When Christmas was Blue
I wonder how many of us are dreaming, along with Bing, of a white Christmas? You know, just like the ones I used to know, or wish I knew. With childhood memories of Syracuse, NY--where gray skies, temps in the 20s (or lower) and frozen precipitation were the norm from November to March--I get nearly as excited now as I once did when spying those first flakes floating outside my window. They transport me back to gleeful afternoons building snowmen and snow forts, teaming up for snowball battles and, best of all, getting off school! Even now a Christmas of white is like frosting on my cake of late December dreams. Perhaps this year I’ll once again have that kind of cake—and eat it too!
Christmas dreaming for me, however, neither begins nor ends with the vagaries of the weather. Rather it springs from my recollections of those Christmases when my impressions of life were both new and naïve. The miracle of time travel that is awakened in the hearing of a particular carol, the watching of an old movie or cartoon, the aroma of certain cookies baking in the oven and the unwrapping of tree ornaments whose sight links us to people or occasions from treasured yesterdays—all lend a sacramental air to those family rituals that make Christmas so much more than just another holiday. It may not always be the most wonderful time of the year, but it is, for many of us, a precious interlude of sentimental and emotional engagement unlike any other in our yearly calendar.
Christmas is also the most colorful of our seasons, with its array of decorative lights, garlands, wreaths, bows, and trees that adorn our houses. Even our language becomes more colorful this time of year. Now I’m not referring to those choice words we mutter while standing in a long checkout line, or trying to complete an online order, or offering commentary on the driving habits of those who confront us in traffic. I’m thinking of the language we use in speaking and singing of seasons of white and of festive bells and balls of silver and gold livening up our homes, streetlamps and stores. And then there is green, perhaps the season’s most distinctive hue, greeting us at every turn: encircled or entwined,; in live, fresh cut or artificial conicals of color that we assign center stage in our living rooms or positioned in our bay windows for passers-by to enjoy. With well placed red-ribboned accents and holly berries sprinkled like holiday spice on our mantles, bannisters and mistletoe, the color palette of Christmas is distinctively delightful. Have you ever noticed, though, that one color, which just happens to be my favorite, is either absent or, when making a Christmas appearance, seems out of place? Blue. Oh every so often you’ll see blue lights among the adornments of a home’s exterior, but to my eyes they don’t seem to fit the color scheme of the season. But that wasn’t always the case. For once upon a time, not that long ago, Christmas was actually quite blue.
This last comment has no bearing on aesthetics and changing decorative tastes. Neither is it a reference to a musical idiom known for its emotionally cathartic lyrics, of which Elvis’ heartsick lamentation of the empty Christmas he’ll be facing remains a seasonal favorite. I’m talking of a blue that ran deeply through our nation’s moral and legal underpinnings. Now this will date many of you reading this piece, those of you who came to life well after the post-war boom was exhausted. In fact you may find what I’m about to say bizarre and unbelievable. The blue of which I speak refers to laws that regarded this day, along with every Sunday as a rule, as being so sacred as to require mandates prohibiting what could be bought, sold, drunk or allowed to operate. They were called Blue Laws, although no one is quite certain why this color become associated with such sweeping social restrictions.
Thanks to Blue Laws, Sundays served as American sabbaths, at least as far as commerce was concerned, preempting Saturdays—the last day of the week—ordained in biblical script. Christmas, along with Thanksgiving, shared that hallowed status conferred on them by legislative and cultural consensus. At one time every state had its own constitutional provisions that spelled out what could, and could not be done on those days, with more than half of them retaining these restrictions in some fashion to this day. When the Supreme Court last weighed in on the subject*, it affirmed the rights of each state to mandate what activities were prohibited on Sundays, both as a safeguard for First Amendment liberties and for the rights of workers to enjoy at least one day’s respite from their weekly labors. Blue Laws may strike us today as draconian leftovers from the past that have no place in a modern society like ours. In point of fact, most pale in comparison to those that once regulated personal and social behavior in our country, where even Christmas was once banned in certain communities.
Massachusetts Bay Colony Notice from 1759
It will come as no surprise that government oversight and overreach have had a long history in the human race. Constantine’s edict of C.E. 321, in which he ordered all Romans to rest on the “venerable Day of the Sun,” is cited as an early example. Days of prescribed conduct can be found in legal ordinances from 13th Century England, as part of Jamestown settlement’s social contracts of 1619, and even today in the law codes of many European countries, Canada, and in 28 of our not-always united states. Some of you may remember Sundays when supermarkets, department stores, restaurants with bars (since alcohol couldn’t be bought or sold)—even gas stations—were closed. Only at hospitals or police stations could you be guaranteed entrance. Back then no one would have dared schedule a soccer practice or school program on a Sunday, for this was the day set aside for church, for family outings and relaxation. In the past five decades, however, local customs and state laws have essentially turned Blue Laws into don’t ask—don’t tell relics of a now-irrelevant past. But for Chick-Fil-A and Hobby Lobby and their anachronistic adherence to principals of closed Sundays, few today have the time nor the interest in what Blue Laws tried to protect and respect.
Lest you read in my words a longing for the good old days when Blue Laws tried to prescribe our conduct on designated days, I actually shed few tears over their passing. Admittedly they gave force to the values of those in the majority in certain eras and in certain places in our country’s history. But just as times are always changing, so are the people who live in those times, whose values reflect the changing circumstances in which they find themselves. Such cultural shifting is not as easy to swallow as it is to write about in an essay. But as long as we are committed to living in this democratic republic that has—in theory if not always in practice—refrained from establishing any national religion or favoring any one faith tradition over another, we must bring ourselves to accept the fact that we, and not our government, should determine which of our ways, and our days, are holy.
Christmas is no longer as blue as it once was-—at least not in a legal or cultural sense. Yet this day of days has much more cultural clout than a normal Sunday, which it shares this year as somewhat of a calendrical rarity.** We can therefore expect a more-than-usual number of stores, libraries, and museums will be shutting their doors on this particular Christmas Sunday, with staffing stretched to the limit at hospitals and police stations. But neither the Christ child, a visit from St. Nicholas, church nor family will temper America’s real source of inspiration, professional sports, with nationally televised NFL games airing on both Christmas Eve and day, and a showcase of five, back-to-back NBA contests on Sunday. aI wonder how many of us will consider these must-see diversions that succeed in drawing us away from family and faith? Or will most of us regard them as easy-to-ignore intrusions whose importance pales in comparison to home and heart.
Meteorologists are forecasting that Christmas this year will be white—but only for some of us. All of us, however, will find it quite colorful, both in terms of those already-mentioned decorations, and in the hues of emotion that we will invariably recognize among those with whom we will share this holiday. Easy to spot will be the green tones of envy that are sure to surface between siblings as they unwrap their presents. And certainly some red tints of rage will flash at any of the faux pas and rude awakenings that family gatherings seem to provoke. More likely we will see the pink blush of excitement when an unexpected present catches us by surprise, or the glimmer of silver or gold when jeweled gifts confirm love’s pledge. Sadly, this Christmas may also reveal those darker shades from folks struggling to conceal their burdens of grief, despair and loneliness. But I’m hoping that maybe, just maybe for some of us, this Christmas will be cast in blue, but not in the sense Elvis went on record anticipating. The blue I’ll be looking for is that glow which reminds us how much we yet need to reserve a place in our hearts, and on our calendars, for the possibility that the child of our stories and songs was not only a gift from God, but a divine pledge that Immanuel yet rings true
O holy Child of Bethlehem,
descend to us, we pray,
cast out our sin and enter in,
be born in us today.
We hear the Christmas angels
the great glad tidings tell;
O come to us, abide with us,
our Lord Immanuel!***
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* That decision came in McGowan v Maryland, 1961.
** Owing to the leap year effect, Christmas lands on a Sunday between 5 and 11 times every 28 years.
***”Oh Little Town of Bethlehem”, vs. 4, by Phillips Brooks (1868)
