Christmas Celebration Research Articles

The Haunting of Thomas Wolfe

FEATURED AUTHOR THE HAUNTING OF THOMAS WOLFE Mary Aswell Doll "O lost and by the wind grieved, ghost, come backagain!" That famous refrain is one most readers ofThomas Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel know by heart. It is a puzzling line, really: What is a "wind grieved ghost?" Without pressing poetry too strongly for its literal meaning, the refrain is a romantic cry from the heart about loss. But since it is addressed to the ghost, the refrain refers to the dead ones whose hold is ever present, as in Wolfe's comment, "I am worrying for the dead this Christmas," or as in his poetic lines, "You who were made for music, will hear music no more: in your dark house the winds are silent. Ghost, ghost, come back." During my growing-up years, some say that my father was a wind grieved ghost. My father, the second editor of Thomas Wolfe, saw the big man as his most promising writer at Harper & Brothers in the late 1930s, even though the two knew each other for only six and a halfmonths. When Tom tragically died, a piece of my father's soul died too. The general impression my father as editor gave was of a cold man, an authoritarian and a stickler for details. My experience of him was different. The younger of his two children, and a girlchild at that, I was the pot ofgold at the end ofthe rainbow, he told me. My mother has recounted the odd coincidences that conjoined Thomas Wolfe with Edward Aswell. Their birthdates were almost alike: Ed Aswell born October 9, 1900, Thomas Wolfe born October 3, 1900. Ed Aswell born in Nashville, Tom Wolfe in Asheville. Tom Wolfe fled the South, Ed Aswell fled the South. Both attended Harvard University. Something about the South makes blood brothers of exiles. For my father, I think the South meant semi-poverty and complacency and conformity. As we can determine from reading his novels, the same was true for Tom (I call him Tom, although I never knew him). In some way my father felt he was Tom's other half, providing the balance ofrestraint to Tom's gargantuan ofexcess. 36 That, in any case, was my mother's conviction. In a letter she wrote to Wolfe's second biographer, Andrew Turnbull, she said my father was obsessed by Wolfe. "He wasn't the same man after Tom's death," she wrote. "I think he believed, poor man, that the posthumous novels were actually a product of the Great Collaboration, a monument ofTom plus Edward Aswell, his alter ego." The bond was partly the South, the place that cursed them both and claimed them both. I have thought of the bond between Wolfe and Aswell as "mythic," in the manner ofGilgamesh grieving for the death ofhis soul mate, Enkidu, from the Sumerian legend. My father described his bond with Wolfe more simply and much more wittily as "a sheep in wolf's clothing." I was born after Thomas Wolfe died. The stories of the visit of Wolfe to the Aswell home have been recounted many times, possibly because that was the only visit Wolfe made to my father's house and so much was made of that. The stories are of my mother creating a Christmas dinner for the honored guest, carefully matching Tom's descriptions in LookHomeward, Angeloffeasts at holiday times; stories about Tom bringing my brother a large teddy bear, a gift he carried on the milk train hours after he was supposed to arrive in Chappaqua for the 1937 Christmas celebration—a careless delay my punctilious mother found unconscionable. I was not born yet. But I do remember playing with that bear, moving its arms around and delighting in the straw noises the arms made. After my parents' divorce in 1946, I grew up in my father's house with a man who seemed burdened and saddened, even while his career was moving forward. But did I really remember that, or did my mother's interpretation ofthe "poor man" color my memory? In two years, as I am writing this piece, my father will have been dead fifty years. Tom will...

Symbolic recognition, multicultural citizens, and acknowledgement: Negotiating the Christmas Wars

In recent times, December has come to mark a new tradition—an annual public debate over the degree to which Christmas should be publicly recognised and celebrated in a multicultural society. Curiously, political theorists of multiculturalism have had little to say on this controversy. In this article, I argue that there is a genuine issue at stake in the so-called ‘December dilemma’, but that the public debate—which construes the matter in terms of offending non-Christians—fails to identify and address it. Differentiating three distinct areas of contention (public holiday, public square, and state schools), I suggest that the core issue is one of ‘acknowledging a “generalised other”’, and sketch what this might mean for each of these public aspects of Christmas celebration.

«Kom og ta del!» – Romanos’ Julehymne og dens liturgiske kontekst

How does the language of the kontakia by Romanos address their liturgical context? This article presents a new translation of the poet’s famous Christmas Hymn and investigates liturgical aspects of the drama by proposing a liturgical reading of it. Furthermore it suggests that in retelling the story of the adoration of the Magi the Melodist tells the story of the adoration of the congregation. The Bethlehem scene becomes a liturgical scene and the contemporary Christmas celebration, for which the kontakion is written, becomes a synaxis in a Bethlehem cave.

Christmas customs among Serbs in Timisoara

The first part of the paper describes a variety of changes that encompass the traditional model of Christmas celebration among Serbs living in Timisoara Romania (reduction, simplification, revival of tradition, adoption of foreign cultural elements and so on), during different time periods. My analysis shows that Christmas customs stand for as markers of the Serbian family and minority in both ethnic and social sense; at the same time, the customs serve as means of ethnic identification and facilitate social hierarchy within the given minority and majority.

Stereotyping in the Representation of Narrative Texts Through Visual Reformulations

Abstract: This study investigated the process of stereotyping in the representation of the content of narrative texts through visual reformulations. Two hundred nineteen visual reformulations produced in response to three narrative texts about Christmas celebrations were analyzed (one in Spanish, the subjects' native tongue, and two in English as a foreign language). Subjects were Argentine college students (prospective teachers and translators of English, Caucasian, mostly female, middle‐class) between 19 and 21 years of age enrolled in English Language II at the National University of La Plata in Argentina. Stereotypes in the visual reformulations were classified into two large groups: those corresponding to the native culture and those referring to the target (alien) culture. Stereotypes were further classified into three categories of reference: main characters (personality and/or physical appearance), the Christmas celebration itself, and the storyline. A selection of typical visual reformulations is analyzed here. In general, the visual reformulations did not sufficiently capture the cultural content of the texts and embodied a superficial approach plagued with stereotypes. The students' perceptions of otherness were limited to what was exotic or exciting and did not reflect genuine efforts to become familiar with what was strange. The study thus revealed the learners' inability to transcend their cultural biases and points to an urgent need to address stereotypes in the classroom.

Gift-Giving Ideas

HO, HO, HO! It's time for me to offer my seasonal gift-giving suggestions. Technology-wise, it has been a busy year indeed, with all sorts of new gadgets, more convenient devices, more compact devices, and steep declines in price. Before I get to the technology, though, it has been my tradition to make a few suggestions on music CDs and DVDs that make great gifts. popular artist Josh Groban has a new CD, titled Noel. Every review I have read gives it a top rating, and I concur. You can preview the CD tracks at www.amazon.com. Being able to preview music before you purchase it is both prudent and enjoyable. Other new CDs of note include Bruce Springstein's protest album, Magic, and Mark Knopfler's Kill to Get Crimson. At the time I wrote this column, Spring-stein and Groban were number 1 and 2 on Amazon's list of best-selling CDs. This year's can't miss CD is Wonderful World--or any other CD--by Eva Cassidy. This a posthumously produced album that is several years old. In prior seasonal columns, I have recommended Cassidy, who passed away at a very young age--before she became popular. Her versions of the title song and of It Doesn't Matter Anymore are my favorites. About a dozen of Cassidy's albums have been produced, and you can sample them all at amazon.com. My all-time favorite seasonal DVD is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra's The Ghosts of Christmas Eve, which is narrated by and stars Ossie Davis. Neither Trans-Siberian Orchestra nor Mannheim Steamroller have new Christmas DVDs and haven't for a few years. This year, I recommend the DVD A Christmas Celebration 2007, by Celtic Woman. Though the group name is singular, various artists perform. And one final musical suggestion, a DVD that children under 5 will love: Yule Be Wiggling, by the Wiggles. If you give this gift to a preschooler, you might want to leave town immediately before you get trapped. Kids love the Wiggles, but they drive adults crazy. Speaking of gifts for children, I have received a lot of positive feedback from parents who really like Floam, the Play-Doh substitute I've mentioned in a prior column. While I think it is overpriced, it is unique. Several other alternatives to Play-Doh exist, including Aqua Dots. These last are small pieces of what looks like plastic that stick together when sprayed or misted with water. Perhaps the most unusual gift for children that I have seen is, believe it or not, a sewing machine. Montessori Services publishes a catalog called For Small Hands. online version can be seen at www.forsmall hands.com. catalog features all kinds of objects that adults might use, such as a flour sifter, but down-sized for children's smaller hands. sewing machine offered is a real sewing machine made for adults who are into handcrafting small objects. According to the catalog, the $79 machine is appropriate for children 8 and older, but younger children can use it too if they are properly supervised. That would depend on the child, of course. Speaking of catalogs and shopping for children, I repeat my recommendation from years past of Edmund Scientific. You can reach the online version at www. edsci.com. Children of all ages are enthralled by such science toys as gyroscopes, prisms, hand lenses, diffraction gratings, batteries, and bulbs. Children in most elementary schools don't get very much science instruction, so anything a parent can do to help out is likely to be beneficial. This year, I would like to name a Product of the Year. Drum roll ... and the winner is the Flip Video, an all-digital video camera from Pure Digital (www. theflip.com). This diminutive video camera has a list price of $119.99, but I have seen it online for under $100. camera is 4.12 x 2.25 x 1.25 in size and weighs just a few ounces, so it is easy to tuck into a pocket or purse. camera records to its internal memory--not to a tape or disc--so the total recording time is limited to 30 minutes. …

Materialism and the Modern U.S. Christmas

Materialism and the Modern U.S. Christmas Russell W. Belk (bio) Belk, Russell. 1989. Materialism with the modern U.S. Christmas. In Interpretive Consumer Research, ed. by Elizabeth C. Hirschman, Provo, UT: Association for Consumer Research, 75–104. Reprinted with the permission of the Association for Consumer Research. On December 24, 1951, in front of several hundred French children attending Sunday school, Santa Claus was hanged and burnt. The executioners were the priests of the Dijon Cathedral who condemned Santa as: a usurper and a heretic. He was accused of paganizing the festival of Christmas and installing himself like a cuckoo, taking up more and more room (Levi-Strauss 1963). Pimlott (1962) calls the coexistence of the religious celebrations of the Christmas Nativity and the more Saturnalia-like secular celebrations of the same occasion, “the paradox of Christmas.” The present paper first presents a brief history of the modern Christmas and redefines the paradox of Christmas. It then explores the shifting ways that Americans look at Christmas, as evidenced by mass media treatments, considered both qualitatively and (for a subset of media treatments found in selected consumer magazines and in Christmas comic books over the past 40 years) quantitatively. These analyses suggest that there is little real threat to the sacred status of Christmas, primarily due to the increasing interpenetration of values celebrated by the Christian and commercial sponsors of Christmas. A Brief History of the U.S. Christmas and Its Two Modern Deities Origins Although Christmas itself may be traced to a number of pagan winter festivals such as the Teutonic Yule and the Roman Saturnalia in pre-Christian Europe (Golby and Purdue 1986), neither these nor the various later European Christmas celebrations are sufficient to explain the modern American Christmas. This lack of continuity is partly due to one of the first backlashes against Christmas. This reaction arose among the religious immigrants to the American colonies. As Barnett (1954) notes, Puritan reaction against the “wanton Bacchanalian feast” of Christmas led these colonists to begin shunning the holiday as early as 1620. By 1659, the colony of Massachusetts had passed an ordinance to fine anyone caught observing Christmas by abstaining from labor, feasting, or other celebration. It took another century before Christmas celebrations began to emerge in America among pockets of Dutch, English, and German immigrants, especially in New York and Pennsylvania (Golby and Purdue 1986, McGinty 1979, Shoemaker 1959, Snyder 1985). And legal recognition of Christmas day by states and territories did not take place until the 19th century (1836–1890). Christmas celebrations are thought by some to have been dying out until a group of 19th century writers began to revive interest through sentimental Christmas tales tying the holiday to Victorian celebrations of home, family, and children (Golby and Purdue 1986). The most influential of these writers were Charles Dickens from England and Washington Irving from the U.S.. Dickens’ (1843) A Christmas Carol was and remains the most influential of these tales. Barnett (1954) may overestimate Dickens’ influence as almost single-handedly reviving Christmas, but his work clearly has had a dominant influence. Changes in the U.S. Christmas Because Christmas in America reemerged as an amalgam of various European celebrations, it is appropriate to speak of the American Christmas celebration as unique. Present U.S. Christmas traditions and iconography include the German Christmas tree, the British Christmas card, and the Dutch Christmas cookie. While our modern Santa Claus draws on earlier European figures, he is a distinctly American creation (Belk 1987). [www.icubed.com/~colargrrl/xmas.htm] Certain Christmas traditions such as Christmas dinner, charity to the poor, and role reversal and other social tension reduction mechanisms have pre-Christian roots. However, most of our current Christmas celebration, including emphasis on family, card exchange, gift exchange, decorated Christmas trees, Christmas shopping, Santa Claus, Christmas carols, and Christmas cookies, and candy, either emerged or reemerged during the Victorian period (Snyder 1985, Golby and Purdue 1986). While first generation European immigrants to America tended to preserve the celebrations of their home countries, adoption of U.S. Christmas traditions such as Santa Claus and exchanging gifts on December 25th rather than earlier or later in the month became...

An Aboriginal Christmas Celebration

The Golden Hill Steiner School in Denmark, West Australia, is a small “alternative” school and part of the world wide Steiner/Waldorf school movement. In 1998 this young school had 56 students from kindergarten to class 6. Because of the small numbers, primary classes are combined (for 1998 this was a class 1/2, class 3/4 and class 5/6).

The Private Life of the Victorian Novel

REVIEW ARTICLE THE PRIVATE LIFE OF THE VICTORIAN NOVEL Deirdre D'Albertis. Dissembling Fictions: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Social Text. New York: St. Martin's P, 1997. ? + 230. ($39.95 US (cloth). Patricia McKee. Public and Private: Gender, Class, and the British Novel (1764-1878). Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota P, 1997. ix + 245. $49.95 US (cloth); $19.95 US (paper). Catherine Waters. Dickens and the Politics of the Family. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997. 246. $54.95 US (cloth). Each of these books examines the nineteenth-century detachment of private from public existences. Though in the late twentieth century we take the idea of a private life as a given, its separation from public life is not simply apparent. These categories were constructed during the century through re-definitions of knowledge, family life, and ideology. Novels have a place in this construction. Catherine Waters investigates one powerful aspect tool of private life, the idea of family. Waters's study focuses on the family as an "imaginary construct," (16) a part of a middle-class ideology. Middleclass readers and writers assume that the family is a transcendent value, a desirable object that united ages, classes, regions, and genders. Nineteenth-century discourse depicted domestic life as a universal ideal. Following Jacques Donzelot, Waters notices a shift in definition of the family as the family came to be regarded as a nuclear unit through which the state could operate: "a transition of a government of families to government through the family" (26). The nuclear family replaced feudal notions of the family as a bloodline or mercantilist notions of the family as a corporation. Waters shows that Dickens at once participates in familial ideology early in his carer and then begins to question its transcendence later on. 70Victorian Review In a fascinating chapter on Dickens and Christmas, Waters reveals the extent of Dickens's domestic ideology. Waters notes that in the early nineteenth century the holiday was depicted as an old-fashioned feast-day that few celebrated anymore. Christmas had been a village festival, a time for the landowner to treat his servants and tenants. In Pickwick, Dickens represents a traditional, pre-Victorian Christmas celebration. But by mid-century, the holiday was reconceived as a family party; new customs (like the tree) were adopted, and the village events were reinvented in smaller, indoor venues. Scrooge can be seen not only as a convert to Christmas, but to the idea of the family. Dickens's Christmas books not only show a change in the representation or Christmas but in the amount of ideological weight the season was meant to bear. Moreover the Christmas books help create and maintain that ideology. Dickens's many fractured families help establish the ideal family by counter-example. In Oliver Twist, Mrs. Mann, Fagin and the workhouse authorities all access the rhetoric of family life. Dickens provides examples of numerous failing, rather than parodie, families as well. Waters notes that in Dickens, families that do not adapt themselves to the domestic ideology inevitably decline and can only be re-established by a woman who reconfigures the family to fit it. Dickens's portrayal of the Dombeys in Dombey and Son is a diagnosis. Dombey runs his family like and as a firm; he fails to follow middle-class ideology and separate the family from his business practices. When Dombey's firm-as-family fails, a woman is called upon to establish true domestic virtues. Florence creates a family that is almost transcendent - though, as Waters notices, threatening characters like Carker and Alice have been removed from the narrative. Waters notes that that bureaucracy in Little Dorrit exists through a series of families; these families show an older idea of the family not as a nuclear unit, but a public conglomeration of blood relatives. The Barnacles and their bureaucratic tribe support the anonymous functions of governing like the Circumlocution Office. Their presence threatens the idea of the individual self. Mr. Dorrit too, with his misplaced idea of paternalism — while playing at being the Father of the Marshalsea he forgets to be father of his own family — satirizes ineffectual, pre-industriai familial organization. Like so many of Dickens's...

The Modern Christmas in America: A Cultural History of Gift Giving.

In days of old, Christmas was defined by the custom of exchanging simple handmade gifts. Today, it has become a multi-billion industry, synonymous with commercialism and consumption. How did this transformation occur? In this incisive and engaging examination of how Christmas has evolved since 1880, Waits chronicles the history of the holiday, from its origin to its current form. The book is illustrated with dozens of historical photographs and will be of interest to cultural and social historians alike. Christmas was a relatively modest occasion in the English- speaking world, celebrated by the exchange of modest handmade gifts, until the Victorians invested the holiday with immense significance as part of a larger effort to celebrate home, family, and a mythic past of well-ordered communities. By the late 19th century, Christmas had become a major American festival. Today, it is a multi-billion dollar industry and easily the most important seasonal event of the year. In this survey of the modern American Christmas, William Waits shows us how this holiday emerged, tracing its evolution from the days prior to 1880 when people presented one another with simple crafted presents to the turn of the century when industrialization brought with it waves of inexpensive, tawdry gimcracks. In the early twentieth century, reform-minded Americans reflecting on the new Christmas prompted a backlash against this cheapening of the Yule tradition, and the Christmas card was born. Henceforth, family members and close friends exchanged useful, costly items, while cards were sent to acquaintances and distant relatives. These reformers also persuaded retail stores to keep their regular hours of business during the holiday, rather than lengthening them, to give trade workers the opportunity to join in the celebration. They also rationalized the collection and distribution of holiday charity, resulting in the Christmas celebration we have today. Waits's book clearly illustrates that the notion that Christmas is uncontrollable is simply untrue. An incisive and engaging history of giftgiving, The Modern Christmas in Americaalso examines the differing traditions of giftgiving to friends, employees, the poor, and among entire communities. Handsomely illustrated with dozens of historical photographs, this book is not only the perfect holiday gift but will also be of interest to any student of American history and culture.

Letter To An Imaginary Friend Parts Three and Four by Thomas McGrath

Reviews Letter To An Imaginary Friend Parts Three and Four. By Thomas McGrath. (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1985. 115 pages, $16.00 cloth, $9.00 paper.) He is the most important American poet who can lay claim to the title “radical.” Though his locale is often “the West,” he is an American poet, whose work has received insufficient attention for many years. Readers who have followed Tom McGrath’s work since the publication of Parts I and II of Letter To An Imaginary Friend, now more than two decades ago, will find much that is familiar in this new, long-awaited volume. Not only has a good deal of it appeared earlier, in such volumes as Echoes Inside the Labyrinth, Passages Toward the Dark, and Waiting For The Angel, but the themes, the language, the metaphor, are all characteristic of—and vintage— McGrath. As is so often the case in poetry, however, the whole is a good deal more than the sum of its parts, and Parts III and IV of Letter are a fine addition to the corpus of McGrath’s work. Again we find here the combination of memory as the engine, so to speak, which drives this poem. The memory here is essentially based on two days in the life of the poem’s speaker—a day when revolutionary fervor gripped Lisbon, Portugal, as the Salazar dictatorship was overthrown, which in turn leads to memory of a Christmas in the childhood of the speaker, in “the little towns” of his birth, Sheldon, and neighboring Lisbon, North Dakota. Memory plays another role in this poem in that it evokes, as reference, or perhaps as allusion, figures and language from Parts I and II. Here we meet again Cal, the farmhand who was such an influential force in introducing the young speaker in the earlier volume to class struggle and to sexuality, to appropriate loyalty and love;we find lines which in the earlier poem are spoken by “Peets,” the speaker’s landlord while he is at Louisiana State University (“Don’t go barefoot to a ‘snake stompin’” is one such reference) and to Mack, the working-class, water-front leader from whom the speaker in I and II learned so much, and to other figures and events. Thus, Parts III and IV recall for us the material of I and II in deliberate ways which make all of Letter one single poem. Indeed, in his introduction to this volume, McGrath writes, and quite rightly so: “As someone has pointed out, I have been working on only one poem throughout all my work.” In this regard, as in so many others, McGrath shares something with the inescapable poet for all American poets, Walt Whitman. 230 Western American Literature The most important single difference I have found between Parts I and II of Letter and Parts III and IV is in tone. This poem is— elegiac, I suppose, is the word I want. McGrath here seems to see much more the end of things than was the case. This has been true of much of his recent poetry, even in shorter pieces, as, perhaps, is appropriate for a poet who has now behind him so many more years than did the writer of Parts I and II. The major portion of Part IV, as a matter of fact, has to do with a kind of speaker’s “Himmelfahrt ,” a trip to heaven, or really the several heavens which derive from, as McGrath’s introduction has it, Kachina mythology from the Hopi: “Accord­ ing to the Hopi we now live in Tuwaqachi, the Fourth World, but we will soon enter Saquasohuh, the Fifth World, which will be much better.” The speaker of the poem enters this fifth world, and travels as well through nine heavens by the end of the poem—all of these part of a dream remembered, (or, per­ haps, created) as the man in Lisbon, Portugal, remembers the child in Sheldon, North Dakota, falling asleep on the way home from the Christmas celebration. The effect of this travel through the heavens and the worlds is the kind of sense of endings I have mentioned, though, at...

The Posadas in Tzintzuntzan Structure and Sentiment in a Mexican Christmas Festival

FESTIVALS LIKE CHRISTMAS, which are celebrated in countless countries and associated with an immense variety of folkloristic tradition, inevitably trace their significance to some common source. Christmas derives its widespread distribution and meaning, of course, from a critically important religious event, the birth of Jesus Christ. Even if we discover, as some scholars have (Count 1948; Miles 1912), that versions of the Christmas holiday were present in Classical Antiquity and earlier, we would be hard put to claim that the winter solstice and pre-Christian rites associated with it penetrate to the consciousness of many people in the Western world today. By contrast, there is good evidence that, despite the secular overtones that Christmas has acquired in many societies, the ultimate sacredness of the celebration remains prominent in the minds of most individuals. This explains why non-Christians who observe the holiday often do so with a deep-seated sense of ambivalence (Matz 1961). Nowhere can Christmas be understood without reference to its crucial religious origin. At the same time, variations in the way the holiday is celebrated undoubtedly derive from conditions that have special national or local significance. Such is the case with the Mexican posadas, a Christmas celebration that reenacts the Holy Family's journey to Bethlehem and that invariably includes the breaking of pinatas. To be sure, ritual portrayals of the days prior to Christ's birth have existed from the Middle Ages (Margetson 1972) to contemporary times (Carcer 1944; Fortun 1957; Speroni 1940) in places other than Mexico. And pifata-like food distributions to children can be found elsewhere as well (Almerich 1944). But the Mexican people have combined these two features, elaborated upon them, and institutionalized them to the point where they have become symbolic of Mexico itself. The mere existence of the specifically Mexican term posadas to designate these special features of the Christmas season indicates their importance to Mexicans everywhere, whether within or outside the country.1 It is therefore discouraging that Mexico, with its 70 million inhabitants and

The "Song of Tapani" in Finnish Christmas Celebration

The "Song of Tapani" in Finnish Christmas Celebration

A Christmas Celebration in Egypt

A Christmas Celebration in Egypt

The Staging of The Court Drama to 1595

It has usually been assumed by historians of the drama that amusements of a dramatic kind at court kept pace with those of the country in general. The entries of 1348 in the Record Books of the Great Wardrobe, which belong to the reign of Edward III, and which concern tunics and visors used in a Christmas celebration, have been interpreted as referring to dramatic entertainments (Collier, i, 15, 22; Warton, ii, 72; Brotanek; Ward, i, 148). This view, however, has recently been called into question in the researches of Professor Arthur Beatty, of the University of Wisconsin, who has pointed out that tunics and visors were also necessities of the tournament, that “It is antecedently improbable that Edward III should have had dramatic entertainments on important occasions,” and that therefore these important entries do not prove the existence of dramatic entertainments at this early date.

Tetanus in the South at the Christmas Celebration.

San Antonio, Tex., Sept. 9, 1903. To the Editor: —Reading the editorial inThe Journal, August 29, giving the astounding number of the last Fourth of July tetanus cases, it occurred to me to call your attention to the fact that the number of tetanus victims of the blank cartridge will be much greater if you include those which result during the Christmas celebration in the south. On my arrival from the north to this city about four years ago I was pleasantly surprised to find how orderly and quietly the people here celebrate the Fourth of July. Not a single accident case was reported in the press; but my surprise was still greater when Christmas day came: Fire crackers, pistols and cannons were all brought into use in trying to make up for the Fourth of July. The celebration is in part kept up till after the New Year's