Theodore Parker - Two Christmas Celebrations
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Theodore Parker >> Two Christmas Celebrations
THE TWO CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS,
A.D. I. and MDCCCLV.
A Christmas Story for MDCCCLVI.
By Theodore Parker,
Minister of the 28th Congregational Society of Boston.
Two Christmas Celebrations.
A great many years ago, Augustus Caesar, then Emperor of Rome, ordered
his mighty realm to be taxed; and so, in Judea, it is said, men went
to the towns where their families belonged, to be registered for
assessment. From Nazareth, a little town in the north of Judea, to
Bethlehem, another little but more famous town in the south, there went
one Joseph, the carpenter, and his wife Mary,--obscure and poor people,
both of them, as the story goes. At Bethlehem they lodged in a stable;
for there were many persons in the town, and the tavern was full. Then
and there a little boy was born, the son of this Joseph and Mary; they
named him JEHOSHUA, a common Hebrew name, which we commonly call Joshua;
but, in his case, we pronounce it JESUS. They laid him in the crib of
the cattle, which was his first cradle. That was the first Christmas,
kept thus in a barn, 1856 years ago. Nobody knows the day or the month;
nay, the year itself is not certain.
After a while the parents went home to Nazareth, where they had other
sons,--_James_, _Joses_, _Simon_, and _Judas_,--and daughters also;
nobody knows how many. There the boy JESUS grew up, and it seems
followed the calling of his father; it is said, in special, that he made
yokes, ploughs, and other farm-tools. Little is known about his early
life and means of education. His outside advantages were, no doubt,
small and poor; but he learned to read and write, and it seems became
familiar with the chief religious books of his nation, which are still
preserved in the Old Testament.
At that time there were three languages used in Judea, beside the
Latin, which was confined to a few officials: 1. The Syro-Chaldaic,--the
language of business and daily life, the spoken language of the common
people. 2. The Greek,--the language of the courts of justice and
official documents; the spoken and written language of the foreign
traders, the aristocracy, and most of the more cultivated people in the
great towns. 3. The old Hebrew,--the written and spoken language of the
learned, of theological schools, of the priests; the language of the Old
Testament. It seems Jesus understood all three.
At that time the thinking people had outgrown the old forms of religion,
inherited from their fathers, just as a little girl becomes too stout
and tall for the clothes which once fitted her babyhood; or as the
people of New England have now become too rich and refined to live in
the rough log-cabins, and to wear the coarse, uncomfortable clothes,
which were the best that could be got two hundred years ago. For mankind
continually grows wiser and better,--and so the old forms of religion
are always getting passed by; and the religious doctrines and ceremonies
of a rude age cannot satisfy the people of an enlightened age, any more
than the wigwams of the Pequod Indians in 1656 would satisfy the white
gentlemen and ladies of Boston and Worcester in 1856. The same thing
happens with the clothes, the tools, and the laws of all advancing
nations. The human race is at school, and learns through one book after
another,--going up to higher and higher studies continually. But at that
time cultivated men had outgrown their old forms of religion,--much of
the doctrine, many of the ceremonies; and yet they did not quite dare to
break away from them,--at least in public. So there was a great deal of
pretended belief, and of secret denial of the popular form of religion.
The best and most religious men, it seems likely, were those who
had least faith in what was preached and practised as the authorized
religion of the land.
In the time of David, many years before the birth of Jesus, the Hebrew
nation had been very powerful and prosperous; afterwards there followed
long periods of trouble and of war, civil and domestic; the union of the
tribes was dissolved, and many calamities befell the people. In their
times of trouble, religious men said, "God will raise us up a GREAT KING
like DAVID, to defend and deliver us from our enemies. He will set
all things right." For the Hebrews looked on David as the Americans
on WASHINGTON, calling him a "man after God's own heart,"--that is,
thinking him "first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts
of his countrymen." Sometimes they called this expected Deliverer, the
MESSIAH, that is the ANOINTED ONE,--a term often applied to a king or
other great man. Sometimes it was thought this or that special man, a
king, or general, would be the Messiah, and deliver the nation from its
trouble. Thus, it seems, that once it was declared that King HEZEKIAH
would perform this duty; and indeed CRYUS, a foreigner, a king of
Persia, was declared to be the MESSIAH, the Anointed One. But, at other
times, they, who declared the Deliverer would come, seem to have had no
particular man in their mind, but felt sure that somebody would come. At
length the expectation of a Messiah became quite common; it was a
fixed fact in the public opinion. But some thought the Deliverer, the
Redeemer, the second David, would be one thing, some another; just
as men now call their favorite candidate for the presidency a second
Washington; but some think he will be a Whig, and support the Fugitive
Slave Bill; some, a Democrat, and favor the enslavement of Kansas; while
others are sure he will be a Republican, and prohibit the extension of
Slavery; while yet others look for some Anointed Politician to abolish
that wicked institution clear out of the land.
When the nation was in great peril, the people said, "the Messiah
will soon come and restore all things;" but probably they had no very
definite notion about the Deliverer or the work he was to do.
When Jesus was about thirty years old, he began to speak in public.
He sometimes preached in the Meeting-Houses, which were called
Synagogues,--but often out of doors, wherever he could gather the people
about him. He broke away from the old established doctrines and forms.
He was a come-outer from the Hebrew church. He told men that religion
did not consist in opinions or ceremonies, but in right feelings and
right actions; that goodness shown to men was worth more than sacrifice
offered to God. In short he made Religion consist in Piety, which is
Love to God, and Benevolence, which is Love to Men. He utterly forbid
all vengeance, and told his followers "love your enemies, bless them
that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which
despitefully use you and persecute you." He taught that the soul was
immortal,--a common opinion at that time,--and declared that men who
had been good and kind here would be eternally happy hereafter, but the
unkind and wicked would be cast "into everlasting fire prepared for the
devil and his angels." He did not represent religion as a mysterious
affair, the mere business of the priesthood, limited to the temple and
the Sabbath, and the ceremonies thereof; it was the business of every
day,--a great manly and womanly life.
Men were looking for the ANOINTED, the Messiah, and waiting for him to
come. Jesus said, "I am the Messiah; follow me in the religious life,
and all will be well. God is just as near to us now, as of old time to
Moses and Elias. A greater than Solomon is here. The Kingdom of Heaven,
a good time coming, is close at hand!"
No doubt he made mistakes. He taught that there is a devil,--a being
absolutely evil, who seeks to ruin all men; that the world would soon
come to an end, and a new and extraordinary state would miraculously
take place, in which his followers would be abundantly rewarded, and his
twelve most conspicuous friends would sit "sit on twelve thrones judging
the twelve tribes of Israel." Strange things were to happen in this good
time which was coming. But spite of that, his main doctrine, which he
laid most stress upon, was, that religion is piety and benevolence; for
he made these the chief commandments,--"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."
He went about in various part of the country, talking, preaching,
lecturing, making speeches, and exhorting the people to love each other
and live a noble, manly life,--each doing to all as he would wish them
to do to him. He recommended the most entire trust in God. The people
came to him in great crowds, and loved to hear him speak; for in those
days nobody preached such doctrines,--or indeed any doctrines with such
power to convince and persuade earnest men. The people heard him gladly,
and followed him from place to place, and could not hear enough of
him and his new form of religion,--so much did it commend itself to
simple-hearted women and men. Some of them wanted to make him their
king.
But while the people loved him, the great men of his time--the great
Ministers in the Hebrew church, and the great Politicians in the
Hebrew state--hated him, and were afraid of him. No doubt some of
these ministers did not understand him, but yet meant well in their
opposition; for if a man had all his life been thinking about the "best
manner of circumcision," or about "the mode of kneeling in prayer," he
would be wholly unable to understand what Jesus said about love to God
and to man. But no doubt some of them knew he was right, and hated him
all the more for that very reason. When they talked in their libraries,
they admitted that they had no faith in the old forms of religion; but
when they appeared in public they made broad their phylacteries, and
enlarged the borders of their garments; and when they preached in their
pulpits, they laid heavy burdens on men's shoulders, and grievous to be
borne. The same thing probably took place then which has happened ever
since; and they who had no faith in God or man, were the first to accuse
this religious genius with being an infidel!
So, one night they seized Jesus, tried him before daylight next morning,
condemned him, and put him to death. The seizure, the trial, the
execution, were not effected in the regular legal form,--they did not
occupy more than twelve hours of time,--but were done in the same wicked
way that evil men also used in Boston when they made Mr. Simms and Mr.
Burns slaves for life. But Jesus made no resistance; at the "trial"
there was no "defence;" nay, he did not even feel angry with those
wicked men; but, as he hung on the cross, almost the last words he
uttered were these,--"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they
do." Such wicked men killed Jesus, just as in Old England, three hundred
years ago, the Catholics used to burn Protestants alive; or as in New
England, two hundred years ago, our Protestant fathers hung the Quakers
and whipped the Baptists; or as the Slaveholders in the South now beat
an Abolitionist, or whip a man to death who insists on working for
himself and his family, and not merely for men who only steal what he
earns; or as some in Massachusetts, a few years ago, sought to put in
jail such as speak against the wickedness of Slavery.
After Jesus was dead and buried, some of his followers thought that he
rose from the dead and came back to life again within three days, and
showed himself to a few persons here and there,--coming suddenly and
then vanishing, as a "ghost" is said to appear all at once and then
vanish, or as the souls of other dead men are thought to "appear" to the
spiritualists, who do not, however, _see_ the ghosts, but only _hear_
and _feel_ them. Very strange stories were told about his coming to men
through closed doors, and talking with them,--just as in our time the
"mediums" say the soul of Dr. Franklin, or Dr. Channing, or some great
man comes and makes "spiritual communication." They say, that at last,
he "was parted from them, and carried up into heaven," and "sat on the
right hand of God."
His friends and followers went about from place to place, and preached
his doctrines; but gradually added many more of their own. They said
that he was the Anointed, the Messiah, the Christ, who was foretold in
the Old Testament, and that did strange things called Miracles; that at
a marriage feast, where wine was wanted, he changed several barrels of
water into wine of excellent quality; that he fed five thousand men with
five loaves, walked on the water, opened the eyes, ears, and mouths of
men born blind, deaf, and dumb, and at a touch or a word brought back
a maimed limb. They called him a SAVIOUR, sent from God to redeem the
Jews, and them only, from eternal damnation; next, said that he was the
Saviour of all mankind,--Jews and Gentiles too; that he was a Sacrifice
offered to appease the wrath of God, who had become so angry with his
children that he intended to torment them all forever in hell. By and by
his followers were called CHRISTIANS,--that is, men who took Jesus for
the Christ of the Old Testament; and in their preaching they did not
make much account of the noble ideas Jesus taught about man, God, and
religion, or of his own great manly life; but they thought his DEATH
was the great thing,--and that was the means to save men from eternal
torment. Then they went further, and declared that Jesus was not the
son of Joseph and Mary, but THE SON OF GOD and Mary,--miraculously born;
next, that he was GOD'S ONLY SON, who had never had any child before,
and never would have another; again, that he was a GOD who had lived
long before Jesus was born, but for the then first time took the human
form; and at last, that he was THE ONLY GOD, the Creator and Providence
of all the universe; but was man also, the GOD-MAN. Thus, gradually,
the actual facts of his history were lost out of sight, overgrown with
a great mass of fictions, poetic and other stories, which make him a
mythological character; the Jesus of fact was well-nigh forgot,--the
Christ of fiction took his place.
Well, after the death of Jesus, his followers went from town to town,
from country to country, preaching "Christ and him crucified;" they
taught that the world would soon end, for Jesus would come back and
"judge the world," raising the dead,--and then all who had believed in
him would be "saved," but the rest would be "lost forever;" a new world
would take the place of the old, and the Christians would have a good
time in that Kingdom of Heaven. This new "spiritual world" would contain
some extraordinary things; thus, "every grape-vine would have ten
thousand trunks, every trunk ten thousand branches, every branch ten
thousand twigs, every twig ten thousand clusters, every cluster ten
thousand grapes, and every grape would yield twenty-five kilderkins of
wine."
But everywhere they recommended a life of sobriety and self-denial,
of industry and of kind deeds,--a life of religion. Everywhere the
Christians were distinguished for their charity and general moral
excellence. But the Jews hated them, and drove them away; the Heathens
hated them, and put many to death with dreadful tortures; all the
magistrates were hostile. But when the common people saw a man or a
woman come out and die rather than be false to a religious emotion or
idea, there were always some who said, "That is a strange thing,--a man
dying for his God. There must be something in that religion! Let us
also become Christians." So the new doctrine spread wide; not the simple
religion of Jesus,--piety and morality; but what his followers called
Christianity,--a mixture of good and evil. In two or three hundred years
it had gone round the civilized world. Other forms of religion fell to
pieces, one by one. Judaism went down with the Hebrew people, Heathenism
went down, and Christianity took heir place. The son of Joseph and Mary,
born in a stable, and killed by the Jews, was worshipped as the ONLY GOD
all round the civilized world. The new form of religion spread very
much as SPIRITUALISM has done in our time, only in the midst of worse
persecution than the Mormons have suffered. At this day there are some
two hundred and sixty millions of people who worship Jesus of Nazareth;
most of them think he was God, the only God. But a small number of men
believe that he was no God, no miraculous person, but a good man with a
genius for religion. All the Christians think he was full of all manner
of loving kindness and tender mercy. So all over the world to-day,
among the two hundred and sixty millions of Christians, there is great
rejoicing on account of his birth, which it is erroneously supposed took
place on the 25th of December, in the year ONE. They sing psalms, and
preach sermons, and offer prayers, and make a famous holiday. But the
greater part of the people think only of the festival, and very little
of the noble boy who was born so long ago in a tavern-barn in Judea. And
of all the ministers who talk so much about the old Christ, there are
not many who would welcome a new man who should come and do for this
age the great service which Jesus did for his own time. But, as on the
Fourth of July, slaveholders, and border ruffians, and kidnappers, and
men who believe there is no higher law, ring their bells, and fire their
cannons, and let off their rockets, making more noise than all those
who honor and defend the great Principles of Humanity which make
Independence Day famous,--so on Christmas, not only religious people,
but Scribes, and Pharisees, and Hypocrites make a great talk about
"Christ and him crucified;" when, if a man of genius for religion were
now to appear, they would be the first to call out "Infidel!" "Infidel!"
and would kill him if it were possible or safe.
Well, one rainy Sunday evening, in 1855, just twelve days before
Christmas, in the little town of Soitgoes, in Worcester County, Mass.,
Aunt Kindly and Uncle Nathan were sitting in their comfortable parlor
before a bright wood-fire. It was about eight o'clock, a stormy night;
now it snowed a little, then it rained, then snowed again, seeming as if
the weather was determined on some kind of storm, but had not yet made
up its mind for snow, rain, or hail. Now the wind roared in the chimney,
and started out of her sleep a great tortoise-shell cat, that lay on
the rug which Aunt Kindly had made for her. Tabby opened her yellow eyes
suddenly, and erected her _smellers_, but finding it was only the wind
and not a mouse that made the noise, she stretched out a great paw and
yawned, and then cuddled her head down so as to show her white throat,
and went to sleep again.
Uncle Nathan and Aunt Kindly were brother and sister. He was a little
more than sixty, a fine, hale, hearty-looking, handsome man as you could
find in a summer's day, with white hair and a thoughtful, benevolent
face, adorned with a full beard as white as his venerable head. Aunt
Kindly was five-and-forty or thereabouts; her face a little sad when you
looked at it carelessly in its repose, but commonly it seemed cheerful,
full of thought and generosity, and handsome withal; for, as her brother
told her, "God administered to you the sacrement of beauty in your
childhood, and you will walk all your life in the loveliness thereof."
Uncle Nathan had been an India merchant from his twenty-fifth to about
his fiftieth year, and had now, for some years, been living with his
sister in his fine, large house,--rich and well educated, devoting his
life to study, works of benevolence, to general reform and progress. It
was he who had the first anti-slavery lecture delivered in the town,
and actually persuaded Mr. Homer, the old minister, to let Mr. Garrison
stand in the pulpit on a Wednesday night and preach deliverance unto
the captives; but it could be done only once, for the clergymen of the
neighborhood thought anti-slavery a desecration of their new wooden
meeting-houses. It was he, too, who asked Lucy Stone to lecture on
woman's rights, but the communicants thought it would not do to let a
"woman speak in the church," and so he gave it up. All the country knew
and loved him, for he was a natural overseer of the poor, and guardian
of the widow and the orphan. How many a girl in the Normal School every
night put up a prayer of thanksgiving for him; how many a bright boy
in Hanover and Cambridge was equally indebted for the means of high
culture, and if not so thankful, why, Uncle Nathan knew that gratitude
is too nice and delicate a plant to grow on common soil. Once, when
he was twenty-two or three, he was engaged to a young woman of Boston,
while he was a clerk in a commission store. But her father, a skipper
from Beverly or Cape Cod, who continued vulgar while he became rich,
did not like the match. "It won't do," said he, "for a poor young man to
marry into one of our fust families; what is the use of aristocracy if
no distinction is to be made, and our daughters are to marry Tom, Dick,
and Harry?" But Amelia took the matter sorely to heart; she kept her
love, yet fell into a consumption, and so wasted away; or, as one of
the neighbors said, "she was executed on the scaffold of an upstart's
vulgarity." Nathan loved no woman in like manner afterwards, but after
her death went to India, and remained years long. When he returned and
established his business in Boston, he looked after her relations, who
had fallen into poverty. Nay, out of the mire of infamy he picked up
what might have been his nephews and nieces, and, by generous breeding,
wiped off from them the stain of their illicit birth. He never spoke of
poor Amelia; but he kept a little locket in one end of his purse; none
ever saw it but his sister, who often observed him sitting with it in
his hand, hand hour by hour looking into the fire of a winter's night,
seeming to think of distant things. She never spoke to him then, but
left him alone with his recollections and his dreams. Some of the
neighbors said he "worshipped it;" others called it "a talisman." So
indeed it was, and by its enchantment he became a young man once more,
and walked through the moonlight to meet an angel, and with her enter
their kingdom of heaven. Truly it was a talisman; yet if _you_ had
looked at it, you would have seen nothing in it but a little twist of
golden hairs tied together with a blue silken thread.
Aunt Kindly had never been married; yet once in her life, also, the
right man seemed to offer, and the blossom of love opened with a dear
prophetic fragrance in her heart. But as her father was soon after
struck with palsy, she told her lover they must wait a little while, for
her first duty must be to the feeble old man. But the impatient swain
went off and pinned himself to the flightiest little humming-bird in all
Soitgoes, and in a month was married, having a long life before him for
bitterness and repentance. After the father died, Kindly remained at
home; and when Nathan returned, years after, they made one brotherly and
sisterly household out of what might else have gladdened two connubial
homes. "Not every bud becomes a flower."
Uncle Nathan sat there, his locket in his hand, looking into the fire;
and as the wind roared in the chimney, and the brands crackled and
snapped, he thought he saw faces in the fire; and when the sparks rose
up in a little cloud, which the country children call "the people coming
out of the meeting-house," he thought he saw faces in the fire; they
seemed to take the form of the boys and girls as he had lately seen them
rushing out of the Union School-house, which held all the children
in the village; and as he recognized one after the other, he began
to wonder and conjecture what would be the history of this or that
particular child. While he sat thus in his waking dream, he looked
fixedly at the locket and the blue thread which tied together those
golden rays of a summer sun, now all set and vanished and gone, but
which was once the morning light of all his promised days; and as his
eyes, full of waking dreams, fell on the fire again, a handsome young
woman seemed to come forth from between the brands, and the locks of her
hair floated out and turned into boys and girls, of various ages, from
babyhood to youth; all looking somewhat like him and also like the
fair young woman. But the brand rolled over, and they all vanished in a
little puff of smoke.
Aunt Kindly sat at the table reading the Bible. I don't know why she
read the Gospels, for she knew them all four by heart, and could repeat
them from end to end. But Sunday night, when none of the neighbors were
there, and she and Nathan were all alone, she took her mother's great
squared Bible and read therein. This night she had been reading,
in chapter xxxi. of Proverbs, the character of a noble woman; and,
finishing the account, turned and read the 28th verse a second time,--
_"Her children rise up and call her blessed."_
I do not know why she read _that_ verse, nor what she thought of it; but
she repeated it to herself three or four times,--
_"Her children rise up and call her blessed."_
