1940 is coming to a close. There was one last episode of Fibber and Molly which I’ll be posting next week. But since this is Christmas Day I thought it would be appropriate to feature this 1938 Christmas broadcast of the Johnson’s Wax Program featuring Fibber McGee and Company, or Jim Jordan without his then ailing wife, Marion. Yes, Molly took a portion of ’38 and all of ’39 off. These programs are terrifically funny, and the ratings were not too shabby, but it really is a different program without that famous chemistry. McGee is in top form, but his wife – sometimes disguising herself cleverly in the role of ‘the sensible one’ – actually aided and abetted McGee in his gleefully destructive schemes. (If you listen with that in mind, you’ll see it.) The programs lacking her, funny as they may have been, made audiences all the more eager to have her back.
I’ve got all of 1941 ready to go. It’s a big year. Harold Peary leaves the program to start the first-ever spin-off, “The Great Guildersleeve,” and the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. Fibber and Molly will also lose Bill Thompson, and four or five characters along with him, as the multi-voiced talent leaves to join the War effort. Gayle Gordon will join the program. TV fans will remember him from “The Lucy Show.” The ensemble will also be joined by Arthur Q. Bryant. As I say, it’s a big year with lots of changes, but the rough one-take live audience style of the Johnson’s Wax Program remains – and that’s a good thing.
The big event of ’41 in the Fibber and Molly universe was their co-starring role in the film comedy, “Look Who’s Laughing,” which also starred Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Several shows in the middle of the season are written around the Wistful Vista premiere of that picture, and Bergen memorably appears in those.
We were busy on Christmas Eve, as you may imagine. It was a day for chores that did not seem in any way like chores. Perhaps if Mom had phrased it that way we would have been less enthusiastic about doing them, perhaps not. But the house had to be cleaned, and then cleaned again after the mess we made decorating. The stockings, as you know, were the only evidence thus far that Christmas was coming in our household – that and the Advent Wreath. We strung a long plastic garland of holly up through the stair banister. As I’ve already mentioned, it was Christmas Eve we would get the tree. For at least three years we dug a live one. I know that because there are at least three massive pine trees that began as Christmas trees growing on the property still. Other decorations included wreaths, the usual ornamentia. It was really all about that antique Nativity scene it became my job to retrieve from the cellar – that, and the tree. In any event, it was an all-day affair.
No, we did not possess a single ornament or decoration depicting Santa Claus. It was not as though my parents deliberately left the jolly old geezer out. They didn’t. The reason there was no Santa Claus in our house was simple: there wasn’t yet any such person when our ornaments and decorations were made. Many were turn-of-the-century pieces, the older ones. Most of our Christmas stuff was my grandfather’s, which he purchased probably some time in the mid 1920’s. Santa didn’t make his appearance until ’31. I’ve written of my suspicions that the Three Kings were new – ish, well because their predecessors had gotten lost on their way across the living room to Bethlehem. That garland of plastic holly I think might have been bought by Mom and Dad, perhaps to celebrate their first Christmas with me as a baby. That would have been 1962. The time period I am remembering is roughly ’65 through perhaps 1980. I was in college by then, but I was the oldest of three. I don’t believe we bought anything new in that time. There was no need.
It was fifteen years that defined Christmas, what it was, what it was for. Contained in every aspect of our Christmas observance was the reason why.
The main event of Christmas Eve was the vigil mass, which in those days really was held at around 11 P.M. Just try to find a Catholic church these days that schedules mass for later than 9. Perhaps you fortunate readers in the larger cities still have such a thing. Well, I don’t know that I could stay awake anymore. And I don’t know how Mom and Dad did it. They were made of heartier stuff, perhaps. But, asking five year-olds to hold lit tapers (candles) in a very crowded church at midnight can be a little… dangerous. I think children under 12 have to wear shin guards and plastic helmets today if they are going to be participating in a candlelight vigil.
In a booster seat.
On antibiotics.
Well, I lit a lady’s hair on fire one memorable Christmas Eve. She was sitting in the pew in front of ours, and I would fidget of course. To make matters worse, all that stuff you ladies used to put in your hair to make it resemble something not heard-of in nature was highly flammable. Good will prevailed in the aftermath, needless to say, and the paramedics were really very nice. Yes, I am exaggerating. First time ever.
Apart from that singular incident, our Christmas Eve was a non-violent celebration. We retuned home, and straight to bed. Our tree was by that time fully trimmed, the scene of Our Lord’s Birth on its shelf beneath it, The Kings on the mantel, following yonder star. We reeked of frankincense, as you can imagine. Or, perhaps you can’t. It’s too bad if you can’t. What do they say about Catholic liturgies? – Smells and Bells. It stayed in the nose for a very long time.
I can hear bells!
We took off our shoes and socks, and we got into our pajamas. Dad stoked the fire back up. I used to wonder why. And the answer is of course they would be awake together – Mom and Dad – for several hours more. As excited as we were, we were also too exhausted to do anything but sleep. Beside our beds upon our night tables were the little mangers made of popsicle sticks and filled with straw, one for each of our good deeds, to make a comfortable bed for Baby Jesus.
As we did every night, we said our prayers. I used to think that prayers worked like radio signals, and now I know they are more like birds. But when I made the Sign of the Cross I believed that I was opening the channel on a particular wavelength – my own special wavelength – so that God could hear me. When I finished praying I would make the Sign again, that second one the equivalent of saying “Over and out.” Sometimes – although this would happen later – I would lie in bed wondering if I had remembered to sign off. Perhaps I was beginning to think some thoughts I didn’t want God to hear. But that’s what I believed. Oh, I knew it wasn’t true in the lowest level of sense – the factual, material one, but I knew it was true on the other level. I’ll call it the Christmas level. On Christmas every thought that came into my mind was a thought I wanted God to hear. I want that to be true today, as true today as it was true then. On Christmas Eve every wavelength on the Earth is open wide.
I’m thinking about Christmas and War because today is the day I have it in my schedule to visit a few large department stores to purchase the two Christmas presents that constitute the whole of my Christmas list. You might be saying well, at least it’s not Christmas Eve ten minutes before the stores close, and you would be right. It is the day before Christmas Eve. But my experience of late Christmas shopping has been quite the opposite of the cliché madness which is depicted on television where people wrestle each other for that last gift on the shelf. I do this every year, and every year I have found that when I wish everybody I meet a Merry Christmas they wish Merry Christmas back to me and joy prevails.
Earlier this week Fibber McGee and Molly gave each other a farewell kiss before charging into the fray at the Bon Ton department store to purchase a new radio phonograph. That program was made in 1940. Christmas shopping chaos is obviously not a brand new phenomenon.
We won a decisive victory during the American Revolution by mounting a sneak attack on Christmas Eve while the enemy was in his cups, celebrating. At other times the highest holy day in Western Civilization has been observed as a day of cease fire in the spirit of good will towards all men. How on earth does Christmas come to be a day of good will towards all men? Christmas is the observance of the single most dividing event in human history, when the Creator God of the Bible became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. I recently heard TV commentator Ben Stein speaking on the subject of politically-correct Christmas greetings, that tendency to substitute Happy Holidays for Merry Christmas, (which has been an option for as long as I can remember.) He stated the obvious, that Christmas is the most significant event in the history of man. Being Jewish, he doesn’t celebrate Christmas as such, but that doesn’t change the fact. He then said something that demonstrated his complete ignorance of Christianity: that Christianity is a religion of Peace, a notion oft-repeated and just as wrong no matter how frequently, unless one understands that peace can only exist as a result of victory, and Christianity is about that victory.
The simplistic idea of Christianity being a sort-of anti-war religion is based perhaps on the fact that Jesus Christ is referred to as, among many other things, the Prince of Peace. Of course, one must ignore those many other things. On many occasions Christ greeted his apostles with an offering of peace, saying “Peace be with you.” Christianity may be a religion of Peace if Christ said that - and said nothing else except that. He also said – and much more significantly - that He was the Son of God. That statement, and all it means, embarked our civilization upon a journey through wars beyond imagining, the very substance of history. War doesn’t come to an end because Jesus says He is God, the Son of God. In fact, many wars have followed that statement. Ours is a history of bloody awful warfare from long before the Birth of Christ. Moses led the Israelites through the desert to do what? – to get to the Promised Land. When they arrived at last they found the Promised Land was already occupied, so what did they do? They made war. Their God – the same God who becomes Jesus at Christmas – intervened to insure victory after victory for His people in warfare, slaughtering thousands of people.
Imagine the sanctions if there were a United Nations in those days.
Peace follows victory. Christ is the Prince of Peace because Christ is victorious. Christ is victorious over death in His Resurrection, victorious over evil in His Sacrifice, and victorious over the very gates of Hell in the establishment of His Church – that which basically becomes the foundation of our civilization, just as the Temple had been before it. Wars happen for many reasons, but if you were to remove all of the reasons that are removable, you would still be left with one reason that will never be removable: that there are people like me who have beliefs we are willing to defend by waging wars. The goal will be victory; in its aftermath comes peace. Christ is already victorious, His enemies already defeated; therefore Christ is the Prince of Peace.
Of course there are many ways to wage war against evil and death. The example set by Christ, and the way He achieved His victory, had nothing to do with guns and fighting. It is proven that His way ensures victory, whereas no other way really can. For this reason the followers of Christ are viewed to be very peaceful people who offer themselves to martyrdom as did Christ before them. Sacrifice is the ultimate weapon. The celebration of the Christian mass is just exactly that same sacrificial offering which – though it may look relatively peaceful – is actually the waging of war against evil in the Christian manner. But to say Christianity is “all about peace” with any credibility one must first say that Christianity is “all about victory” - because there is no peace without it.
So the good will towards all men aspect of Christmas comes into the picture when we are united in the celebration of God’s Birth and subsequent sacrifice and victory. No matter what else may divide us, if we are united in this celebration then that spirit of good will prevails. But, on the other hand, while your enemy is celebrating it may also be an excellent time to mount a sneak attack.
Well, the tree is almost decorated. When to say “when,” that is the Budweiser question here applied to hanging trinkets and beads on a dying fir tree in my living room. As I turned the key in the car ignition this morning I heard the radio news announce that some person somewhere was robbed but the robbers decided not to take the Christmas presents underneath the Christmas tree. They opened them apparently, and decided they were not suitable for robbing. As human interest stories go it was the lamest I’ve heard in a while. The story might have been interesting if the robbers had left the presents wrapped as they were – yes, robbers with hearts of gold. (Oh I suddenly feel nauseous.) But the part that got me was the presents were valued at $8 or $900. I gather the victim, who was at church at the time of the robbery, has 27 children – otherwise $8 or $900 is not only excessive but completely insane.
I’m told that’s not a lot of money, and not a lot to spend on Christmas presents, particularly since one big screen TV will top that amount. (Though I assume if the victim had one of those under the tree the robbers would have taken it.) To my way of thinking it isn’t a lot of money either. It’s a single rent or mortgage payment for – probably – most people, or we can call it a median perhaps, considering the whole country which includes cheap rural areas like mine and expensive urban areas like yours. But for Christmas? I’ve never spent that much. Until the inflation rate hits 200% I will not spend that much on Christmas.
But this year I have only three significant other persons whom it may be suitable to gift with items costing over 5 bucks – two young sons and Elizabeth my helper, also known as the Amazing Monkey Girl and/or the White Tornado. My extended family, as I believe I mentioned if not in a post then in a comment, give each other prayers for Christmas. It was a tradition started a few years ago by one of my aunts, (father’s sister), after it had become clear that shipping packages full of junk around the world no longer made the slightest sense after we all reached an age beyond needing much by way of material things.
Someone says I’m cheap. Maybe I am. The “poor” spend like drunken sailors at Christmas time. I’ve seen it. Christmas means nothing but spending to so many people. It becomes an obsession, a burden – quite literally a possessing demon – for many. But I think I’m generous, though I may be frugal. If I have generosity in my character it is active the year ‘round. I believe that to give a gift to one who is needy is something that should be done anonymously.
The Lady was just here, back and forth from the local hospital where her daughter is making a grandson for her. We stepped out for coffee, egg nog lattes no less. It was good to see her, beautiful as ever. I haven’t mentioned her in a while because I haven’t seen much of her. She drives one of those high-end cars with the heated seats and all. Plastic, everything’s plastic. What happened to my metal world? What happened to my world of wood? I like wood. Wood is good. Estes model rockets – remember those? We painted rocks, and we made ashtrays out of clay, pipe bombs. A few years ago here in this town a High School senior set off a little bomb atop one of our stores on Halloween. No damage was done. His name was removed from the program of graduates that year; he was made a non person, stricken from record, just like in a Stalin purge, (except they didn’t shoot him – though that’s such a minor detail.) Well, we used to set off such bombs when I was his age that did some damage. Did anybody say our not-quite-harmless pranks were criminal? Of course not. Each generation devolves until in time we become nothing more or less than spineless sludge.
So what does that have to do with Christmas? Nothing. I’m freely associating, like I used to do more often here on this page. But I’m winding it up now because I have a short job to get to, and I have to finish trimming this tree, and I want more coffee.
I will make sure the CD is firmly in the car CD player so that when I turn on the ignition there will be no chance that I will again be assaulted by the news from a world that isn’t anything at all like mine. I like mine better. I think you would, too. There’s hope in my world. If there’s none in yours I’ve plenty of room left in mine.
Nobody will be here on Christmas Eve, except me. I’m glad I thought of that last night when I had my son help me pull the tree inside, set it into its stand, get it upright and straightened. There it is, like a… well, like a bloody big green pine tree in my living room. What an odd thing. When I was young the tree never came inside before Christmas. It would have seemed rather silly to us. We dug live trees for a few memorable years so that they could be planted outside after serving their twelve day tour of duty. Dad had built a tree stand strong enough to accommodate the root ball in its burlap wrapping. It was a wooden table really with two tiers. The Nativity went underneath the tree on the lower tier. I know it’s a little early yet, but I thought I might write about that Nativity set today.
And the trap door in my father’s house – I’ll have to mention that too. Our cellar stairs were really no more than a ladder which was crafted with treads about a quarter the size of a regular stair tread and mounted into a stringer with a very steep pitch, so it wasn’t quite a ladder and it wasn’t quite a stair. We had a cellar rather than a basement. You may be asking, “What’s the difference?” Well, a basement is a place with wood paneled walls, (not truly paneled, but covered in those thin sheets of faux paneling that become moldy over time and warp and sag), with a big screen RCA television console, shag carpeting, a pool table, and so on – that’s a basement. What we had was definitely a cellar. My father had a massive Shop Smith combination saw table/lathe which took up most of the area known as his workshop. There he made many a soap box derby car, (well, at least three), and many other useful things. Our cellar had windows at eye level, as the house was built into the hill and hung over the one side of it precipitously, and an entrance door underneath the back porch which was like any other door you might pass through without having to duck your head. Goodness, this is becoming lengthy.
We had a bathroom down there. My maternal grandmother’s brother had once lived in our cellar, so it was at some point in its existence a “finished” cellar, though I still cannot bring myself to think of it as a basement, finished or not. By the time I was of an age to remember things all that remained of that apartment was the toilet. You might think of the cellar’s separated regions as “rooms” if you’d like, but the “walls” were really not walls at all but rather the somewhat organized in floor-to-ceiling stacks accumulation of historic artifacts which might be called junk in most dictionaries, but not in Dad’s edition.
Our Nativity set was somewhere stacked as part of one of those “walls.” When I was old enough to lift the heavy trap door on its big hinges and set it back against the wall and then descend the treacherous stair/ladder into the workshop, find my way (leaving a trail of breadcrumbs) past the furnace with its friendly warm snorts of fire to the place where Christmas was stored, it became my job to fetch the Nativity set, which lived packed in sawdust inside a wooden crate that once held an appliance of some sort – perhaps a radio phonograph – that Grandpa may have purchased in 1939. It was a very good wooden box, strong but not too heavy. Gosh, where have all the very good wooden boxes, strong but not too heavy, gone?
Once the box which contained the birth of Our Lord Jesus had been wrestled upstairs, which would never happen before Christmas Eve, the celebration of the Solemnity of Christmas was well and truly begun, and not a minute before.
When you opened the box the first thing to notice was the mellow smell of sawdust, and then, for the eyes, a folded up newspaper comics page from last year featuring Pogo, Prince Valiant, Li’l Abner, Mary Worth, which may be set aside for reading later. After carefully removing that layer of newsprint and exposing the sawdust with its buried treasures like the sands of Egypt, the painstaking excavation could then commence. The first thing you would probably discover with the exploratory poke of your finger was the pastry brush which would be used to brush the bits of fine dust out of the little crevices in the tiny antique figures of porcelain and bone that lay buried within. The lambs were particularly precious, and they came from a much older set. It was a conglomeration of several Nativities passed down over generations from Adam, presumably. Each year another delicate tiny lamb leg would break off, and these were irreparable bone figures with hand carved wooly backs and perfectly rendered little lamb faces.
“Little Lamb, Who made Thee? Dost Thou know Who made Thee?”
They were very fortunate to have shepherds to watch over them – each from an antique German set, bearded and robed, with staffs – and also to lean up against with only three legs.
The bottom tier of the tree stand was curtained by the green cloth which draped over the sides and back, leaving an opening through which the scene in the manger could be viewed. Yes, it would be illuminated. No mini-lights in those days. We had colored light bulbs about the size of night-light bulbs which wanted screwing into their sockets on the strings of tree lights. Each bulb was mounted within a star-shaped tin reflector. It was just such a bulb mounted in just such a reflector which would illumine the Nativity beneath the Christmas tree.
All but the Three Kings and the Christ Child were installed within the manger scene on Christmas Eve. Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, the mule, the proclaiming angels, the famous three-legged lambs, waited though the night. Christ would appear in his makeshift crib by Christmas morning. The Three Kings, following the star light bulb with its tin reflector, which they could see from afar, began their twelve day journey on the fireplace mantel. The Three Kings were the newest figures in our Nativity set, made of plastic. I think it may be the case that several sets of Three Kings over the years got lost on their way from the mantel (The Orient) to Bethlehem, under the tree. Perhaps they fell into the cellar through the trap door, for they would have to pass that way. And perhaps somewhere in my father’s cellar, huddled for warmth around the furnace pilot light, there is community of tiny Oriental Kings who have survived all these years on legs of lamb.
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