<\/p>\n
Yesterday was the 35th Christmas Day that has been observed since Little Talks first went on the air. During that time only a few things have been changed in respect to Christmas in Central Maine.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most notable change has been in respect to transportation. In 1948, when this program began, the Maine Central Railroad had to give special attention to Christmas vacation in the Maine colleges. Because nearly all the students went home for Christmas and returned after New Years by train, the Maine Central urged Maine’s four major colleges to stagger their dates of closing in December and opening in January. If all opened and closed on the same day, the traffic became nearly impossible for the railroad to handle.<\/p>\n
By 1958 bus transportation had become popular. The bus lines put on special buses for the big college loads. As many as ten of those buses often carried students from the Maine colleges to Boston, where they changed for regular busses to New York and other points.<\/p>\n
After 1960 student-owned cars increased on all the campuses, and by 1970 that had become the most common way of getting home for Christmas. Students who did not have a car often got rides with those who did. By that time also students from Bates, Bowdoin and Colby were coming from longer distances. In 1950 only a relatively small number came from outside Maine and Massachusetts. By 1975 they were enrolling in Maine colleges from all 50 states. That meant increased use of air service. Almost all students who did not get a ride home in someone’s car went by air. Use of public bus lines had dwindled to a trickle.<\/p>\n
On previous programs through the years I have told you that, in the first half of the 19th century, there was no public observance of Christmas anywhere in Maine. That was a hangover from Puritan times in Massachusetts, when Boston people frowned upon all festivities, including Christmas. They would have nothing to do with the way the day was still celebrated in England. The only attention paid to Christmas was in the church service, when the Sunday before Christmas saw mention of the anniversary of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. There were no Christmas presents, no decorated trees, no wreaths, no holiday parties.<\/p>\n
I have previously reported that the first recorded public recognition of Christmas in Waterville occurred in 1858, when a Christmas program was presented by the Sunday School of the First Baptist Church; but that program had no tree, no presents and no carols. After the Civil War the giving of presents at Christmas became common, and the two weeks before December 25 saw Christmas ads in the newspapers. I have been unable to ascertain when Christmas Day first became a holiday in Waterville, but I suspect it was after the opening of the Lockwood Mills in 1875. I only know that by 1890 the mills were closed on Christmas Day, and I am told that the holiday was always observed by Hollingsworth and Whitney after their Winslow mill opened in 1902. But, at least until the last quarter of the 19th century, everyone worked on Christmas Day, unless it fell on Sunday.<\/p>\n
Christmas Day apart from Christmas Sunday has seen change in this century in respect to church observance. In my boyhood all the churches in my native town had Sunday School parties on Christmas Eve. There was a big tree, around which were placed gifts for the children by their parents. While many families reserved major gifts for home on Christmas morning, other families brought all the kids’ presents to the Sunday School tree. At our parties I have seen one boy get as many as 15 gifts.<\/p>\n
That custom has now become obsolete. While Sunday School parties are still held, the only gifts are bags of candy, popcorn balls, and other small items from the school and its teachers. One custom persisted through all the changes: the hanging of Christmas stockings, often topped off by a large orange. Unless a home had a fireplace, it became difficult for chil.dren to visualize Santa Claus coming down the chimney; but human ingenuity has come up with modern explanations.<\/p>\n
Evergreen was associated with the day long before it became a Christian festival. Because on the shortest day of the year in December all other plants were brown and dead, and other trees were bare of leaves, the evergreens have long been seen as assurance of the renewal. of life in the coming spring. It is the evergreen that suggests everlasting life. To pagans, long before the Christian era, evergreens symbolized life in the midst of death. In ancient Rome homes at this season were decorated with green laurel. “When Christianity
\nfixed December 25 as the anniversary of the Savior’s birth, the Church naturally revered evergreen as a Christian symbol.<\/p>\n
Since medieval. times holly and mistletoe have been Christmas decorations. Mistletoe is said to have been used by the Druids, who left the famous monoliths at Stonehenge. Five hundred years before Columbus,Eric the Red and other Norsemen brought mistletoe to America. Mistletoe was never a popular church decoration for Christmas, but was used rather in the home. The custom of kissing under the mistletoe is of ancient origin and was not connected with church observances. Use of out-of-door greenery at Christmas is also a very old custom. Samuel Pepys, the 17th century British diarist, tells of London houses having exterior decoration by greens at the time of the Great Fire of London. On Boston’s fashionable Beacon Hill houses were festooned with outside greenery at Christmas. The big community Christmas tree is of comparatively recent origin. The most famous one is set up in Washington and is now lighted by the President of the united states pressing an electric button. That tree, as well as community trees for Rockefeller Plaza in New York, Independence Square in Philadelphia, and for other American cities, are often cut in Maine. The first community Christmas tree is said to have been put up in Pasadena, California in 1909.<\/p>\n
Ever since the Second World War the community tree in Trafalgar Square in London has been provided by the grateful people of Norway. Most American customs have spread westward from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But, like the community tree, the outdoor creche spread in the opposite direction. It seems to have had its 20th century revival in California, where four hundred years earlier the creche was set up in the courtyard of the Spanish missions.<\/p>\n
Light and fire, associated with the season, were common long before the Christian era. In parts of rural England one still sees the big Christmas candle, not the small ones placed in windows and on tables, but one of giant size that would burn for 24 hours. For that big candle to go out before the morning of December 25 meant bad luck for a year. A Christmas custom connected with light and fire has been observed in Christian Syria for centuries, despite Mohammedan predomination in that country. On Christmas Eve the Christian family, all carrying lighted candles, march around an unlit bonfire in the courtyard. After the youngest child who is able to read has read the gospel story of Christmas, the father lights the bonfire. When it dies down, everyone jumps over the embers and makes a wish.<\/p>\n
On Christmas morning they all go to church before daylight. There another bonfire is lighted and a figure of the Christ child is carried around the building. Christmas carols were originally dance songs. A round, ring dance was accompanied by singing. The early themes were not religious, but connected with love and courtship. Then in the 14th century they took on religious themes, and still later became connected with Christmas. For a long time they were not regarded as hymns and were not published in the hymnbooks. Their connection with Christmas first came in Italy when St. Francis Assisi permitted their use at a great religious festival, recognizing them as a gay and cheerful expression of joy because of the Savior’s birth. As late as 1825 Puritan tradition still condemned Christmas carols. A Boston minister then wrote: “Carols are pagan ditties that delight the laborer and the servant maid, but have no place among respectable people.” But such doleful remarks could not prevent popular carols moving into the churches. There are many more varied customs connected with Christmas. I have referred to a lot of them on previous Christmas broadcasts. But I would remind you that today, when Christmas is so highly commercialized and has become so predominantly secular,we must not forget what the day really means.<\/p>\n
Anyone who has the least familiarity with history recognizes the truth of what Gibbon says in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He wrote: “The great contribution of Christianity was that it brought hope to a hopeless world.” So in the midst of lavish giving and gay parties, we need to remember that we celebrate Christmas because nearly two thousand years ago to a humble couple from the despised town of Nazareth a baby was born in Bethlehem of Judea.<\/p>\n
Year: 1982<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #1333, Broadcast on December 26, 1982<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35294,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10179"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10179"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10179\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}