Radio Script #48
Little Talks On Common Things
December 25, 1949
Last week we told you a bit about Maine and especially Waterville in 1873. What was going on in Maine at that Christmas season 76 years ago? All was not jollity and merry-making. Just ended with a verdict of guilty was one of Maine’s most famous murder trials. John T. Gordon of Thorndike, accused of the brutal murder of his brother and sister-in-law, had attempted to cover his crime by setting fire to the house.
Quite unlike the manner in which the modern press covers a murder trial, Belfast’s weekly newspaper, the Republican Journal, dealt with the trial in much the same manner as the British press now covers a homicide trial in England; namely, by factual, detailed report of the actual testimony. For instance, this is the way the report of the prisoner’s own testimony begins:
“I am the accused in this trial. Was 29 ,years old November first. Was born in Thorndike. Have had six brothers, four older and two younger. Lived at home most of the time until 21. Almon (the murdered brother) was three years older than I am. Don’t know when he was married. Was on good terms with Almon. They charged me nothing for my board.”
Brief, cryptic sentences and stilted language of this sort is not connected narrative. It represents, in newspaper fashion of the time, the summary of what were really answers to lawyers’ questions. But by the time you have read fifteen columns of this sort of writing in two issues of the Journal, you get a very clear picture of the crime and what the many witnesses thought about it.
When the account reaches the point where the editor has inserted a one word sub-head “verdict”, you look for a quick statement of the finish. But you look in vain. A modern reporter would be much annoyed by the leisurely manner in which the old Belfast editor approaches the point. He says:
“The jury retired at 10 o’clock. At ten minutes past eleven an officer came in and whispered to the sheriff, and it became known that a verdict had been agreed upon and that the judge had been sent for. Soon the Chief Justice came in and took his seat. Associate Justice Dickerson sat upon the platform apart from the Chief. The Attorney General sat with folded arms at his table. The venerable father of the murdered woman and her brothers were present. Soon the jury filed in. Stillness ensued while waiting for the prisoner’s counsel.
“The silence within the chamber became painful. The gathered throng were oppressed with the feeling that a human life hung on the issue. The bright sun shone in at the window, lighting up the hall with a warm glow. From the street came the merry sound of sleigh bells and the shouts of boys at play.
“The clerk commenced to call the list of the jury, each meIllber responding to his name, and the crier keeping the count. Then, addressing the foreman, the clerk inquired, ‘Have you agreed upon a verdict?’ ‘We have.’ ‘Prisoner, stand up and look at the foreman. Mr. Foreman, do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?’ In a subdued voice the response came, ‘Guilty of murder in the first degree.’ ”
Murder was not the only news in Maine that week before Christmas 76 yearsago. A heavy gale struck the port of Rockland, sending three ships on the rocks and bringing two schooners together at the entrance to the harbor. In 1873 Calais and Eastport were great ports of entry for foreign goods. The Passamaquoddy Revenue District, which included both of those towns, collected $93,000 in customs fees that year, while Bangor had only $17,000, Bath $11,000, and all Aroostook only $13,000. What was once the very important port of Castine accounted for a tiny $375, and the once-thriving shipping center of Kennebunkport took in only $6.29. Even the loyal Republican Journal had to lament: “It will be seen that the government paid out in the Belfast District $567 more than it collected.”
Just before Christmas of 1873 the editor of a little paper called the Clipper was brought before the Lewiston municipal court for contempt, because his paper had referred slurringly to the judge. The editor was found guilty and fined ten dollars. Only two days before that Christmas of 1873 a big storm hit Maine, wind and sleet doing a lot of damage in the Kennebec Valley. A week later one newspaper dolefully remarked: “We have received report from Washington that the big storm of last week was predicted, but the storm got here before the prediction did.”
Meanwhile down in Ellsworth the sheriff had been engaged in a lively scuffle with a hundred women. Long in the habit of staying around for chat and gossip after court adjourned, the women were indignant when the sheriff ordered them to disperse. When the officer called two deputies to his aid, the fun really began. The Ellsworth paper described the ensuing action as Ita good deal like driving flies from the room”. The women would pour down the gallery on one side and up the other, flee into the ante rooms and closets. As fast as a few of them went out the door, twice as many more came in. Finally, fearful of missing their dinners, the officers tried persuasion instead of force.
Those milder tactics worked. The hall was soon cleared and everyone was happy.
We hear many glowing stories about what Christmas was like in the old days. Wherever and whenever Christmas has been celebrated, it has always been a happy and merry festival. But it hasn’t always been celebrated at all, even in our part of the world. That old 1833 geography, of which we have previously spoken, has this to say:
“The inhabitants of New England spend very little time in amusements. with the exception of Thanksgiving, they have no national holiday in the diversions of which both men and women find gaiety and joy. The Fourth of July is a political anniversary; in its ceremonies men alone are engaged. The grave habits of the people, derived from their ancestors, their strict religious notions, the necessity for constant industry, are all opposed to scenes of thoughtlessness and gaiety.”
That quotation makes it clear that as late as 1833 Christmas was not commonly celebrated in New England. But, perhaps even more significantly, it reveals that in the author’s mind Christmas was associated with jollity and merry-making, and was not merely a religious event. Where did he get that idea? From England, of course, where flourished the kind of Christmas Dickens would make famous a few years later in “The Christmas Carol”; the kind of Christmas Washington Irving had already described in the “Sketch Book”.
The New England Puritans did indeed abhor, jollity, and thus repudiated even the festivals of the church which in any way allowed merry-making. They were just as bitter against May Day, with its dances around the May Pole, as they were against Christmas games and feasting.
This attitude of solemnity and severity in respect to religion was by no means new when the pilgrims and Puritans came to America. As long ago as 245 AD one of the church fathers, Origen, denounced the idea of keeping the birthday of Christ “as if he were a king or a Pharaoh”.
No one knows just h?w or why December 25 was selected to celebrate the Savior’s birth. In fact, before the fifth century, there was no general agreement as to when it should come in the calendar, whether on January 6, March 25, or December 25. There was no record nor any reliable tradition to prove the exact day of Jesus’ birth. Even the exact year is still in dispute, though the weight of authority sets the year as 4 BC. By a curious twist of reckoning, the mistake made in the early use of the Gregorian calendar amounted to four years, so that historically we must now make the paradoxical statement that Christ was born four years before Christ.
In one of the works of Hippolytus, written about 202 AD, appears this statement: “Jesus was born at Bethlehem on Wednesday, December 25, in the 42nd year of Augustus.” But many of the early churches would not accept that date. In fact the Syrian and Armenian churches accused the Roman Christians of idolatry, because December Q5 had Tong been celebrated by the Romans as “natalisinvicti solis”, the birthday of the conquered sun. So those who celebrated January 6 as Christmas naturally held to it because they hated the idolatrous sun-worshipers of December 25.
Always from remotest antiquity the celebration of the Savior’s birth seems to have been a feast, a time of rejoicing, never a fast or time of solemnity. There is nothing irreligious or unseemly about making Christmas a merry time. In spite of Origen’s denunciation the Christians kept right oncelebrating it as a gay festival, and finally they united on the common date of December 25.
Just as the Romans had a pagan festival on December 25, so had the ancient Britons. Before Christianity came to the British Isles, December 25 marked the beginning of the Anglian year, was called “mother’s night”, and was marked with ceremonies appropriate to a new year’s birth.
After the Puritans had come to America, their fellow believers back home in England had beheaded King Charles, set up the protectorate under Cromwell, and had put the strict Puritan beliefs into political practice. When Charles II came to the throne, he restored the Christmas festival, but for many years afterwards the Scots upheld the Puritan view and continued to ban Christmas.
Outside the Teutonic countries — that is, the countries whose languages derive from the ancient Germanic tongues, and these include England and the united States as well as Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and the Scandina- vian nations — outside the Teutonic countries Christmas presents are unknown. The Christmas tree was common in medieval Germany, but not in England. There it was the Yule log.
One aspect of Christmas in my boyhood days I now greatly miss. I wish the practice could be revived. I refer to the Christmas bells. All Christmas morning every church bell in my boyhood town was rung at intervals all the forenoon — not tolled, but loudly and gaily rung. The sounds carried far over the crisp winter air. People who lived as far away as Hio Ridge, nearly four miles from Bridgton Village, used to say that they could often hear those bells on Christmas morning.
In my boyhood town there probably weren’t half a dozen people who had ever heard the chimes of a carillon. The giant carillons of the big cities are still expensive and rare. The great carilloneers, who control the range of bells from tiny to huge, are few. But modern electronics and modern magnification of sound have made possible beautiful and relatively inexpensive carillons like that in the Lorimer Chapel at Colby College. Thus many people were able to hear the Colby chimes last evening and today, and to hear also the magnified notes of the beautiful Mellon organ, playing the familiar Christmas music.
So, as we near the end of this beautiful Christmas Day, Ernest Marriner and the Keyes Fibre Company join in wishing you a very merry Christmas.
Year: 1949