Merry Christmas!

"Several hundred million people get a billion or so gifts for which they have no use, and some thousands of shop-clerks die of exhaustion while selling them, and every other child in the western world is made ill from overeating -- all in the name of the lowly Jesus." -- Upton Sinclair (circa 1925).

Christmas was Sully’s favorite time of year, even though his father had died so close to it. Since he’d been on his own he hadn’t had a place to go, besides the Hi-Note, and before that Joe’s and The Lizard and Irene’s, but the spirits of Christmases past had comforted rather than tormented him. He remembered vividly the Yule trees of his boyhood, the smell of them and the plumpness of their branches, which he’d imagined might be harboring nests of turtledoves, tapering to a spindly tip surmounted by a papier-mache angel whose wings brushed the ceiling, and which at night was enhaloed by the circle of light cast there by the tree’s lights. He could still see, with an almost palpable clarity, his first gifts: A radio, a cowboy outfit, a trike--he’d had his dad shovel a path along the driveway through the snow, so that he could ride it, before he’d even opened his other presents.  --  Chapter 45, The Misforgotten.

He got deathly ill every Christmas-time

American poet Edward Arlington Robinson ("Miniver Cheevy") was born on this day in 1869. When he died in 1935 he was considered one of the greatest poets in America.


"The popular interpretation of Christianity," he wrote, "makes me sick."
 

   As a child Sully had thought about God only when he’d had to. Church was a dreary enough experience: The pastor’s perpetual pleas for donations, the highly unsatisfactory stories sandwiched in-between. The preacher’s exhortations to think of the Almighty as a friend and mentor were lost on Sully, who considered the whole business of God sending His own son down to suffer and die for his sake a pretty nasty one, not to mention a damn convoluted arrangement.  --  Chapter 13, The Misforgotten.

Holiday of the Month: Christmas

"If Jesus Christ were to come today, people would not even crucify him. They would ask him to dinner, hear what he had to say, and make fun of him."   --   Thomas Carlyle.

   Christmas was Sully’s favorite time of year, even though his father had died so close to it. Since he’d been on his own he hadn’t had a place to go, besides the Hi-Note, and before that Joe’s and The Lizard and Irene’s, but the spirits of Christmases past had comforted rather than tormented him. He remembered vividly the Yule trees of his boyhood, the smell of them and the plumpness of their branches, which he’d imagined might be harboring nests of turtledoves, tapering to a spindly tip surmounted by a papier-mache angel whose wings brushed the ceiling, and which at night was enhaloed by the circle of light cast there by the tree’s lights. He could still see, with an almost palpable clarity, his first gifts: A radio, a cowboy outfit, a trike--he’d had his dad shovel a path along the driveway through the snow, so that he could ride it, before he’d even opened his other presents.  --  Chapter 45, The Misforgotten.

Now go, and sin no more

On this day in 1918, evangelist Billy Graham was born.


"Current evangelism is as far as one can go in the pursuit of faith without works. Graham has brought to perfection the notion of a global parish, that is, no parish at all. He is relieved of the need to make private visits, to gather boxes of old clothes in the church basement, to perform weddings, bury the dead, to encourage rummage-sales and pie-suppers. Not only is he relieved, but the saved are also...

"With their salvation kits, they are like patients making a single visit to a clinic and who are therefore recorded in the cure statistics." -- Elizabeth Hardwick.

   As a child Sully had thought about God only when he’d had to. Church was a dreary enough experience: The pastor’s perpetual pleas for donations, the highly unsatisfactory stories sandwiched in-between. The preacher’s exhortations to think of the Almighty as a friend and mentor were lost on Sully, who considered the whole business of God sending His own son down to suffer and die for his sake a pretty nasty one, not to mention a damn convoluted arrangement.  --  Chapter 13, The Misforgotten.