Hark now hear, the angels sing

But first we have to sweep away the bah humbuggers

The Friday Letter / No. 472 / Dec. 24, 2021
Christmas Eve

Wintson Churchill and George Bernard Shaw were two crusty old curmudgeons known for their very public sparring. The story is told that Shaw once sent Churchill two tickets to the opening of one of his plays, with the note to “bring a friend, if you have one.” Churchill is said to have responded with words to this effect in a note: Can't make it opening night. Will attend the second night, if there is one.

Every year we look for an appropriate Christmas story for The Friday Letter, a story that warms the heart and gives hope to a weary world, just as the first Christmas story did more than 2,000 years ago. But we have to start this biting humbug piece of Shaw's, a very funny poke that we are confident will dissaude nobody from celebrating the birth of Christ in the true spirit.

from “An Atrocious Institution”

George Bernard Shaw

Like all intelligent people, I greatly dislike Christmas. It revolts me to see a whole nation refrain from music for weeks together in order that every man may rifle his neighbour's pockets under cover of a ghastly general pretence of festivity. It is really an atrocious institution, this Christmas.

We must be gluttonous because it is Christmas. We must be drunken because it is Christmas. We must be insincerely generous; we must buy things that nobody wants, and give them to people we don't like; we must go to absurd entertainments, that make even our little children satirical; we must writhe under venal officiousness from legions of freebooters, all because it is Christmas – that is, because the mass of the population, including the all powerful middle class tradesmen, depend on a week of license and brigandage, waste and intemperance to clear off its outstanding liabilities at the end of the year.

As for me, I shall fly from it all tomorrow or next day to some remote spot miles from a shop, where nothing worse can befall me than a serenade from a few peasants, or some equally harmless survival of medieval mummery, shyly proffered, not advertised, moderate in its expectations, and soon over. In town there is, for the moment, nothing for me or any honest man to do.

Christmas and Mary's little lamb

But now we turn to happier stories in the true spirit of Christmas.

Last Sunday, Pastor Rebecca Heber of the Oasis North American Lutheran Church in Lake Mary, Fla., recounted this story about the origin of the Christian version of “Mary Had a Little Lamb” by Marv and Marbeth Rosenthal. Some of the details come from Wikipedia, which is not a source for scholarly research, but the story is fit for Christmas even if some of the details might be sketchy.

“There are actually three different, through related, versions,” Pastor Heber begins. “We'll go with this one:

“The poem was first published in 1830, and is said to be based on an actual incident involving Mary Elizabeth Sawyer, a woman born in 1806 on a farm in Sterling, Massachusetts. In 1815, Mary, then nine, was helping her father with farm chores when they discovered a sickly newborn lamb in the sheep pen that had been abandoned by its mother.

“After a lot of pleading, Mary was allowed to keep the animal, although her father didn't hold out much hope for its survival. Against all odds, Mary managed to nurse the lamb back to health and, from the time it was able to walk about, Mary wrote, 'It would follow me anywhere, if I only called it.'

“Sometime later, Mary was heading to school with her brother when the lamb began following them. Once at the one-room schoolhouse they attended, Mary secreted her pet under the desk and covered her with a blanket. But when Mary was called to the front of the class to recite her lessons, the lamb popped out of its hiding place, and, much to her embarrassment but the merriment of her classmates, came loping up the aisle after her.

“The teacher shooed the lamb outside, where it then waited until Mary took her home during lunch. The next day, John Roulstone, a student a year or two older, handed Mary a piece of paper with a poem he'd written about the previous day's events. You know the words:

Mary lad a little lamb; its fleece was white as snow.

And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. It followed her to school one day,

And so the teacher turned it out.

But still it lingered near, and waited patiently about

Till Mary did appear.

“The poem became wildly popular in the mid-1880s after it was set to music, and was even the first audio recording in history when Thomas Edison recited it on his newly invented phonograph in 1877 in order to see if the machine actually worked. It did.”

See Pastor Heber's full sermon at oasischurchnalc.org)

The boy who laughed at Santa Claus

Ogden Nash

In Baltimore there lived a boy.
He wasn't anybody's joy.
Although his name was Jabez Dawes,
His character was full of flaws.

In school he never led his classes,
He hid old ladies' reading glasses,
His mouth was open when he chewed,
And elbows to the table glued.
He stole the milk of hungry kittens,
And walked through doors marked NO ADMITTANCE.
He said he acted thus because
There wasn't any Santa Claus.

Another trick that tickled Jabez
Was crying 'Boo' at little babies.
He brushed his teeth, they said in town,
Sideways instead of up and down.
Yet people pardoned every sin,
And viewed his antics with a grin,
Till they were told by Jabez Dawes,
'There isn't any Santa Claus!'

Deploring how he did behave,
His parents swiftly sought their grave.
They hurried through the portals pearly,
And Jabez left the funeral early.

Like whooping cough, from child to child,
He sped to spread the rumor wild:
'Sure as my name is Jabez Dawes
There isn't any Santa Claus!'
Slunk like a weasel of a marten
Through nursery and kindergarten,
Whispering low to every tot,
'There isn't any, no there's not!'

The children wept all Christmas eve
And Jabez chortled up his sleeve.
No infant dared hang up his stocking
For fear of Jabez' ribald mocking.

He sprawled on his untidy bed,
Fresh malice dancing in his head,
When presently with scalp-a-tingling,
Jabez heard a distant jingling;
He heard the crunch of sleigh and hoof
Crisply alighting on the roof.
What good to rise and bar the door?
A shower of soot was on the floor.

What was beheld by Jabez Dawes?
The fireplace full of Santa Claus!
Then Jabez fell upon his knees
With cries of 'Don't,' and 'Pretty Please.'
He howled, 'I don't know where you read it,
But anyhow, I never said it!'
'Jabez' replied the angry saint,
'It isn't I, it's you that ain't.
Although there is a Santa Claus,
There isn't any Jabez Dawes!'

Said Jabez then with impudent vim,
'Oh, yes there is, and I am him!
Your magic don't scare me, it doesn't'
And suddenly he found he wasn't!
From grimy feet to grimy locks,
Jabez became a Jack-in-the-box,
An ugly toy with springs unsprung,
Forever sticking out his tongue.

The neighbors heard his mournful squeal;
They searched for him, but not with zeal.
No trace was found of Jabez Dawes,
Which led to thunderous applause,
And people drank a loving cup
And went and hung their stockings up.

All you who sneer at Santa Claus,
Beware the fate of Jabez Dawes,
The saucy boy who mocked the saint.
Donner and Blitzen licked off his paint.

“Hark now hear, the angels sing,” from “Mary's Boy Child” by Jester Hairston, recorded by Harry Belefonte, 1993