Christmas: Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse, edited by Robert Haven Schauffler

It’s extremely unlikely that the name Robert Haven Schauffler (1879–1964) resonates in any way with you, but if you are a reader from about 30-to-90 years of age, you have probably read one of his books.
 
Schauffler was an American writer, musician, war hero and biographer (of Beethoven, Brahms and Schumann), as well as editor of a series of books about holidays.

He was born in Austria to missionary parents; his family would later found Schaffler College in Cleveland for Bohemian immigrants who were interested in social or religious work.  He would later serve in the Great War and win a Purple Heart.

In 1907 he wrote a book about Thanksgiving, and his publisher recommended a follow-up book on Christmas.  (He would later write or edit books on Arbor Day, Independence Day, and the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln.)  Now, here’s the amazing thing, the book -- Christmas: Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse – was first published in 1907.  I have seen editions from the 1920s, 30s, 40s, and finally an edition published in the 1970s, which I first read in grade school.  Schauffler’s collection is one of scores of “anonymous” books that are in nearly every school library, well-thumbed by children and adolescents, and then cast aside without a second thought.  It’s now available for free download from Project Gutenberg or ManyBooks.net. 

That’s something of a shame, because Schauffler’s Christmas collection has many good things in it.  Aside from the obligatory Dickens and Hans Christian Andersen, Schaffler has tidbits from writers as diverse as Leigh Hunt, Christina Rossetti, Robert Herrick and William Morris.  If you desire a Christmas bedside reader, you could do no better.

Here is a snippet from another forgotten author, Hamilton Wright Mabie (1846–1916): The world has been full of mysteries today; everybody has gone about weighted with secrets. The children's faces have fairly shone with expectancy, and I enter easily into the universal dream which at this moment holds all the children of Christendom under its spell. Was there ever a wider or more loving conspiracy than that which keeps the venerable figure of Santa Claus from slipping away, with all the other oldtime myths, into the forsaken wonderland of the past? Of all the personages whose marvelous doings once filled the minds of men, he alone survives. He has outlived all the great gods, and all the impressive and poetic conceptions which once flitted between heaven and earth; these have gone, but Santa Claus remains by virtue of a common understanding that childhood shall not be despoiled of one of its most cherished beliefs, either by the mythologist, with his sun myth theory, or the scientist, with his heartless diatribe against superstition. There is a good deal more to be said on this subject, if this were the place to say it; even superstition has its uses, and sometimes, its sound heart of truth. He who does not see in the legend of Santa Claus a beautiful faith on one side, and the naive embodiment of a divine fact on the other, is not fit to have a place at the Christmas board. For him there should be neither carol, nor holly, nor mistletoe; they only shall keep the feast to whom all these things are but the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace.

More on the holidays next week!

Percy Bysshe Shelley at Occupy Wall Street

Yesterday’s heroic actions, both here in the US and abroad, of the rising Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement have put me in mind of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s magnificent poem, The Mask of Anarchy.

Mask was written in 1819, following the Peterloo Massacre.  In August, 1819, the cavalry attacked a crowd of some 70,000 peaceful protestors who had gathered to demand reforms of parliamentary representation.  It was a time of incredible unemployment, and austerity measures on behalf of the government were making matters worse.  During the demonstration, local authorities called on the military to arrest the movement’s leader, Henry Hunt, and other key followers.

In a manner that eerily foreshadows recent events in New York, Portland, Seattle and Oakland, the cavalry charged into the crowd with drawn swords.  Some 15 people were murdered during this early police action, and more than 500 were injured.  Wags of the time called the massacre Peterloo in an ironic comparison to the recent Battle of Waterloo.

Shelley (1792-1822) -- idealist, humanist and liberal – was appalled at the heavy-handed behavior of the government, and at the unthinking violence on the part of the cavalry.  He wrote The Mask of Anarchy in response, but the poem was not published until 1832, after the poet had drowned off the coast of Italy.  It was published with a preface by fellow poet Leigh Hunt, who had initially withheld it from publication because he “thought that the public at large had not become sufficiently discerning to do justice to the sincerity and kind-heartedness of the spirit that walked in this flaming robe of verse.”

Readers who want to read the whole poem can see an online edition of the 1832 first edition here:  http://www.archive.org/stream/masqueanarchyap00huntgoog#page/n6/mode/2up.

I’d to close today with my favorite passage from the poem:

Stand ye calm and resolute,

Like a forest close and mute,

With folded arms and looks which are

Weapons of unvanquished war.

And if then the tyrants dare,

Let them ride among you there,

Slash, and stab, and maim and hew,

What they like, that let them do.

With folded arms and steady eyes,

And little fear, and less surprise

Look upon them as they slay

Till their rage has died away

Then they will return with shame

To the place from which they came,

And the blood thus shed will speak

In hot blushes on their cheek.

Rise like Lions after slumber

In unvanquishable number,

Shake your chains to earth like dew

Which in sleep had fallen on you-

Ye are many — they are few

The Peterloo Massacre was one of the defining moments of its age, as, I believe, OWS will prove to be to ours.  The poem should be required reading for the police of our once-great nation.