INXS-Mas

'Tis the season to reflect on the holiday that started as a drag party.

This from Matt Crenson of the AP in yesterday's Boston Globe:

For most of its history, Christmas was a free-for-all, more New Year's Eve or Mardi Gras than the domestic idyll described in Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem, "A Visit From Saint Nicholas" (better known today as "The Night Before Christmas").

The holiday has its origins in the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a weeklong winter solstice celebration that featured feasting, drinking, gambling, and sex. Men dressed like women, women dressed like men, and masters waited on their slaves in a raucous reversal of the social hierarchy.

Such behavior was almost inevitable during the weeks surrounding the winter solstice in the preindustrial societies of northern Europe, thanks to what Nissenbaum refers to as a "combustible mix" of leisure time, abundance, and alcohol.

The work of the harvest done, young men had plenty of time on their hands, much of it in the form of long, dark nights tailor-made for mischief. In a world without refrigeration, the arrival of cold weather made fresh meat available for the first time in months. But most importantly, December meant beer. By mid-month, whatever grain surplus their hard summer's labor had produced would have been fully fermented and ready to drink.

In the northern Europe of the late Middle Ages, gangs of young men would engage in "wassailing," a cross between Christmas caroling and home invasion. The gangs would visit wealthy homes, often in disguise, and sing songs that threatened violence if they were not invited in for food and drink.

In agrarian societies, practices like wassailing served as a critical safety valve, giving people at the bottom of the social ladder a release that would keep them in line during the rest of the year.

But with the arrival of the Industrial Revolution, factory owners didn't want their employees wandering off for weeks of drunken merriment. During the 1820s, after a series of particularly raucous holiday seasons in New York, the city's elite began campaigning for a more restrained, domestic Christmas. Central to that campaign was the tradition of purchasing gifts, especially for children.

'Twas better to receive - or take - than to give. I guess the "War on Christmas" was won quite some time ago.

Bob Stops the Bleeding

At first glance, it looks like Herbert's come around: "It is time to pull the troops out of harm’s way."

Well, he's come around in a John McCain sort of way. Quoting McCain on Vietnam, Herbert remarks

No other national endeavor requires as much unshakable resolve as war. If the nation and the government lack that resolve, it is criminal to expect men in the field to carry it alone.

There are better reasons to call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq aside from the fact that Americans "lack the resolve" to finish the job. Presumably if Americans were mobilized for war and willing to pay any cost to support the war on terror, the nation's sacrifices would be justified - and Herbert would still be cheerleading.