Merry Transubstantiated Teutonic Pagan Winter Solstice Ritual

At the risk of sounding like the "War on Christmas" paranoids who see an Agent of Satan in every working-the-sales-counter-during-Christmas-break college coed who wishes them an atheistic "Happy Holidays", I have to say that, as a rule, I don't like novelty Christmas songs.

 

As the title makes clear, I don't mind making jokes myself about the fact that it actually does get really, really cold in Palestine in the winter and you'd have to be six kinds of an idiot shepherd to be abiding in the fields with your flocks by night in late December (when said fields would have no grass for said flocks to graze on anyway), so either Luke was just winging it with the shepherds bit, or the Jehovah's Witness are right and Jesus wasn't born in December, and, as I've said before, celebrating His birth on December 25th is just the result of a ploy by the Vatican to get my tree-hugging squarehead ancestors to stop littering the Black Forest with massacred Roman legions and the missionaries they were supposed to protect (but, in defense of whichever His Holiness it was who came up with the plan, it should be remembered that this was way on back there in the dark ages and popes didn't become infallible until 1870; we'll have to give him a pass if changing their Yuletide winter fertility ritual into a Christian holy day wasn't exactly the "final solution" to the "German Problem" he thought it was going to be).

 

Still, since the Scriptures don't specifically say when Christ was born, one day is as good as another to celebrate and this is the day we picked, and it IS the most wonderful time of the year, so it should be both a spiritual and secular festive occasion. Consequently, I just don't have much use for any song that doesn't celebrate the birth of Our Savior and peace on earth, good will toward man, or the joy of being home with the family for the holidays and walking in a white Christmas winter wonderland, or the thrill and wonder of being a kid and Santa Claus coming to town--and I have even less use for songs disrespectful of such feelings of glad tidings and good cheer. Even as a kid I was ambivalent about Alvin and The Chipmunks because it seemed more of a gimmick than a celebration of the season, and these days, "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" just seems cynically mean-spirited, belittling and degrading everything good and decent the holiday is about. And when I hear the dogs barking "Jinglebells"...well, I just wanna whip out my G.I. .45 and do my impersonation of John Belushi as Wild Bill Kelso in "1941" ("Radio's wrong!").

 

But, I've always liked "Snoopy's Christmas".

 

Yes, it was a novelty song, and yes, it was a gimmick, and, yes, maybe even a cynical attempt to cash in on the phenomenal popularity of Schulz's cartoon strip at the time. But the song itself isn't cynical, and, far from being cruel, in between the maudlin sentimentality of those few bars of "O, Tannenbaum" at the beginning to the comical pop of the champagne cork, despite the whistle of the wind in the wires and the roar of the twin Spandaus and Vickers, the bells from the village below DO celebrate peace on earth, good will toward men. No matter how it came to be, it IS a Christmas song. And, I was gratified to recently learn I'm not alone in feeling that way--and thus the inspiration for this year's Christmas 'toon.

 

This year is the Centenary of the 1914 Christmas Truce, that informal and tragically only temporary peace in No Man's Land that undoubtedly outraged the Col. Blimps and Col. von Blimpz in their respective command posts safely behind the lines, but for a few hours brought goodwill toward men between the lines. Christmas being as important to Germans as it is, Kaiser Bill himself saw to it that thousands of trees and millions of candles were sent to the front so that das Frontschweine could keep Christmas in the trenches. That they did, and ended up keeping it out of the the trenches as well, meeting Tommy Atkins between the rows of barbed wire to exchange cigarettes and biscuits and other small gifts, to sing Christmas carols and, yes, to play football. It would only last a few hours, and then the war would continue for almost four more years. But for just that little while, just that once, there was that feeling expressed in "Snoopy's Christmas", for real.

 

For this year's Christmas cartoon I was considering something to do with trains, either real or model or both, since both are linked in my mind--and in the minds of so many others--with the holiday, but I hadn't really gotten any inspiration yet. Then, I was idly surfing through the WW I sites and ran across an item mentioning that the members of a WW I Centenary group in New Zealand were planning to mark the 100th anniversary of the Christmas Truce with a dinner, and they were planning to start the night's events with a singing of "Snoopy's Christmas", for the very reasons that I've always liked the song. Of course, as soon as I read that I gave up all thought of trains, because I knew then exactly what I wanted to do for this year's 'toon. Having made me change my mind, I hope the Kiwis don't change theirs. They seemed a little defensive about it, but I think it's fine idea. If you'd like a quick but moving tribute to the real story--and an insight into why the New Zealand group might feel a little defensive and why I myself have some doubts about the propriety of this 'toon--check out this commercial for a British supermarket at:

 

rare.us/story/this-wwi-themed-christmas-ad-is-blowing-up-...

 

There are also a few historical arguments against both in the New Zealanders using the song at their Christmas Truce dinner and me featuring it in my cartoon. Not the least of these, of course, is that there is no record of any beagle having been commissioned in the RFC/RAF or piloting a Sopwith Camel (although in searching the web for Camel reference material, I did find that a beagle pilot feasibility study has been done).

 

For another thing, in December, 1914, the air war consisted mainly of German observers wearing their sabers in flight ("Regulations require and Tradition demands...", you know), and of pilots and/or observers on both sides taking the occasional potshot at one another with a pistol or a carbine and a 0.00000000001% chance of actually hitting anything except French airspace, and, in the main, simply waving to one another as they went about their business. As Quentin Reynolds pointed out in "They Fought for the Sky", in all of the major German daily newspapers in all of the month of December, 1914, there is exactly ONE brief mention of military aviation, buried on the back pages. We are still some two months shy of the centenary of the day in February, 1915, when Roland Garros took to the air with steel wedges bolted onto the backs of the propeller blades to deflect the bullets of a machine gun firing through them (deflecting them into the sky on either side was the plan, but, as Herr Fokker would instantly realize when viewing the captured machine--and then setting about re-inventing the interrupter gear--in accordance with Murphy's Law there was the almost certain probability that at least one of the bullets would eventually be deflected into the engine or the fuel tank or M. Garros himself; I've often wondered how that little 80-hp Morane-Saulnier got off the ground with all that metal on board--the weight of the steel wedges was probably negligible, but Roland's Big Brass Ones must have weighed a ton).

 

Likewise, Manfred von Richthofen would not start flying fighters until 1916, and, moreover, he himself is a bit miscast in the "Snoopy's Christmas" story. By any reasonable assessment he was a cold-blooded bastard who reveled in the kill, and wouldn't have let any bells from the village below--or anything else save a .303 round up his backside from an Aussie machine gun outfit below (or maybe, as I sentimentally still like to think, from a Canadian Roy Brown behind)--keep him from reaching for the trigger to pull it up tight. Ernst Udet almost certainly, Oswald Boelcke or Werner Voss quite possibly, maybe little brother Lothar von Richthofen or perhaps even Hermann Goering, who at the time was still a promising young man and hadn't yet fallen in with bad companions. But the bloody Red Baron? Not bloody likely.

 

I should also say von Richthofen was not a graying and mustachioed grouchmeister like the Captain in "Katzenjammer Kids", the way he was portrayed on The Royal Guardsmen's album covers and in most if not all other cartoon drawing (and neither was he the devastatingly handsome soap opera hero type pizza guy)(and, other than it goes good with beer, what the hell does he or ANY German have to do with pizza, anyway?!!). But, I decided to bow to tradition and make my 'toon Red Baron a geezer with a gray mustache. It just seemed the Snoopy's Christmas-y thing to do.

 

Likewise, I didn't give my little Tommie and Fritzi period hairstyles. Instead, I gave them the kind of long, straight, center-parted styles that all the cute girls at my high school were wearing back in the mid- to late-Sixties, to artistically symbolize the days when the "Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" (and, for that matter, everything "Peanuts") craze was at its height, when I was reading everything I could get my hands on about WW I air fighting and building every Airfix and Revell 1/72nd scale and every 1/48th (more or less) scale Aurora WW I aeroplane kit on the market (and, of course, Revell's Triplane, Camel and SPAD in gloriously huge 1/28th), and back when it was only the (holy crap, where did the time go?!!) FIFTIETH anniversary of The Great War. Of course, I also did it to artistically symbolize that long, straight hippie chick hair is a hell of a lot easier to draw than those swirly-curled upswept Edwardian dos in vogue back before it was even the first anniversary.

 

Finally, I did ponder at some length whether or not to incorporate "Merry Christmas" in the 'toon, although not for any "War on Christmas" reasons. The Camel was a British bus, and most of von Richthofen's action was against the British, and he was killed just as the Americans (other than the relatively few volunteers flying for France and the even fewer serving in the RFC) were just getting into the war, so I was having trouble deciding whether or not to use the American "Merry Christmas", thinking that the English "Happy Christmas" might be more appropriate. As you can see, historical accuracy finally won out. As everyone knows, Snoopy was certain that this was the end, when the Baron cried out:

 

MERRY CHRISTMAS, MEIN FRIEND!!!

Done