Arkansas Blog

Since I was a kid I've enjoyed the State Capitol Christmas lights. Never mind that state funds are being used for specific religious purposes. Works for me and my family.

But someone please tell me, what in the hell do fireworks have to do with the birth of Our Dear Lord? PEACE on Earth? Aren't fireworks symbolic of the rockets' red glare; bombs bursting in air? War? I don't understand the fireworks.

>>But someone please tell me, what in the hell do fireworks have to do with the birth of Our Dear Lord? PEACE on Earth? Aren't fireworks symbolic of the rockets' red glare; bombs bursting in air? War? I don't understand the fireworks.

They're pretty. (Do you really need a reason for the fireworks that are just as out of place at the state capitol as the friggin' Christmas decorations?) And I hope everyone is happy that Arkansas has a genuine CHRISTMAS tree and none of this "happy holiday" and "season's greetings" stuff!

Gimme a break!

As a child, on a visit to Arkansas with my family--when we lived elsewhere--I remember being puzzled by the proliferation of fireworks stands around Christmastide, since I hadn't noticed them in the other places we'd lived. "Oh, it's just something they've always done in Arkansas--sometimes they shoot off guns or just rattle pots and pans." Hmm (I thought), I do come from a strange place.

Subsequent years of observation and reading have provided me a possible answer, but it's kind of involved.

Everyone knows that the Chinese are credited with the invention of gunpower and fireworks, which were first and foremost noisemakers, not weapons of war. The noise *might* have been used to scare a less-savvy enemy, but it was primarily to frighten away evil spirits and demons at sacred times or in spiritually or civically perilous or auspicious circumstances. It wasn't until much later that the technology was adapted for warfare.

Anyway, the custom of noisemaking on certain occasions seems always to have been ubiquitous, and fireworks have insinuated themselves into the custom, wherever they have become available. Thus, weddings, births, baptisms (or other rites of passage), funerals, changes of government and various civic observations are all occasions for noisemaking--usually with at least a sub-text of dispelling bad mojo.

So there's a thread of paganism underlying even the most Christian of holy days, and the Arkansas customs and lore surrounding Christmas come directly from the England and Europe of our ancestors--such as the tradition that the cows low at midnight on Christmas Eve (or, nowadays, on "Old Christmas", 12 days later), or the custom of using lights and noisemaking to ward off (or to symbolize the flight of) evil forces.

Just my two cents' worth.

I just barely knew Bill McCuen for a short time before he hit the fan. My favorite bartender always told me to vote for Bill because he was the crookedest guy in Little Rock and I thought that was saying a whole lot. Just as I start getting comfortable with the idea of having a palm in LR that I could grease, the epic Arkansas flag debacle commenced and rolled up over McCuen's head like foreskin. Bye bye Bill.

Before the hammer dropped, Bill and 2 other guys attended some kind of drunken toga party in LR and delighted the crowd by handing out autographed Arkansas flags.....What? Me worry? A friend of mine, a real hep cat, an Arkansas bi coastal, Ray-Ban wearing, Dodge Diplomat driving hipster was in attendance at the flag singing party and brought his autographed flag back to Fort Baptist. During a night of mutual hard drinking he offered to sell his McCuen souvenir and I snapped it up.

Though I have no idea where it's buried at the DBI compound, it is one of my most prized processions. I was hoping to pave my way to a golden retirement by selling the damn thing to the anti-Clinton Museum, but that thing never got off the ground. I think before I die, I'll find my autographed flag so they can drape it over my coffin and present it to my wife at my funeral. I know, I know...I didn't serve in no Arm forces, but I'm hoping my AT Blog battles earn me the right to have a disgraced Arkansas flag laid over my dead body when I lay me pixels down.

I hope Max will post the schedule for the lighting of the Jewish, Buddhist, and Muslim Capitol holiday displays and I hope he was joking when he said the Baby J looked just like a little Houston Nutt. How wrong that would be! It's Tuberville Baby Jesus time! Go Troops! Beat Iraq!

Lo Saturnalia!! Hail Saturn!

The festival itself honors the Roman God Saturn. Essentially a peaceful and jovial deity, his name Satur (gorged), or Sator (a sower) signifies abundance of the harvest. According to mythology, he was driven from the heavens by Jupiter and hid in the countryside. Eventually, he became King of Latium, and ruled there with his wife Ops. As a king, he brought prosperity and abundance to the kingdom, and was honored by having a festival day named in his honor. This later became a week long event at midwinter starting on Dec. 17.

Besides being a rowdy, noisy event, Saturnalia was also a time to visit friends, give gifts of wax candles (to signify the returning of the Sun after solstice), and decorating homes with greenery. Candles and lamps were lit to chase away the spirits of darkness.

Schools, businesses, and courts of law were closed. Instead of the toga, more informal dinner clothing was allowed. The pilleus, a red felt cap worn by freed slaves in the Roman Empire; slaves whose masters had endowed them with freedom and whose descendants became fully-fledged Roman citizens, was worn even by household slaves, as a sign of the freedom of the season.

Each family chose a Lord of Misrule to oversee the chaos, and cross dressing, parties, and masquerades all were in vogue. Slaves were treated like equals, allowed to wear their master's clothing, and be waited upon by their master's at mealtime.

Eventually as Christianity spread throughout the world, and anything Pagan in origin was frowned upon, the Festival of Saturnalia was replaced by the Feast of the Nativity, which later became known as Christmas.

Some Pagans and Neo Pagans still celebrate the Festival of Saturnalia along with or instead of Yule celebrations.

Lo Saturnalia!!!!

Isn't The Lord of Misrule duck hunting in Stuttgart this weekend??

Thanks, Rev, but it isn't "LO", it's "IO", pronounced "YO". Otherwise, it's good support for my thesis above.

Just two more of my cents on the fireworks...I think the proliferation of fireworks stands in Arkansas around that time of the year is so that kids can have something to shoot off for New Year's. I've never heard of anyone celebrating Christmas with fireworks. It seems counter-intuitive to the whole "peace" thing.

And for the record, I didn't mean I'm in favor of the noise and fireworks, just that I understand it-- or rather, I understand where it comes from.

Personally, I hate the "shopping season" that Christmas has become. For a number of years, I lived in a community (monastic) in which NO Christmas observances took place until after supper on Christmas Eve. We then had 12 days to observe Christmas, after which we started getting ready for Lent.

Out here "in the world", I just shake my head.

The war on Christmas
By Ed Quillen
Article Last Updated: 12/01/2007 07:04:56 PM MST

Just two years ago, we heard much about the "War on Christmas," and as nearly as I can tell, it has been about as successful as the wars on poverty and drugs. In other words, Christmas won.

"Merry Christmas" appears in the television advertising of various big-box stores. The lights of "the world's largest Christmas tree decoration" on Tenderfoot Hill above Salida were turned on, complete with fireworks, at a community celebration a few days ago. For the first time in memory, the rental house next door even has strings of Christmas lights on its front-yard trees.

Or perhaps they aren't really Christmas lights. They all glow white, and from what I've read out of Fort Collins lately, red and green lights are wholesome Christmas symbols, but little twinkling white lights represent a generic winter festival promoted by the Secular Humanist Worldwide Alliance of Political Correctness Opposed to Traditional Values.

I thought of asking my neighbor just why she chose to display white lights, but that seemed too simple. Instead, I started looking for whoever was behind the War on Christmas.

It took a while, but I finally found Endicott Scrooge, managing general partner of Megaglobal Capital Management, the corporate descendant of the 19th-century London firm of Marley & Scrooge.

He explained that he was the great-great-great-great-grandnephew of Ebeneezer Scrooge, one of the company's founding partners. "Uncle Eben never married," Endicott said, "after Belle, his true love, got tired of waiting for him. But he had a younger brother, Jeroboam, who took over the company after Ebeneezer had that famous nervous breakdown, and I'm descended from Jeroboam."

"Ebeneezer had a nervous breakdown?" I asked. "I don't think I know what you're talking about."

"Of course you do," Endicott said. "Charles Dickens wrote about it in 1843. That night Uncle Eben said he saw three ghosts, then started giving his stuff away the next day? Believe it or not, he signed the firm up to pay the medical bills of that Cratchit cripple. He could have bankrupted the company."

That did sound serious. "You're telling me it was a sign of insanity when Ebeneezer started saying 'Merry Christmas' instead of 'Bah, humbug?' " I asked.

"What else could you call it?" Endicott replied. "Poor Uncle Eben just snapped, and it was a good thing that Grandpa Jeroboam could ease him out of the company and step in to take over. The firm has survived and thrived for generations."

"And all those years you've been waging the War on Christmas?" I asked.

"More or less," he conceded, "but remember, we didn't start it. When Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans took control of England in 1645, they outlawed Christmas because they saw it as decadent revelry. The Pilgrims of New England felt the same way. They also waged war on Christmas - it was banned in Boston from 1659 to 1681."

"But that was a long time ago," I pointed out. "What are you doing today to war against Christmas?"

"For one thing," Endicott explained, "we've invented two new holidays to take people's minds off the message of Christmas. The day after Thanksgiving is now "Black Friday," and it involves a pilgrimage to a shopping mall while the national media focus on retail sales figures. More recently, we have "Cyber Monday" to celebrate online retailing."

"Pretty clever," I said. "And that takes people's minds off 'Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men' "?

"Peace and good will are bad for our investment business - oil futures, commodity hedges, defense stocks," Endicott said. "So of course we continue to fight the War on Christmas."

Ed Quillen (ed@cozine.com) is a freelance writer, history