinselled greetings as of old, to friends, to readers, to strangers of many conditions in many places. Merry Christmas to uncertified accountants, to tellers who have made a mistake in addition, to girls who have made a mistake in judgment, to grounded airline passengers, and to all those who can’t eat clams! We greet with particular warmth people who wake and smell smoke. To captains of river boats on snowy mornings we send an answering toot at this holiday time. Merry Christmas to intellectuals and other despised minorities! Merry Christmas to the musicians of Muzak and men whose shoes don’t fit! Greetings of the season to unemployed actors and the blacklisted everywhere who suffer for sins uncommitted; a holly thorn in the thumb of compilers of lists! Greetings to wives who can’t find their glasses and to poets who can’t find their rhymes! Merry Christmas to the unloved, the misunderstood, the overweight. Joy to the authors of books whose titles begin with the word “How” (as though they knew)! Greetings to people with a ringing in their ears; greetings to growers of gourds, to shearers of sheep, and to makers of change in the lonely underground boo
ths! Merry Christmas to old men asleep in libraries! Merry Christmas to people who can’t stay in the same room with a cat! We greet, too, the boarders in boarding houses on 25 December, the duennas in Central Park in fair weather and foul, and young lovers who got nothing in the mail. Merry Christmas to people who plant trees in city streets; Merry Christmas to people who save prairie chickens from extinction! Greetings of a purely mechanical sort to machines that think—plus a sprig of artificial holly. Joyous Yule to Cadillac owners whose conduct is unworthy of their car! Merry Christmas to the defeated, the forgotten, the inept; joy to all dandiprats and bunglers! We send, most particularly and most hopefully, our greetings and our prayers to soldiers and guardsmen on land and sea and in the air—the young men doing the hardest things at the hardest time of life. To all such, Merry Christmas, blessings, and good luck! We greet the Secretaries-designate, the President-elect: Merry Christmas to our new leaders, peace on earth, good will, and good management! Merry Christmas to couples unhappy in doorways! Merry Christmas to all who think they’re in love but aren’t sure! Greetings to people waiting for trains that will take them in the wrong direction, to people doing up a bundle and the string is too short, to children with sleds and no snow! We greet ministers who can’t think of a moral, gagmen who can’t think of a joke. Greetings, too, to the inhabitants of other planets; see you soon! And last, we greet all skaters on small natural ponds at the edge of woods toward the end of afternoon. Merry Christmas, skaters! Ring, steel! Grow red, sky! Die down, wind! Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morrow!

  1952

  As Christmas draws near, there seems to be less peace on the earth of the Holy Land than practically anywhere else, and we therefore wish an extra portion of good will to all who live beneath the Star of Bethlehem. We wish a surcease of rancor to the angry, a sackful of restraint to the hotheaded, and to everybody a moratorium on political debts. Our merriest Christmas wishes go to those whose lives have been harried by holiday preliminaries: to the novice skaters at Rockefeller Center, forced to take their lessons before so unusually many challenging eyes; to Salvation Army tuba players on Fifth Avenue, manfully making their music despite the double jeopardy of cold lip and jostled elbow; to a temporary saleswoman we saw at Saks with tears in her eyes and the book “Creatures of Circumstance” tucked under her arm; to a bulky, mink-clad lady we bumped into on Madison Avenue, who (a prep-school mother?) was trying to look as if she habitually walked around carrying a brace of hockey sticks; to the girl in the Barton’s candy ad, nibbling self-consciously on a chocolate Christmas card; and to a young man we watched directing pedestrian traffic in front of the Lord & Taylor show windows (he was wearing a crash helmet, and we hope he survived). Our especially sympathetic regards go to those anonymous bulwarks of industry, the people who clean up offices after office parties. May they all find a bottle of Christmas cheer cached behind a filing cabinet!

  We wish a Merry Christmas to the man in the moon, and also to an enterprising Long Island man who has been selling earth dwellers lots on the moon. (A Happy Light-Year to his customers.) Merry Christmas and congratulations to the ninety-two-year-old doctor to whom the Army—which now has forty-one generals of a rank equal to or higher than the loftiest attained by George Washington—has just given a reserve promotion from captain to major. Merry Christmas to Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, who has turned sixty-five, and may he, too, make the grade ere long. Merry Christmas, when it comes to that, to the Army, which has indulgently permitted a pfc. in Korea to retain ownership of some land he impulsively bought there, for the establishment of an orphanage.

  THAT’S TOO BAD DEPARTMENT

  [Headline in the Saratogian]

  CHRISTMAS CALLED NOEL IN PARIS, SARATOGIAN WHO RESIDED THERE SAYS.

  1938

  Merry Christmas to all orphans and strays everywhere, including our dog, who vanished last week. May somebody throw her a bone. Merry Christmas to all the defenders of lost and little causes, among them an animal-loving outfit beguilingly called Defenders of Furbearers. (Merry Christmas to furriers, too.) Merry Christmas to all the institutions endowed by the Ford Foundation, and a particularly rollicking Noël to one beneficiary—the hard-pressed hospital that reluctantly closed its doors on December 1st, never dreaming that succor was imminent. (What delightful evidence that Santa comes only when your eyes are shut!) Merry Christmas to the Foundation’s controversial offspring, the Fund for the Republic, which is under considerable political attack at the moment and has just diplomatically added two offspring of literary men to a panel of judges for a TV-program contest it is sponsoring—Robert A. Taft, Jr., whose father wrote “A Foreign Policy for Americans,” and Philip Willkie, whose father wrote “One World.” Merry Christmas to one world, including all Germanys, all Koreas, all Vietnams, all Chinas, and both Inner and Outer Mongolia.

  1955

  (photo credit 23.3)

  SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

  SALLY BENSON

  Margaret Cummings lifted the large copper bowl, filled with unopened Christmas cards, from the living-room table and carried it over to a bridge table that stood in front of the couch. “Now, then,” she said, setting the bowl down.

  Mr. Cummings, who was sitting on the couch, put aside a copy of the Saturday Evening Post and sighed. “Are you going to check them with your list?” he asked.

  “Certainly I’m going to check them with my list. I always do. At least, you can check them as I read them to you. There’s no sense in keeping people on your list when they don’t remember you. And if we find we’ve forgotten someone, we can still get a card in the mail tonight. The list is on my desk.”

  Mr. Cummings got up and went over to the desk. He was a small, slender man who was untouched by the gaiety of the season. And although, after dinner, he had helped his wife trim their tree, he had done so with a sort of mathematical precision, interested only in the technical details of the business. He had fastened the tree firmly in its stand, tested the lights, straightened the wires on the ornaments, and unwound the tinsel. The twenty Christmases he had lived through since his marriage had left him with a mild distaste for red and green ribbons, tissue paper, Christmas seals, and the smell of spruce trees.

  “It’s under the blotter,” Mrs. Cummings said. She pulled a straight chair up to the bridge table and sat down. “You might bring that letter-opener, too.”

  Mr. Cummings brought the letter-opener and the list and sank back on the couch again. “All set?”

  “This looks like an ad,” Mrs. Cummings said, holding up a square white envelope. She slit it open and her face fell. “It’s from Chris. Chris Panagakos. Why, I feel terribly about it. I haven’t bought a thing there for months, not since I decided to pay cash and go to the A. & P.” She ran her finger lightly over the card. “It’s engraved, too. And in very good taste. Really, in very good taste. It just says ‘Compliments of the Season’ and ‘Panagakos Brothers.’ ”

  “Well,” Mr. Cummings said, fingering the list, “do you want to send them a card or don’t you?”

  “Of course not. I’ll just stop in and buy some little thing. Here’s one from the Archer girls. You know, Bobby Archer’s sisters. I suppose that’s intended to be Mattie Archer carrying that boar’s head. Any of the Archers would drop dead on a mouthful of boar’s head with their stomachs. Why, Mattie Archer is ridden with ulcers. Ridden with them.”

  “O.K.,” Mr. Cummings said. “They check.”

  YULETIDE SPEAKEASY SCENE

  Policeman enters, goes up to bar, and says heartily to owner: “Merry Christmas.” Owner punches “No Sale” key on cash register, takes out bill, hands it to policeman, and says, not quite so heartily: “Merry Christmas.” Policeman exits to continue his rounds.

  —HAROLD ROSS, 1930

  “Goodness!” Mrs. Cummings exclaimed. “This one’s written all over, like a letter. It says, ‘Angus is in high school and Barbara is continuing her studies at St. Mary’s. We all hope to go East next summer.’ Why, it’s from th
is girl I went to college with. This girl was a girl—I hate to say this, but—well, she was crazy. Not exactly crazy, but odd. And why she would ever think I would give a hoot about what her children are doing I’m sure I can’t say. Helen Smosely was her name. Did you ever hear of anything like it? And it’s a good thing she signed it ‘Helen Smosely Martin,’ because if she’d signed it ‘Helen Martin,’ I wouldn’t have known who she was from a hole in the ground. Put her down for next year, Bill, because she’s in Detroit and if I send her a card tonight, she’ll know I just did it because I got one from her.”

  Mr. Cummings took the card and copied the name and address from it carefully.

  “I can’t get over it,” Mrs. Cummings said. “Helen Smosely. She probably got my address from the Alumni Quarterly. Here’s a card from those friends of yours in New Mexico—the Ryans. I sent them one on your account. Look, their card has a swastika on it. Not very appropriate, considering. You’d think they’d realize how people might feel about swastikas, although I suppose, living in New Mexico, they still think of them in the old way.” She shook her head. “Helen Smosely. Here’s one from the Burchells. It ends, ‘There is laughter everywhere, And the shouts of little children fill the wintry air.’ Although I don’t see how they would know when they haven’t any little children and never did have. I don’t believe people can read the verses on the cards they buy or they’d never buy them. I thought ours looked nice this year, didn’t you, Bill?”

  Mr. Cummings put one hand to his forehead and frowned. “Let’s see—”

  “Oh, Bill!” Margaret Cummings laughed. “You’ve forgotten. If that isn’t too funny! Wait until I tell Frannie. You just about slay her anyway. It was the photograph of our fireplace that we took last Christmas. Remember how pretty the fireplace looked last Christmas? And I must say I think it was smart of me to have it photographed and plan so far ahead.”