‘The time will be so full there will be little left to brood and none to mope. Yet sadness will be an undercurrent to the gaiety.’ Photo: Image: Scene from the film Christmas Under Fire (1941)
‘Christmas in America’: Janet Payne Whitney, from the 19 December issue, 1941
‘The forces of hate have split the world apart.’
Even more than we anticipated a week or two ago, our thoughts and our greetings go out this Christmas time to America as a whole and, in particular, to our American Friends and to our English children there. Despite America’s full entry into the war, there will be Christmas celebrations there, and this welcome article by one we can both claim as ‘ours’ – Janet Payne of Hitchin, now Janet Whitney of Westtown, Pennsylvania, author of Elizabeth Fry and Jennifer – will help us to share together in one another’s lives at a season the significance of which the world conflict makes greater than ever.
Our first Christmas in America was in 1917. We had been in the country since September, and had already discovered the most important thing to discover about the American winter – that is, that the blue sky and bright sun shine have no relation to temperature. Until the hapless Englishman finds this out he is apt to sally forth from his steam-heated domicile into the radiant day inadequately clad, and almost freeze to death before he can obtain more clothing. The sun may shine, the sky be blue, but the wind may be blowing at fifty or sixty miles an hour straight from the North Pole, with mighty little between. Or, even more deceptive, a still calm may prevail, in which at first the well-warmed human feels no discomfort until he finds his fingers and toes becoming lifeless in the temperature of zero and below.
But when the newcomer has learned to dress for the part how delightful and exhilarating is the American winter! None of that prolonged greyness which drives the foreigner to look upon the British Isles as a melancholy spot. Ice and snow and frost perform their magic under cloudless skies.
And Christmas is a festival indeed.
Before we had begun to wonder about Christmas or think about being homesick an invitation arrived from friends already dear, James Wood and Carolena Wood, of Mount Kisco, and when the time arrived that is where we went. When we turned in at the drive of Braewold, the house – set in a level place on a hillside, among lawns and trees – was all ablaze with lights at every window, and our hosts had flung the door wide open, and all the household stood there in the orange light to welcome us to Christmas.
Inside, besides the warmth to which we had become accustomed, there was in the main room a blazing fire of logs. The cosy feature of the English winter is present in most of the American houses which we know; not as a necessity but as something too delightful to give up. The Christmas tree, in this case cut down in their own woods, went right up to the ceiling, covered with glittering glass ornaments and twinkling lights. It looked wild and pagan and gave forth a scent of resin and of the forest. It represented fragments of many ancient faiths enchanted into the service of a Christian holiday.
And on Christmas Day what beautiful parcels appeared! To the average Englishman brown paper and string is an adequate wrapping for a present, with perhaps a little gum or glue on recalcitrant comers. But not so with the American who has somehow acquired, between his wilderness days and now, a passion for finish in detail. Table arrangement and flower-arrangement are practised as fine arts, not only by the rich or by the few, but by thousands of busy housewives. So the doing up of the Christmas gift is made part of the gift – white-paper and red ribbon, green paper and gold ribbon, red paper and gold or green string, silver paper with designs of holly or Santa Claus to make it rich; and gay stickers to fasten on, two or three to a package, each saying ‘Merry Christmas’ or something else appropriate.
After more than twenty American Christmases we now know the ritual. The holly wreath on the door, tied with red ribbon, to wish ‘Merry Christmas’ silently to every passer-by (in our case the passers-by are chiefly birds and squirrels, but the wreath must be there). The stockings hung up on Christmas Eve if there are children in the house. The tree, small or great, bespangled according to taste – some people who don’t expect children indoors festoon coloured electric lights over a tree growing in what the American persists in calling his ‘front yard’.
Carol singing is much practised. It sometimes touches the heart all too close to hear the fresh young voices in the dim dawn with ‘Hark the Herald Angels’ or ‘It Came Upon the Midnight Clear’. But one would not want to be without that pang.
The English guests in America this Christmas will be tenderly cared for, surrounded by cheerfulness and plenty. The time will be so full there will be little left to brood and none to mope. Yet sadness will be an undercurrent to the gaiety. Who wants to be a guest at Christmas, even the most cherished? Christmas is the home time for children. So they learn, even the youngest, that hate means separation, while love means together and uniting. The forces of hate have split the world apart.
The tinsel-covered tree is a German fashion. How deep the sadness this Christmas in the homes of Germany, the aggressor nation, the ‘separating’ nation, with not even a good cause to ‘justify’ her war. How sad the homes of riven France, even with their young men home from battle and their children about the hearth; lovers of freedom with their freedom lost. The sadness of the homes of England is far less than these. England can, perhaps, this Christmas feel pity for her enemies.
And the children, growing up, as we say, ‘to make a new and better world’, may in their various billets, at home or abroad, seal on their hearts the lesson of this Christmas of separation: that the new world must be a world in which people draw together and help each other, not a world in which they drive each other away. We need each other’s help to make this earth a cosy place for human habitation.
John Woolman said ‘Jesus Christ had no reserve in promoting the happiness of others… He who was perfectly happy in himself… yet became a companion to poor sincere-hearted men… Now this mind being in us which was in Christ Jesus, it removes from our hearts the desire of superiority, worldly honours or greatness. A deep attention is felt to the Divine Counsellor, and an ardent engagement to promote, as far as we may be enabled, the happiness of mankind universally.’
Janet Payne Whitney (1894-1974) was the author of at least four biographies: Geraldine S Cadbury; Elizabeth Fry, Quaker Heroine; John Woolman, American Quaker; and Abigail Adams. She also wrote five novels: Jennifer; Judith; Intrigue in Baltimore; The Quaker Bride; and The Ilex Avenue.
Comments
Please login to add a comment
