Salmagundi [Christmas Accidents.--American Custom Of "treating"]

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Title:     Salmagundi [Christmas Accidents.--American Custom Of "treating"]
Author: William Cowper Brann [More Titles by Brann]

This year's crop of Christmas accidents appears to be up to the average. As an angel-maker Christmas outclasses St. Patrick's day and is almost equal to the Fourth of July. The North celebrates the birth of our dear Lord by stuffing itself to the bursting point with plum budding, while the South manifests its appreciation of God's mercy by blowing itself to pieces with gunpowder. Dozens of people were killed, hundreds lost more or less important portions of their anatomy while a great army of new-made dyspeptics goes marching onward to the grave. I cannot understand what either plumpudding or gunpowder has to do with saving grace. The man must be very gross who can celebrate with gluttony and drunkenness the birth of the Redeemer. Why should anyone desire to transform the world into a murderous pandemonium because of the arrival of the Prince of Peace? Truth to tell, Christmas has become a secular holiday rather than a day for religious rejoicing, and Deists, Atheists and Agnostics take as much interest in its observation as do those who believe in the divinity of the Babe of Bethlehem. More people get drunk on Christmas than on any other day in the year. It is a time of violence and blood, rather than of "peace on earth, good will to men." I move that we switch, and instead of celebrating the nativity of Christ, observe the birth of Bacchus. We will then be privileged to drink until we are drunken. We can then stuff ourselves with the good things of earth and be consistent. We can then explode cannon-crackers, fire anvils and yoop with our mouths open without being guilty of the slightest disrespect to our God. But what must Christ Jesus think as he looks over the jasper walls, of this high revel, supposedly held as a sacrament? Surely he must be sorry he was ever born of woman. But gluttony, and drunkenness and fireworks are not the full extent of a so-called Christian world's offering. We have perverted the communistic doctrine of Christ in our practice of giving Christian presents. So long as custom confines gifts to immediate relatives and dependents it was well enough, for the largesse was usually selected with discretion and prompted by love; but it has now become the practice to send gifts to pretty much the entire circle of one's acquaintances. The result is the expenditure of tens of millions of money annually in the purchase of useless plunder. And the worst of it is that presents are usually given on the reciprocity plan--the custom has well nigh left the realm of sentiment and degenerated into social tyranny or brute selfishness. The homes of this land are littered to-day with trash which the recipients did not want and cannot use. And half the people who incurred this foolish expense are suffering the inconvenience of poverty. On the day after Christmas a lady shoved me her presents. They made a truly imposing pile. "There's not a solitary thing in the entire load," said she, "for which I have the slightest use. I cannot retain much of the stuff as keepsakes because of the bulk, and I am neither privileged to sell it or to give it away. I would have appreciated a rose or a ribbon from one I love more than all this trumpery from the people who are for the most part mere acquaintances. And I? Oh I adhered to the custom--went broke buying a lot of useless truck with which to encumber others. And now that Christmas is over and we contemplate our thin purses and impossible presents, we all wonder why 'that monster custom' doesn't permit us to exercise a little common sense. Christmas is becoming ever more and more a nightmare to me. The dinners are simply dreadful. The housewife begins a month in advance to plot against the stomachs of her people. I never ate but one Christmas dinner for which I did not feel like apologizing to my doctor, and that was not eaten in strictly religious company. It was a regular Bohemian lunch partaken of on a Pullman by myself, a newspaper man and two other sinners. The everlasting roast turkey, the pudding, pies and all the rest of the greasy, indigestible mass was missing. We had tongue sandwiches and Budweiser, deviled ham and more beer. I remarked that we were awfully wicked, but the newspaper man consoled me by saying the Christ was something of a Bohemian himself. We take an infinite deal of pains and spend an awful sight of money just to make ourselves miserable." One great trouble with the American people is that they do not have nearly enough holidays. In fact, Christmas is the only one really worthy of the name, for on New Year's, and July Fourth, we do not cease business until noon, while on Thanksgiving we forget to chase the nimble nickel merely long enough to feed. Next to gain-getting, eating seems to be the important business of the Universe. It is the manner in which a semi-civilized people express pleasure. Ouida has called attention to this fact somewhere. If a general wins an important battle, if a poet writes an immortal epic, if a Columbus discovers a new world, or if a God becomes incarnate we--eat! Yet there be sentimentalists who say that soul and stomach are not synonymous! It appears that the heart cannot feel, that the brain cannot enjoy unless we're shovelling a varied assortment of provender into the belly. That humble but useful organ seems to be the seat of all joy, as it is the source of most sorrow.

. . .

The American custom of "treating" is receiving some severe criticism from the European press. It deserves it. It is one of the most ridiculous and hurtful that ever cursed mankind. It is responsible for the bulk of the crime and pauperism usually accredited to John Barleycorn. Where there is no treating there's usually little intemperance. When a man steps into a "resort" for a glass of beer he's pretty apt to find a party lined up at the bar. He wants to pay for his beer, drink it and take his departure. But this is not permitted. He may have no more than a passing acquaintance with any of those present, but he must drink with the crowd, and having done so feels obligated to ask the crowd to drink with him. It does so, and he's "out" from one to three dollars. Having drunk with Tom he must drink with Dick and with Harry, and when he departs he's more than half drunk. The chances are that he could ill afford the expense incurred--that if left to himself he would have taken one drink instead of a dozen. "Treating" is a foolish custom that should be abolished in the interest of sobriety. It is good neither for the saloon nor for society. It is not good for the saloon because it occasions drunkenness and disorder and causes it to be avoided by thousands of otherwise good paying patrons. It is not good for society because weak men waste their substance, and a drunken man is an unsafe citizen. But the treating habit has too strong a grip on the American people to be eliminated by magazine essays--it must be made a misdemeanor. I am told that in Germany it matters NOT how friendly the members of a symposiac may be, everybody is expected to order and pay for his own booze. The result is that the German drinking place is respectable as the average restaurant and is patronized by almost the entire people. Temperance is the rule--stimulants are freely used but seldom abused. The treating habit is born of the American desire to "splurge." It means an enormous waste of money. It likewise means a sinful waste of good wine, for when a crowd of men belly a bar and pour stimulants into themselves as swine absorb swill it really matters little whether they drink Pomeroy See or barrel-house booze. They do not enjoy their potations--their only desire is to make drunk come. The treating habit is making of us a swinish people and strengthening the hands of the Prohibitionists. . . .

The "Rev." Sam Jones of Jawgy has broken loose again. This time he sets his cornstalk spear in rest and charges full tilt at the public school system and pretty much everything else in sight. His pathway is strewn with a gruesome wreck of the English grammar. Sam discussing the merits of education suggest a brindle mule criticising the Venus de Milo or a scavenger expatiating on the odors of Araby. His reverence (?) has become imbued with the idea that it spoils a boy to educate him, which goes to prove that the less a man knows the more he despises knowledge. But we can scarce blame Sam for railing at education. He is but obeying the law of self-preservation. When the people learn to distinguish between a hawk and a heron-saw they will drive this putrid-mouth little blatherskite from the pulpit. . . .

The New York Press wants all niggers holding federal offices in the South "armed to the teeth" for their own protection. It has an idea that the South is peopled only by "white savages" whose favorite sport is the shooting of nigger officer-holders from ambush. Like the erstwhile Artemus Ward's monkey, the editor of the Press is "a most amusin kuss." The South never gets angry at that kind of an animal. Occasionally a corrupt Republican administration appoints some ignorant Ethiopian to office who becomes insufferably insolent to his white neighbors and is called down with a six-shooter; but for every negro office-holder "assassinated by Southern savages" at least five white women are dragged from their homes by Northern white-caps and brutally abused. Who says so? I do; and I stand ready to prove it by the files of the leading Republican paper of this nation for ten years past. I refer, of course, to the St. Louis Globe- Democrat, the best all-around newspaper in the world. The South has very little affection for nigger office- holders, but they are full as safe as any other class of citizens so long as they behave themselves. The black man is not to blame for accepting an office, it is the Republican administration that deserves censure in thus making him the political superior of his white brethern. It is not the nigger who deserves killing, but the meddlesome Yankee editors who encourage him to be insolent.

. . .

According to press report a fashionable New York society female has dismissed her maid and engaged a valet. Well, if the dear creature enjoys having a man dress and undress her, comb her hair and lace her corsets why should an envious world stand on its hinder legs and carp? New York fashionables must have some antidote for ennui. If it be proper for ladies to have valets I presume that it is permissible for men to have maids. What is sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. Verily "the world do move."

. . .

In the morning Mr. Logan wore a doeskin box coat with pearl buttons nearly as large as alarm clocks in two rows on it. His spats were old-gold color to match. In the afternoon he wore a dark plaid coat and trousers and a saffron-colored vest. The vest was garnished with maroon-colored inch-and-a-quarter checks. He wore an Ascot scarf, dark blue, with lavender polka dots. His scarfpin was a gold whip four inches long and set with a half-inch turqoise in the middle. He wore ox-blood shoes in the morning and ox-blood gloves and in the afternoon his shoes and gloves were buff colored. In the evening he wore full dress.--Chicago Times-Herald.

And still we wonder at the increase of crime! Could any self-respecting Texan with a six-shooter concealed about his person be expected to meet such a gorgeous bird o' paradise and suffer it to escape? I wonder if Mr. Logan scrapes his tongue, manicures his toes and puts his moustache on curl papers? And I wonder what the devil old "Black Jack" would say could he wake up long enough to take survey of his clothes-horn of a son? And I wonder what the deuce the woman who married it will do with it? And I wonder why the hades his ma doesn't lead the little man out into the woodshed, remove his panties, lay him across the maternal knee and hit him 'steen times across the rear elevation with a green cypress shingle? Think of a featherless he animal playing peacock--no mission in God's world but to dress and undress itself three times a day. . . .

The New York Medical Record says that "a custom prevails in this country that ministers should be considered as free from pecuniary obligation to the doctor for service rendered." The Record then proceeds to file a very vigorous kick because of the aforesaid custom, broadly intimating that sky-pilots in general are long on gall and short on gratitude. There is certainly no reason why the preacher, who usually receives a good salary, should not pay for his poultices and pills. When he relieves cases of soul-sickness he does so "for the glory of God" and the long green. He expects to be paid twice for his services--once here and again in heaven. The doctor of medicine is not infrequently poorer in this world's goods than the preacher, and he looks forward to but one fee. He should not be deprived of that by men who sweetly sing:

"I would not live always, I ask not to stay."

If the doctors treat the dominies gratis it follows as a matter of course that they must recoup themselves by adding to the bills of their lay brethren, just as railway companies which carry preachers at half-rate must saddle the loss upon their other patrons.

. . .

Mintonville, Ky., not only sticks to its gods, but insists on clinging with a death grip to its good old orthodox devil, horns, hoofs and tail. The Rev. Gilham of the Christian church of that city, who has doubtless discovered recently that that unimportant portion of the world which moves and has its being outside of Mintonville had several centuries back diplomatically dropped the devil question, undertook to inform his flock that he, too had arrived at the conclusion that his Satanic Majesty was a myth, a delusion and a snare, a howling farce. The reverend gentleman's intentions were good, but he had reckoned without his congregation. They had always had a devil who was responsible for their pecadilloes; he was a convenient little institution to have around when the pecadilloes were a little more numerous than was compatible with the moral standard of Mintonville, and they realized that if the devil were removed from the Mintonville directory they would have to reform or shoulder their own shortcomings. Either course was quite too sad to contemplate. In fact the Mintonvillians positively would not contemplate them. Give them their devil and they could safely straddle between the horns of their dilemma. Remove their devil and they were undone. But Parson Gilham asserted that there was no devil. Mintonville had consequently to choose between their devil and their parson. The world could furnish more parsons but it couldn't furnish more devils. It was the parson and the devil for it and the red downed the black--the parson had to go. The reverend gentleman was ejected from his sacred office with scorn and contumely and likewise a number of pistol shots. It is to be supposed that the devil now reigns triumphant in Mintonville, while Gilham smooths down his clerical coat-tails from the horizontal to the proper perpendicular and wonders if he has not, like the proverbial parrot, talked too damned much.

[The end]
William Cowper Brann's essay: Salmagundi [Christmas Accidents.--American Custom Of "treating"]

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