"Holiday Magic"

Today is the 83^rd anniversary of Pearl Harbor. On September 11^th we remembered the 23^rdanniversary of September 11. Both are dates that will be recalled in infamy, but the contrasts are compelling. Twenty-three years after Pearl Harbor was 1964, and the world had moved on. By 1964, Japan was the 6^th largest economy in the world, and a strong ally of the United States in the Pacific and East Asia. There had been resolution – unconditional surrender in 1945, combined with magnanimous support from the United States. In 2001 we are attacked by state-less terrorists. There has been no surrender, and thus no re-building.

Nevertheless, we should take a few moments to remember those lost on this date 83 years ago, and we should give thanks to the wisdom of those who allowed once enemies to become allies.

 

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To move onto this brief essay. Like many, I have always loved this time of year. My heart beats faster, filled with expectations that stem from childhood. The photo is of the wreath on the door to our apartment. On it hang small items my wife has collected over the years.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Holiday Magic”

December 7, 2024

 

“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are

better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas.”

                                                                                                               Laura Ingalls Wilder (1867-1957)

                                                                                                               The Long Winter, 1940

 

As a child, the days between Thanksgiving and Christmas were magical. They still are, though there are differences. As a child, magic explained what the mind could not reason, like how could Santa Claus actually visit the homes of all my friends in Peterborough on Christmas Eve, let alone the homes of all the children in other New Hampshire towns. We believed our mother when she told us that our horses could converse in English at midnight on Christmas Eve. There was magic in having “Mitzi,” our family’s Shetland pony, hang her horseshoe alongside our stockings from the fireplace mantle.

 

Today, the magic is on the faces of children as they climb onto Santa’s lap, in the expressions on strangers at the supermarket, in the pleasantries of the parking lot attendant, and on the kindly face of the pharmacist. We hear it in recordings of Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas,” and in the church choir’s rendition of Joseph Mohr’s “Silent Night.” It is the Christmas tree on top of the car and the red ribbon tied to the dog’s collar. “Faith,” as Fred Gailey said in defense of Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34^th Street, “is believing in things when common sense tells you not to.”

 

There is magic in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Christmas is the celebration of His birth. It was celebrated in Rome in the 4^th Century. Moralizing Puritans distained the secularization of Christmas, believing it should be treated solely as a holy day. Its recent commercialization has been accompanied with self-indulgence. And, certainly, personal pleasure is part of the magic. But we do not forget those who suffer from loneliness, illness, pain or want. Generosity is part of the magic of Christmas. 

 

In the long life of Christianity, today’s celebrations are recent. Washington Irving introduced Sinterklaas (based on Saint Nicholas) in his 1809 book The History of New York, Clement Moore wrote his classic in 1823, and Christmas cards and trees were introduced in the 1840s. The day became a federal holiday in 1870. While according to Gallup church membership has been declining for over a hundred years, the magic of Christmas has not suffered.

 

It is alive and well in our home. On our front door hangs a wreath, decorated with treasures. The rooms are populated with my wife’s collection of Byer’s Choice Santas and choristers, and my childhood stocking hangs, hopefully, over the mantle of our electric fireplace. Lights strung across the porch and on wreaths lend gaiety. We will watch old movies – “Christmas in Connecticut,” “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and “A Christmas Carol,” with Alastair Sim as Scrooge. And on Christmas Eve, I will read my Arthur Rackham illustrated edition of The Night Before Christmas.

"Sisters in Resistance," Tilar J. Mazzeo - A Review

 The lead headline in the second section of my yesterday’s politically correct local paper read: “Nips bring big money to towns.” While surely no disrespect was meant toward any Japanese Americans living in the region, I could not help but think of the reaction of woke language vigilantes had the headline appeared in right-leaning papers like the New York Post or even The Wall Street Journal. They would have called out their editors as unapologetically xenophobic. (Incidentally, the term refers to tiny bottles of liquor on which the state of Connecticut recently imposed a five-cent tax, which brought in $4.2 million in its first full year of operation – a lot of small bottles sold (and presumably consumed) for a state with a population of 3.6 million.)

 

Like P.G. Wodehouse’s Uncle Fred, I try to “spread sweetness and light” wherever I can.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Sisters in Resistance, Tilar J. Mazzeo

October 29, 2022

 

“There is in every true woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire,

which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity but which

kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.”

                                                                                                 Quote from Washington Irving’s The Sketch Book

                                                                                                 Inscribed on a bench in New York’s Central Park

                                                                                                 In memory of Frances de Chollet, one of the “sisters”

 

World War II spanned four years, eight months, and seven days, from Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, to her unconditional surrender in Reims on May 7, 1945. The death count is estimated at 70 and 85 million people. World War II is, probably, the most written about event in history, with Amazon listing over 70,000 titles – more books than one person could read in a lifetime. With over 100 million service men and women, on both sides, the War produced tens of thousands of heroes and heroines, many whose stories have yet to be told, reminding one of the closing line from the 1948 movie, The Naked City: “There are eight million stories in the naked city, and this is one of them.” Ms. Mazzeo gives us one of them in this remarkable story of three women who out-witted the German war machine over a diary – Mussolini’s daughter, a German spy, and an American socialite, married to a Swiss banker.

 

The three women: Edda Mussolini Ciano (1910-1995), “…the favorite daughter of Italy’s autocratic ruler…” and married to Count Galeazzo Ciano. Hilda Beetz (1919-2010), “…had double-crossed the Nazis when she helped Edda flee with the majority of the actual diaries”; and Frances de Chollet (1900-1999) “…drawn into the world of espionage run by Allen Dulles…” They had little in common until they colluded, unknowingly, in a dangerous, but ultimately successful, venture to bring Ciano’s diaries and papers to the Allies in Switzerland. Ciano had served as Italy’s Foreign Minister from 1936-1943, when he became disillusioned with his father-in-law’s government. In his diaries, he had written of his dislike for several Fascist and Nazi officials, especially Joachim von Ribbentrop, Germany’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

 

By mid-1944, the Italian Fascist Party was beginning to collapse, Mussolini was near Lake Garda under German protection. Ciano was hated by both Italian partisans and the Nazis. Edda, whose wealth had been dissipated, saw her husband’s diaries as potential currency for her and her children. Hilda Beetz turned double agent when she fell in love with Ciano, the man she was supposed to seduce in order to retrieve the diaries. Frances de Chollet was asked by Dulles to befriend Edda who had sought refuge in Switzerland. The story told by Ms. Mazzeo is how the papers – divided, hidden, and retrieved – were finally given to the Allies to be used at Nuremburg. 

 

There are others who make appearances in the story, among them – Virginia Agnelli (1899-1945) and her daughter Susanna (1922-2009), friends of Edda, and Emilio Pucci (1914-1992), an Italian nobleman, lover of Edda, who was tortured by the Nazis.

 

“After the war…,” Ms. Mazzeo writes, “these women’s stories faded into the background. But in the lived moment of what surely measures as one of the Second World War’s greatest rescue missions, they were the key actors…” Three courageous women risked their lives for the sake of a better world. This is Ms. Mazzeo’s book – a World War II story of civilian heroism – a book worth reading.

"It's the Culture, Stupid - Part II"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“It’s the Culture, Stupid – Part II”

June 13, 2020

“Nothing in the entire world is more dangerous

than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”

                                                                                                Martin Luther King (1929-1968)

                                                                                                Strength to Love, 1963

                                                                                                collection of sermons

Ignorance is the bane of civilized society. It is inexcusable in a country with free high schools. In a manifestation of cancel culture, mobs tear down statues of yesteryear’s heroes. I wonder: what is gained by destroying historical artifacts? Where is the curiosity expressed by Washington Irving in Sketchbook almost two hundred years ago? “I longed to wander over the scenes of renowned achievements.”[1] Should we rename army bases in a moment of exuberant zeal, or would it be wiser to debate the issue when heads are cooler? Are past wrongs righted when relegated to the ash heap of ignorance? Can we assume we have reached perfection where our descendants will find nothing wrong in today’s actions? Would those whose bravery stems from being part of a mob tearing down statues of Christopher Columbus have had the courage of the Italian navigator to sail across an infinite sea to an unknown land?

History must be considered in context and with perspective. It is impossible for us to judge the behavior of our forefathers based on today’s moral standards, just as it will be unfair to us for our descendants to mock our actions today based on values a hundred years hence. Should we ignore Columbus because he is now pilloried as a racist, more than five hundred years after his voyage of discovery? Should we disregard Thomas Jefferson, and the words he wrote about self-evident truths and of how all men were created equal with unalienable rights, because he kept slaves? Cannot we admire the former and criticize the latter?

The cultural war is perhaps most pronounced in the Washington D.C. environs, where 283,000 federal bureaucrats work. They are joined by about 14,000 staffers for the 535 Congressmen and Senators. Lobbyists comprise another 11,600 people. Added to the mix are thousands who work in media. In all, they make up almost 20% of the metro areas workforce. These are highly paid people who live in four of the nation’s five wealthiest counties – Howard (MD) and Loudon, Fairfax, and Arlington, all in Virginia. It is a self-contained culture where most jobs are based on who you know. Once hired, they are ensconced, moving from agency to lobbyist firm to agency. But as Richard Grenell, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany and ex-acting Director of National Intelligence, recently noted, the D.C. culture is autonomous, where there is “no outside thought, there’s no perspective.” While forty million Americans lost their jobs due to a state-mandated shut-down of the economy, these people kept theirs, even when told to stay home – most paid from our tax dollars. The contrast to the rest of the country is startling. It was this narcissistic cocoon that Donald Trump threatened to dismantle in 2016 when he pledged to “drain the swamp.”

So, is it a surprise that this mixture of conventional bureaucrats, lobbyists and media worked hard to defeat Mr. Trump in the 2016 election? Should we be stunned to learn that the Obama Administration and the intelligence services interfered with the peaceful transition of power post-election and pre-inauguration? Was it startling that seventy members of Congress refused to attend the inauguration, or that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tore up her copy of Mr. Trump’s State of the Union speech in front of 37 million viewers? With the Durham report pending, should we be shocked that 1,500 Justice Department retirees have spoken out against Attorney General William Barr, or that so many have attacked the President and his Administration? Has any previous President been treated with such hypocritical condescension?

And why is it that racism is most prevalent in bastions of progressivism like New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Baltimore and Philadelphia? Have policies that provide uncompetitive schools, a failure to support two-parent traditional families and a culture of victimization failed the very people they were supposed to help? For Democrats, a year that began with a strong economy and record levels of employment for Black workers, the killing of George Floyd was a godsend, to complement the shuttering of the economy to counter COVID-19. Just as scare stories regarding the pandemic proliferate, the murder of Mr. Floyd has been exploited as systemic racism. Why do so many now want to defund the police? In a review of Stacy Abrams new book, Our Time is Now, Barton Swaim provides one answer: “Because, for overeducated white liberals…blaming the cops is easier than blaming themselves.” Certainly, there are bad cops who should be fired. But these same liberals ignore inconvenient facts like bad cops get protected by unions, that police shootings have declined dramatically in the past twenty years and that racism is most prominent in Blue-run cities and states. The legitimate protests gave activists like George Soros the opportunity to unleash Black Lives Matter, an organization he helps fund through Open Society Foundation. BLM draws attention to alleged racism and inequalities but does little to address root causes – education, family and personal responsibility – and did little to curtail the riots and looting, abetted by radical groups like Antifa. As Candice Owens says in a video viewed over six million times, a divided nation is fundamental to the success of progressive politics.

Nevertheless, great harm was done to African-Americans. First slavery and then a century of “Jim Crow” laws that prevented Blacks from achieving the promises of America. The 1964 and 1965 Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act largely corrected past wrongs, though implementation was slow and sometimes painful. To help atone for centuries of ill treatment, affirmative action was introduced in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson in Executive Order 11246. It was a necessary program at the time. But implicit in that policy is that it gives birth to victimization – that without help from government, success is impossible. It is patronizing and racist. No one race is intellectually or morally inferior to another.

Politicians choose to compartmentalize the electorate. When the goal is votes, it is more efficient to address the concerns of a group than to consider the fears and desires of an individual. Like everyone, Blacks need tools to succeed – strong family ties, a good education where choice is an option, and an environment that encourages personal responsibility and accountability. Millions of Blacks have made successes of their lives in fields ranging from the military, music, literature, law, sports, politics, medicine, science and hundreds of others. They have done so as individuals – as Democrats and as Republicans, as liberals and as conservatives. But when they do so as conservatives, they are disparaged by white liberals; they are told they are traitors to their class, that they are “Uncle Toms,” that “they ain’t Black.”

Ignorance of our past is no excuse. Platitudes do not provide answers. Political polarization is not uncommon. America has always been splintered by policy differences. It is only in time of war that we become truly unified. However, a culture that emphasizes diversity of race, sex and religion, but not thought is negative for freedom and independence. It is when opinions are censored, as they have been in our universities in recent years, amplified in the press and social media and promoted by politicians that we risk authoritarianism. We move forward as individuals, not as Christians, Jews, Blacks, Whites, gays, women or men. That is how we should be weighed, by the “measure of our character.” But politics is about garnering votes; it is about power, something we all need to keep in mind, especially in an election year. 

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[1] As quoted by Nicholas Basbanes in his biography of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Cross of Snow.