Jingle Bells and Harps of Gold
Aiken UU Church
December 23 2012
Did Unitarians
invent Christmas? Well, maybe the answer is a surprising one…we could say, at
the very least, that Unitarians have influenced the way we Americans celebrate
it. Because of four remarkable American Unitarians that we’ll hear about this
morning, our holidays will be merry and bright, if not white!
Four years ago
Doug Muder wrote an article called “The ghosts of Unitarian Christmas” in UU World; in it, he claimed that
Unitarians reinvented Christmas:
“Unitarians didn’t just inherit Christmas
from the orthodox Christian sects… To a large extent we invented it, or
reinvented it. For years the orthodox didn’t know what to do with Christmas.
Easter was the big religious holiday. In England, Christmas looked more like Saturnalia
than anything Christian.
The actual caroling tradition was more
like trick-or-treating than the way we picture it now. Rowdy mobs of the poor
would stand outside the houses of the rich and intimidate them into offering
food and drink. The Puritans hated the whole idea so much that the
Massachusetts Bay Colony would fine you for celebrating Christmas.”
http://www.uuworld.org/life/articles/124481.shtml
There
was in fact a ban on Christmas that existed as law for 22 years, from 1659
until it was revoked in 1681 by an English-appointed governor, Sir Edmund
Andros, who also revoked a Puritan ban against festivities on Saturday night.
But even after the ban was lifted, the majority of colonists still shunned
celebrations. Samuel Sewell, whose diary of life in Massachusetts Bay Colony
was later published, made a habit of watching the holiday—specifically how it
was observed—each year:
“The
Puritans who immigrated to Massachusetts to build a new life had several
reasons for disliking Christmas. First of all, it reminded them of the Church
of England and the old-world customs, which they were trying to escape. Second,
they didn't consider the holiday a truly religious day. December 25th wasn't
selected as the birth date of Christ until several centuries after his death.”
Doug Muder says that the first change in
American celebrations of Christmas came in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1832,
in the home of Charles Follen, the Unitarian minister and abolitionist. He went
on to found a congregation in Lexington that’s named after him today. Why is he
famous? For bringing a tradition from his native Germany to America in 1832 -
the first Christmas tree in New England. Now no home would be complete in its
Christmas decorations without this ancient pagan symbol, and the White House
lighting of the national tree by the president is just as much an American
custom as pardoning the Thanksgiving turkey.
Maria Child
The next Unitarian to contribute to the
American celebration of Christmas is a woman named Lydia Maria Child. In 1844
she wrote the poem "A
Boy's Thanksgiving Day", which became better known as “Over the River and
through the Woods.” It celebrates her childhood memories of visiting her Grandfather's House.
Edmund Sears
The third Unitarian
who changed the face of Christmas for America was a minister who wrote lyrics
that paint a beautiful picture of a midnight scene in Bethlehem. “It Came Upon
a Midnight Clear” was written by Edmund Hamilton Sears in 1849, and we aren’t
sure if the carol was first sung at his home by members of his congregation in
Wayland, Massachusetts, or in the Sunday school of the Quincy Massachusetts
Unitarian church.
James Pierpont
The final Unitarian
whose music also impacted our Christmas tradition was based further south than
Massachusetts – James Lord Pierpont, whose brother John in 1853 became the last
minister before the Civil War to serve the Unitarian church in Savannah. In
1857 James wrote a song called “One Horse Open Sleigh” – and in 1859 he
reissued it under a new name: “Jingle Bells.” Sleighing was a popular activity
of the time, and it’s suggested that while in Savannah as music director of his brother’s
Unitarian church, Pierpont was homesick and wrote the song about his younger days in New
England.
Like many other important American songwriters,
Pierpont didn’t get rich from "Jingle Bells" at the time, but later,
"In the period of 1890 through 1954,“Jingle Bells” was in the top 25 most
recorded songs in history."
The recognition of his composition came posthumously
when Pierpont was elected into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. And more
locally, in 1997, Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia
established a James Lord Pierpont Music Scholarship Fund.
Looking deeper
Charles Follen, Maria Child, Edmund Sears, and
James Pierpont – we as UUs should be justly proud of these 4 Unitarians as we
celebrate Christmas. Even though there is one other Unitarian whose
contribution to Christmas is hugely important – Charles Dickens - they have
made the holiday uniquely American.
But just as Dickens in “A Christmas Carol”
promoted the
brotherhood and sisterhood of all people, and universal values like compassion,
friendship, and family, the contributions of Follen, Child, Sears, and Pierpont
also come to us undergirded by equally strong convictions and a desire to
create a world of peace and justice.
Let’s look a little more deeply into the
stories of these four.
Unitarianism in the America of the early 19th
century stressed the importance of rational thinking, and a personal, direct
relationship with God. By 1825, Unitarian ministers had formed a denomination
called the American Unitarian Association. Its members were outspoken on issues
such as education reform, prison reform, moderation in temperance, ministry to
the poor, and the abolition of slavery.
The Reverend Lucinda Duncan, minister of
the Follen Community Church in East Lexington Massachusetts, founded by Charles
Follen in 1839, said of him: “Follen has left us a legacy of social action
based on the principle of freedom.” Charles Follen was born in Germany in 1796,
where aristocratic rule was reinstated following the end of the Napoleonic Wars
and French domination. He was a student who joined in the revolutionary
movement for reform, and a few years later as a professor he left for America,
where he became Harvard’s first German teacher in 1825.
Follen was influenced by Boston Unitarians
like William Ellery Channing and began to study for the ministry. He married in
1828, became an American citizen and a father in 1830. In December 1832,
wanting to recreate the beauty of a decorated tree from his childhood years in
Germany, Follen went out into the woods and cut down a small fir tree. He then
set it in a tub and hung from its branches small dolls, gilded eggshells, and
paper cornucopias filled with fruit, and set candles in it. Harriet Martineau,
an English Unitarian and journalist who was visiting Boston, described what
happened next:
"It really looked beautiful; the room seemed
in a blaze, and the ornaments were so well hung on that no accident happened,
except that one doll's petticoat caught fire. There was a sponge tied to the
end of a stick to put out any… blaze, and no harm ensued. I mounted the steps
behind the tree to see the effect of opening the doors. It was delightful. The
children poured in, but in a moment every voice was hushed. Their faces were
upturned to the blaze, all eyes wide open, all lips parted, all steps
arrested."
This was not the first Christmas tree in America,
but after he set the example in New England of decorating it, it became a
widespread popular custom. And the Follen Community Church commemorates this by
lighting a tree every Christmas on the church lawn…but it also works hard “to
remain true to Follen's example as a social activist.” Here’s the untold story:
“As an American, Follen took up the fight against slavery with the same spirit
the younger Follen protested the injustices in his native country.
His uncompromising abolitionist principles once
lost him a job as pastor of All Souls Church in New York City; he was outspoken
in his stand against slavery at a time when abolition was still highly
controversial, even in Massachusetts. Harvard did not renew his professorship
in 1835, and his wife later said that it was his outspoken views that cost him
his Harvard position.” http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/1996/12.12/ProfessorBrough.html
Taking a position as minister for the small
congregation of East Lexington, Massachusetts, he designed the octagonal church
which still stands, laid out so that the minister would not be elevated above
his parishioners.
Except that tragically, Follen did not live to
preach in that church. He was killed in 1840 at the age of 44 in a fire on
board the steamship Lexington while crossing Long Island Sound.
Maria
Child was another Unitarian abolitionist, and also became a Unitarian as a
young adult; she chose the new name Maria to go by at this transformative stage
of her life. She became an advocate of women’s suffrage, but her work as an
author brought her fame at a young age: she wrote several controversial books,
the first being a novel about racial intermarriage at the age of 22. When she was 31 she published “An Appeal in
Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans,” which became the most
influential anti-slavery non-fiction book ever written.
She turned her attention in later years to Native
American advocacy, working ceaselessly for the rights of native people to have
good education, to speak native languages, and practice their own religions.
She passionately opposed the American government's policy to forcibly drive the
Cherokee people from their tribal lands. When she was 66, she wrote “An Appeal
for the Indians,” a controversial call for government officials and religious
leaders to bring justice to American Indians. She inspired other advocates with
her writing, which also led to the founding of the U.S. Board of Indian
Commissioners and the creation of the Peace Policy during the presidency of
Ulysses S. Grant, although nothing came of that policy.
So when we remember Maria Child for writing the
poem “Over the River and through the Woods,” it is such a small part of her impressive lifetime of
achievement and advocacy.
Someone whose song lyrics are seen as
prophetic is Edmund Sears, who wrote “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear” in 1849.
Unlike the first verse with its recreation of the scene in Bethlehem when Jesus
was born, the final verse focuses on the hope that peace on earth will prevail:
“Yet with the woes of sin and strife
the world has suffered long;
Beneath the angel strain have rolled
two thousand years of wrong;
And man, at war with man, hears not
the love song which they bring;
O hush the noise, ye men of strife
and hear the angels sing.”
The Reverend Edmund Sears served a small
congregation in Wayland, Massachusetts in the 1830s, but when he moved to a
larger congregation he suffered a breakdown after 7 years. He then moved back
to Wayland, where he wrote the carol. Sears was also a fervent abolitionist
during the Civil War, but it is thought that the song refers to the hope of
peace following the Mexican-American War, which had just ended in 1849.
As adventurous as Sears was fragile, James Pierpont
was the son of a Unitarian minister, and could trace his family lineage back to
Charlemagne and beyond to England under William the Conqueror. He was sent to boarding school when a
young boy, and a few years later ran away to sea for a short time. As an adult,
he had a "Gold Rush" adventure, leaving his wife and children in
Massachusetts. He returned to Massachusetts but soon joined his brother in
Savannah, giving organ and voice lessons to support himself while organist and
music director of the Unitarian church. A year after his first wife died of
tuberculosis, he married the daughter of Savannah’s mayor.
In 1859, after publishing the song “One Horse
Open Sleigh” and re-releasing it as “Jingle Bells” the following year – neither
time a hit – Pierpont saw the Unitarian church close due to its position on
abolition. But while his brother returned north, James Pierpont stayed in
Savannah with his wife and, remarkably, joined the First Georgia Cavalry when
war broke out. He even wrote music for the confederacy, but maybe the soldiers on both sides sang “Jingle Bells” on cold December
nights while they were camped out before a battle.
The Unitarian Church in Savannah still
calls itself the “Jingle Bells” Church, but since the
roots of the song trace to both Massachusetts and Georgia, there are historical
markers in both states. This, Martha Boltz writes in an article on the Civil War, means
that the song represents the War Between the States
in a very literal way.
But here’s a real achievement for Pierpont: “Jingle Bells” was the
first song — and the first Christmas carol — performed in outer space, when
astronauts Wally Schirra and Tom Stafford sang it on December 16, 1965, during
the flight of Gemini 6.
The Civil War:
“Jingle Bells,” sung by the North and the South at Christmas
http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/civil-war/2012/dec/12/civil-war-jingle-bells-sung-north-and-south-christ/
So “Jingle Bells” may not be the most profound song
– it may not have the nostalgic picture of family warmth and happiness at
Christmas that Maria Child’s song does, and it may not be a prophetic call for
world peace like Sears’ carol is – and its author may not have been the most
noble of advocates for peace and justice - but along with the Christmas tree of
Charles Follen, it may be the most popular symbol of Christmas in this country.
And so that’s why we can say that Unitarians
invented Christmas…and merry Christmas to all of you.
Gaye Ortiz
December 23 2012
