Kenneth C. Davis's Blog, page 105

It is NOT Presidents Day. Or President's Day. Or Even Presidents' Day.

So What Day Is it After All?

Okay. We all do it. It's printed on calendars and posted in bank windows. We mistakenly call the third Monday in February Presidents Day, in part because of all those commercials in which George Washington swings his legendary ax and "Rail-splitter" Abe Lincoln hoists his ax to chop down prices on everything from linens to SUVs.

But, really it is George Washington's Birthday –federally speaking that is.

The official designation of the federal holiday observed on the third Monday of February was, and still is, Washington's Birthday.

You can also check out my videoblog on George Washington.

But Washington's Birthday has become widely known as Presidents Day (or President's Day, or even Presidents'  Day). The popular usage and confusion resulted from the merging of what had been two widely celebrated Presidential birthdays in February –Lincoln's on February 12th, which was never a federal holiday– and Washington's on February 22.

Created under the Uniform Holiday Act of 1968, which gave us three-day weekend Monday holidays, the federal holiday on the third Monday in February is technically still Washington's Birthday. But here's the rub: the holiday can never land on Washington's true birthday because the latest date it can fall is February 21, as it did in 2011.

Washington's Tomb -- Mt. Vernon (Photo credit Kenneth C. Davis 2010)

Just because it is officially Washington's Birthday doesn't mean we can't talk about the other Presidents too. So here's a quick Presidential Pop Quiz:

•Who was the first President born an American citizen?

Martin van Buren, the eighth, also known as "Old Kinderhook," or "OK". All of his predecessors were born British subjects during the colonial era.

•Who was the first President to commit troops to a foreign country?

From 1801 to 1805, Thomas Jefferson sent the navy and marines to "Barbary" in what is modern day Libya, Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia to attack the pirates who were preying on American and European shipping.

•Washington was the first general to become President. But how many other generals became President?

Eleven. Besides Washington, five were career officers: Andrew Jackson (Creek War, War of 1812); William Henry Harrison (Battle of Tippecanoe); Zachary Taylor (Mexican War); Grant (Civil War); and Eisenhower (WW II).  Six others were not career soldiers but attained the rank by appointment: Franklin Pierce, (Mexican War); Andrew Johnson, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison (all of whom served in the Civil War).

Ironically, the two greatest war Presidents, Lincoln and Roosevelt, had little or no military experience. Lincoln was briefly in the Illinois militia, or national guard, during the Black Hawk War and later said he led a charge against an onion field and lost a lot of blood to mosquitoes.

During World War I, Roosevelt was Undersecretary of the Navy and had tried to enlist, but was asked to remain in his navy office. And many other Presidents had military experience but never attained the rank of general.

•Which President dodged the draft, legally?

During the Civil War, Grover Cleveland paid for a substitute when he was drafted. That was legal at the time under the 1863 Conscription Act.

•Which two Presidents died on the Fourth of July, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence was signed?

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams in 1826. James Monroe also died on July 4, 1831, and Calvin Coolidge was born in Vermont on Independence Day.

•Did President Lincoln write the Gettysburg Address on the back of an envelope?

That's the myth. But no, Lincoln drafted what may be the most memorable speech in American history several times. At Gettysburg for the dedication of a cemetery to the thousands who had died in the 1863 battle, Lincoln was not the featured speaker. That honor went to a man who spoke for two hours. Lincoln's address took about two and half minutes. But which one do we remember?

•Which President returned to the House of Representatives after his term?

John Quincy Adams

Many of these questions are drawn from Don't Know Much About History or my children's book Don't Know Much About the Presidents

Don't Know Much About Minute: Abraham Lincoln's Birthday

February 12 used to mean something–Lincoln's Birthday. It was never a national holiday but it was pretty important when I was a kid.

The Uniform Holidays Act in 1971 changed that by creating Washington's Birthday as a federal holiday on the third Monday in February. It is NOT officially Presidents Day.

But it is still a good excuse to talk about Abraham Lincoln. especially since his real birthday is on the calendar.

Honest Abe. The Railsplitter. The Great Emancipator. You know some of the basics and the legends. But check out this video to learn some of things you may not know, but should, about the 16th President.

Here's a link to the Lincoln Birthplace National Park

This link is to the Emancipation Proclamation page at the National Archives.

And you can read much more about Lincoln in Don't Know Much About History and Don't Know Much About the Civil War.

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

 

The paperback edition had been released witha new cover to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil war.

Joyce, Jesus, Goddesses & Groundhogs

Today is an auspicious date on the literary and liturgical calendars. James Joyce was born near Dublin on February 2, 1882 and his masterpiece Ulysses was published this date in 1922. (For more on Joyce and his birthday and works, see the Joyce Center in Dublin.)



This got me to thinking about things Irish and the fact that this date (sometimes February 1st) is also the day on which the ancient Celts celebrated imbolc, a sacred day heralding the approach of spring, and a day which honors the Irish goddess Bridget, patron of fire and poetry. How Joycean!



And it is also St. Bridget's Day –Bridget being the second most prominent Irish saint after Patrick. But she may also be related to that much older figure in Irish mythology, the goddess Bridget.



On top of that it Candlemas and Groundhog Day.



So how do we tie all these pieces together?



To me — and possibly to James Joyce, lover of things mythic, Christian and Irish—it is a wonderful case of ancient myths colliding with Christianity.



First, to explain Candlemas. It is a Christian holiday that celebrates the day on which Jesus was taken to the temple to be presented as an infant. Adding 40 days to Christmas Day arrives at the date. It would have been the earliest date at which Mary could have entered the temple after giving birth to be ritually purified.  The words "candle mass" refers to the tradition of blessing of holy candles that would be used throughout the year. (Candlemas is also known variously as The Feast of the Presentation or the Feast of the Purification of Mary).



But in medieval Germany, it was on Candlemas Day that the groundhog was supposed to pop out of his hole to check for the weather. If the day was clear and he saw his shadow, he returned to hibernation. But if it was cloudy, the weather would moderate and spring would come early. German settlers brought that tradition to America and especially to Pennsylvania. (You know all about Punxsutawney Phil by now.) There are similar ancient traditions in Scotland and parts of England.



Back to Ireland where the pre-Christian Celtic imbolc celebrated the coming of spring as ewes began to lactate before giving birth to the spring lambs. But the Irish also believed that a serpent emerged on imbolc to determine if the winter would end. And on imbolc, the goddess Bridget walked the earth as a harbinger of the return of fertility, And it was day of a great bonfire that would purify the earth. As Ireland was Christianized, the goddess Bridget morphed into the legendary figure of Bridget, who was later sainted, and famed for keeping a sacred fire burning.



Put all these things together and you have a rich tapestry of pagan and Christian traditions that merge on February 2. Special animals forecast the coming of spring.  The earth is purified by bonfires.  Mary is purified and so are the holy candles. Spring and life are returning to earth and the lambs are about to be born, and the Lamb of God has been presented at the temple.



Whether you believe any of these traditions or none, it is fascinating to see all these threads come together on a day most Americans simply associate with men in top hats and fancy clothes watching for a large, furry rodent to emerge from a hole in the ground.

You can read more about Bridget, the goddess and the saint, in Don't Know Much About Mythology.

"Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution" –MLK and OWS

On Monday, the nation will celebrate Martin Luther King Day, honoring the birth of the slain civil rights leader on January 15, 1929.  The obligatory snippets of the "I Have a Dream" speech will air on television. But Dr. King's life was about more than one speech — or one issue.

In a previous post I wrote about Coxey's Army, an 1894 protest march, and its connection to the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement. That got me to thinking about where Occupy Wall Street would fit into Dr. King's worldview. One of the last sermons he delivered offers more than a clue.

On March  31, 1968, a few days before his death on April 4, 1968, Dr. King spoke at the National Cathedral in Washington about the plans for the Poor People's Campaign, an ambitious program to end poverty with jobs, improve housing and raise incomes for poor Americans of all races. Another march on Washington was  scheduled to begin in May 1968.

In this speech, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution," King addressed the two evils he was working to overcome besides racial injustice: poverty, which knows no color in America, and war, then specifically the war in Vietnam. The text of the entire speech can be found online at Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, Stanford University.

Most people associate Dr. King exclusively with the civil rights struggle. But he understood that social justice could not happen without economic justice. And that war was not the answer.

Would Dr. King be on the streets with OWS?  I'll leave that to others to say for certain. But on Monday, read one of his last sermons and you may get the answer.

 

Don't Know Much About® Jack London

Born this date in 1876, American novelist, short story writer and political essayist Jack London.

You probably remember him for his tales of dogs in the Alaskan wilderness, including The Call of the Wild and White Fang. He wrote his most famous works after spending time in Alaska during the Gold Rush.

But London was much more than a writer of wilderness adventures. As a young man, he was briefly caught up in Kelly's Army, part of a larger protest movement called "Coxey's Army." It was the "Occupy Wall Street" of the 1890s.

Following an economic depression in 1893 –the largest economic downturn in American history to that time– a group of unemployed American began a march on Washington. They were led by Jacob Coxey and were eventually called "Coxey's Army." In 1894, they began a protest march, hoping to force the federal government to do more to help out-of-work Americans with road building and other public works projects. It was one part of the growing populist and labor movements of the day and was met with predictable disdain by politicians. This is a report from the New York Times from March 1894.

Out West, the movement spawned "Kelly's Army" and a young Jack London joined up. He later wrote about the experience in a piece called "Two Thousand Stiffs."

In the evenings our camps were invaded by whole populations. Every company had its campfire, and around each fire something was doing. The cooks in my company, Company L, were song-and-dance artists and contributed most of our entertainment. In another part of the encampment the glee club would be singing  . . . All these things ran neck and neck; it was a full-blown Midway. A lot of talent can be dug out of two thousand hoboes. I remember we had a picked baseball nine, and on Sundays we made a practice of putting it all over the local nines. Sometimes we did it twice on Sundays.

 

London later became a Socialist and was a passionate unionist and advocate of workers' rights. They probably didn't tell you that when they assigned White Fang in junior high.

There is a great collection of London material, including writings, biographical and critical material at Sonoma State University's Jean and Charles Schultz Information Center.

London died on November 22, 1916. This is his New York Times obituary.

His home is now a California State Park

Don't Know Much About® "Common Sense"

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

–Thomas Paine, January 10, 1776

 

You know that saying about the pen being mightier than the sword? As the American Revolution haltingly began, an anonymous writer helped prove it true.

The battles at Lexington and Concord in 1775, the easy victory at Fort Ticonderoga in May 1775, and the devastating casualties inflicted on the British army by the rebels at Bunker (Breed's) Hill in June 1775 had all given hope to the patriot cause a full year before independence was declared.

But the final break—Independence—still seemed too extreme to some. It's important to remember that the vast majority of Americans at the time were first and second generation. Their family ties and their sense of culture and national identity were essentially English. Many Americans had friends and family in England. And the commercial ties between the two were obviously also powerful.

The forces pushing toward independence needed momentum, and they got it in several ways. The first factor was another round of heavy-handed British miscalculations. First the king issued a proclamation cutting off the colonies from trade. Then, unable to conscript sufficient troops, the British command decided to supplement its regulars with mercenaries, soldiers from the German principalities sold into King George's service by their princes. Most came from Hesse-Cassel, so the name Hessian became generic for all of these hired soldiers.

The Hessians accounted for as much as a third of the English forces fighting in the colonies. Their reputation as fierce fighters was linked to a frightening image—reinforced, no doubt, by the British command—as plundering rapists. (Ironically, many of them stayed on in America. Benjamin Franklin gave George Washington printed promises of free land to lure mercenaries away from English ranks.) When word of the coming of 12,000 Hessian troops reached America, it was a shock, and further narrowed chances for reconciliation. In response, a convention in Virginia instructed its delegates to Congress to declare the United Colonies free and independent.

The second factor was a literary one. On January 10, 1776, an anonymous pamphlet entitled Common Sense came off the presses of a patriot printer. Its author, Thomas Paine, had simply, eloquently, and admittedly with some melodramatic prose, stated the reasons for independence. He reduced the hereditary succession of kings to an absurdity, slashed down all arguments for reconciliation with England, argued the economic benefits of independence, and even presented a cost analysis for creating an American navy.

With the assistance of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine had  come to America from London and found work with a Philadelphia bookseller. In the colonies for only a few months, Paine wrote, at Franklin's suggestion, a brief history of the upheaval against England.

It is almost impossible to exaggerate the impact and importance of Common Sense. Paine's polemic was read by everyone in Congress, including General Washington, who commented on its effects on his men. Equally important, it was read by people everywhere. The pamphlet quickly sold 150,000 copies, going through numerous printings until it had reached half a million. (Approximating the American population at the time, including slaves, at 3 million, a current equivalent pamphlet would have to sell more than 35 million copies!) Paine donated the proceeds to Washington's army.

For the first time, mass public opinion had swung toward the cause of independence.

The Library of Congress offers these pages on Common Sense.

 

This post is adapted from Don't Know Much About History which discusses the Revolution and Thomas Paine's unhappy fate. In Paris during the French Revolution, Paine was imprisoned by revolutionary authorities. Upon his eventual release, he wrote an angry open letter to his old comrade George Washington, in which he skewered Washington for not having done enough to secure his release from the French prison. Paine later returned to America but when he died in 1809, no church in American would accept his body for burial as he was an atheist. The man who influenced history Paine was buried wit a handful of people in attendance at his farm in New Rochelle, New York. His remains were later removed to his native England for reburial but were later lost.

 

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

More Christmas Myths: Why 12 Days?

I know Christmas is already a distant memory. So is Boxing Day. And there is the New Year to think about. But we are still in the midst of the Twelve Days of Christmas. In fact you have until January 5th! That's right, you have more time to celebrate.

So why Twelve days? Just a lucky accident of the calendar?

Of course, twelve is a significant number, in biblical terms. Twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve disciples. There are lots of other important twelves.

It all goes back to the solstice , which occurred on December 22 in 2011. On the "shortest day," the Sun "stands still" (the literal meaning of "solstice") at its lowest point in the northern sky and then begin its trek back towards the Northern world, bringing light and life with it as the days lengthen.

So while many of us call it the First Day of Winter, it is really the beginning of a "new year" and that's how the ancients saw it. As I've discussed in other posts on Christmas myths, the Solstice was crucial in many cultures and is the source of a great many holiday traditions celebrating light, hope, renewal — and the reason for the season's general merriment.

Again we have ancient pagan ritual to thank for this Christmas tradition. The Romans, who knew how to celebrate, eventually extended their weeklong solstice party –Saturnalia– into the new year, creating a 12-day period of merrymaking. The early Christians, being in Rome, did as the Romans did. In northern traditions, the Norse also celebrated their solstice festival, known as Yule, for twelve days.

One of the specific ways that Solstice celebrations from ancient times are still remembered is by the "Twelve Days of Christmas." Largely misunderstood, the Twelve Days of Christmas traditionally begin with Christmas Day and lead up to the Epiphany –January 6– which is also celebrated as "Three Kings Day." It is believed to be the day on which the Magi visited the Christ Child, or the day of Jesus's baptism in other traditions. To many Christians, Epiphany (some also call it "Little Christmas") is the more important and the appropriate date on which to exchange gifts –as the Magi did.

The ancient idea that the world was "turned upside down" until around the Solstice was the source of a Roman tradition of masters and slaves trading places. There was also a Celtic tradition of a period of chaos until the Solstice. This led to the Christian-era "Feast of Fools" presided over by the Lord of Misrule. This idea is immortalized in literature by Mr. Bill Shakespeare, who wrote a play called Twelfth Night. Set on "twelfth night," or January 5 (the night before Epiphany), it is filled with role reversals –of both class and gender–and general disorder and merriment led by Sir Toby Belch, one of Shakespeare's greatest comic characters.

The other cultural vestige of the twelve days is the Christmas carol, The Twelve Days of Christmas.

I have always found it a tedious carol. But a fairly modern "urban legend" making the Internet rounds is that the song was devised to teach a series of Catholic virtues and ideas –the catechism– to children, during England's long wars between Protestants and Catholics. Each of the days, this theory holds, represents a fundamental Church idea: the partridge in a pear tree is Jesus; "four colly birds" (not "calling birds") are the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John; the five golden rings are the first five books of the Bible, or Torah, and so on. This notion is widely disputed by scholars and an in-depth dismissal can be found here:

http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/music/12days.asp

And the final part of this tradition says leave the decorations up until Twelfth Night.

Christmas Myths (5): "Oh Fir Tree, Oh Fir Tree"

Walking through midtown Manhattan yesterday, we tried to pass the great tree at Rockefeller Center –just to get a glimpse. As always, it was drawing a big crowd, the streets were packed and we gave up.

And as always,  this enormous and dazzling display of lights makes me pose an old question: There weren't any evergreen trees in Bethlehem. Why do people decorate Christmas trees in honor of the birth of Jesus?

Once again, we have the pagans to thank, as I've been describing in this series about Christmas and its mythic roots. In writing about the Roman Saturnalia in my post about December 25th, I mentioned Attis, an agricultural god worshiped in Rome, whose celebration date was December 25th and his symbol — a pine tree.

From pre-Christian times, evergreen boughs and other evergreen vegetation represented life in the midst of the dead of winter. While it was true in both ancient Greece and Rome where houses were decorated with evergreens as symbols of life, it was especially true in the Nordic and Germanic countries. The evergreen or fir tree was significant to the Norse, who burned a Yule log, and celebrated trees as sacred.

In medieval times, after Christianity arrived in the Norse and German world, that idea took hold in a German tradition called the miracle or Paradise Play, in which an evergreen was brought inside and represented the tree in the Garden of Eden and was decorated with apples— eventually hanging shiny red balls on the tree went together. The German Tannenbaum is really the source of the familiar Christmas tree. By the way "Tannenbaum" is translated as "Christmas tree" but its literal meaning is "fir tree."

As for the lights, legend has it that Protestant Reformer Martin Luther was in the woods on a winter evening and looked up to see the stars shining through the trees and was inspired to put lights in the Christmas tree. Of course, he used candles which is not a good idea.

So who brought the Christmas tree to America?

The first Christmas trees in America were used in the early 1800's by German settlers in Pennsylvania. Although the German soldiers, or Hessians, who were in Trenton, New Jersey back during the Revolution may have been sleeping around their Tannenbaum when George Washington crossed the Delaware to attack them on Christmas morning. King George III of England was German and had Christmas trees in England but it was not a widely popular Christmas tradition in America until the mid-19th century, as the great influx of immigrants to America began to bring the many Christmas traditions that had been suppressed by the Puritans of Massachusetts.

So whether you call it a Christmas tree or a "holiday tree," when you admire that great big evergreen, it's just one more way we all bring out our inner Viking!

And about that Rockefeller Center tree– The first of these now iconic trees was set up by construction workers who were building Rockefeller Center during the Great Depression. Then, as now and as it was for the Norse, it was a symbol of hope!

Don't Know Much About the Bible

Don't Know Much About@ History (2011 Revised and Updated Edition)

The 12 Myths of Christmas- "Reason for the Season"

The 2011 Winter Solstice came today. So tis a perfect day to talk about the real "reason for the season."

And here's the real first Christmas question: Why all the fuss over December 25?

For starters, the Gospels never mention a precise date or even a season for the birth of Jesus. How then did we settle on December 25?

If a bright light just went off in your head, you're getting warm. It's all about the Sun.

In ancient times, a popular Roman festival celebrated Saturnalia, a Thanksgiving-like holiday marking the winter solstice and honoring Saturn, the god of agriculture. The Saturnalia began on December 17th and while it only lasted two days at first, it was eventually extended into a weeklong period that lost its agricultural significance and simply became a time of general merriment. Even slaves were given temporary freedom to do as they pleased, while the Romans feasted, visited one another, lit candles and gave gifts. Later it was changed to honor the official Roman Sun god known as Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") and the solstice fell on December 25.

Two other important pagan gods popular in ancient Rome were also celebrated around this date. The Roman were big on adopting the gods of the people they conquered. Mithra, a Persian god of light who was first popular among Roman soldiers, acquired a large cult in ancient Rome. The birth of Attis, another agricultural god from Asia Minor, was also celebrated on December 25. Attis dies but is brought back to life by his lover, a goddess whose temple later became the site of an important basilica honoring the Virgin Mary. By the way, the symbol of Attis was a pine tree.

Candles. Gift giving. Pine trees. Dying gods brought back to life. Hmmm. Sound familiar?

All the similarities between Saturnalia and these other Roman holidays and the celebration of Christmas are no coincidence. In the fourth century, Pope Julius 1 assigned December 25 as the day to celebrate the Mass of Christ's birth –Christ's mass. This was a clever marketing ploy that conveniently sidestepped the problem of eliminating an already popular holiday while converting the population. Most of our Christmas traditions reflect the merger of pagan rituals, beliefs, and traditions with Christianity. The early church fathers knew that they couldn't convert people without allowing them to keep some of their ancient festivals and rituals so they would allow them if they could be connected to Christianity. (Catholic authorities disagree and say that December date was arrived at by adding nine months to March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation, the day of Jesus' miraculous conception. But where did that date come from?)

The importance of the winter solstice, then, is crucial to understanding not only the date of Christmas but many of the other "myths" of this season.

While we are talking about dates, the precise year of the birth of Jesus is also a mystery. The dating system we use is based on a system devised by a monk around 1500 years ago and is seriously flawed. The historical King Herod who ordered the massacre of the innocents died in 4 BC (or BCE, Before the Common Era). The "census" ordered by Emperor Augustine is not recorded in Roman history, but a local census did take place in the Roman province of Judea in 6 AD (or CE, the Common Era). Is that all perfectly clear now?

You can read more about the mythic roots of Christmas and the gospel accounts of Jesus in Don't Know Much About Mythology and Don't Know Much About the Bible.

The 12 Myths of Christmas (1)

Were there really Three Kings? Which pagan festival was a time for gift-giving and candle lighting? Why is mistletoe hung at Christmas?

I'll try not to be the Grinch here. But the truth is that almost everything we cherish about Christmas traditions –lights, trees, gifts, jolly old men– has some interesting background –much of it from a time long before there was a Christmas. In fact, advent is really a time to bring out your inner pagan. In the next few weeks, I will be posting some blogs about the "mythic" roots of many of the most cherished Christmas traditions.

1. What does Santa Claus have to do with Saint Nicholas?

December 6 is the feast of Saint Nicholas. It makes a perfect day to consider one of the first of the "myths" of Christmas. Where does Santa Claus comes from? And what does he have to do with a 4th-century Christian miracle worker from Turkey?

In Christian tradition and legend, Saint Nicholas was an early hero of the church, the archbishop of Myra in what is now Turkey. Legend has it that he once threw gold coins through the window of three poor girls so they would have dowries and get married. Without dowries, their father feared that they would be forced into prostitution. This was just one of many legendary acts of charity attributed to Nicholas, which included putting coins in childrens shoes. Since his feast day — the date of his death on the church calendar– falls in early December, his generosity was eventually connected to the Christmas season, Advent and the idea of the "three kings," or wise men, who brought gifts to the baby Jesus.

So how did this rather thin, ascetic Turkish bishop –the way he is traditionally depicted in sacred art—morph into a large, bearded man with a red suit and a large sled full of toys pulled by eight flying reindeer?

Many of the Santa Claus traditions can be traced back to the Norse god Odin. The Norse celebrated the winter solstice with a long festival. In their legend, Odin brought the sun god back to the world on the solstice. He rode across the night sky on a horse named named Stepnir –an eight-legged horse. Norse children would put out hay and straw for the horse in their shoes. In the Christian era, the legend of Odin became a Father Christmas figure and was merged with the religious legend of Saint Nicholas. The eight-legged horse became eight tiny reindeer.

The Dutch brought Saint Nicholas to America as SinterKlaas and the name was later anglicized as Santa Claus. In Europe, children still put out their shoes on different nights, but here, the tradition was changed to stockings hung by the chimney with care.

Whether he is called Father Christmas, Pere Noel or Saint Nick, or Odin, for that matter, there is something more important to know:

"Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Claus."

Read the text of newsman Frank P. Church's letter to a small girl in New York that inspired that famous line here (via the Newseum):

http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia/

And follow this blog over the next few weeks for more about Christmas past. And you can read more about Christmas and its mythic roots in Don't Know Much About Mythology