BATTLE OF THE NATIVITY

I am tempted to call it a primeval struggle, drenched in antiquity, shrouded in religious fervor and destined to feed future conflict until come judgment day, whenever the heck that may  be. Except it just ain’t so. It is much simpler than that. The day after Christmas 2007, two rival gangs got into a turf dispute and started a  rumble. Somebody called the cops, who managed to separate the combatants, The Jets (AKA the Greek Orthodox Priests), and the Sharks (AKA the Armenian Apostolic Priests) were battling inside the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birth place of the Prince of Peace in Bethlehem, Israel, Palestinian Territories. And nothing about this melee made any more sense than your standard gang brawl. And yet I blame the French Emperor Napoleon III for the entire mess.

First, a word about all that antiquity – it does not appear to have happened where or when everybody now thinks it did - assuming it happened at all. Roman census or no census, there was no reason for a pregnant Mary to be making a 90 mile donkey ride from Nazareth, on the Galilee plain of northern Israel, to Bethlehem in the mountains just south of Jerusalem, in the west center of Israel. Being the man, Joseph was expected and qualified to speak for his entire family. He would have been the only one required to travel. But why require anybody to travel? The Romans census takers did what census takers still do today - they counted people where they were. That would be where their property was, and where their money was. Why disrupt business all across a rebellious province, in the name of counting people where they were not? It makes no sense.

And there is another problem, an archaeological problem. There is no archeology in Bethlehem from that period. The ground under today's Bethlehem contains Iron Age artifacts and Byzantine artifacts, but nothing in between, nothing from the age of Jesus. The village outside of Jerusalem did not exist on the night that Jesus was born.. However, there was another Bethlehem, “Bethlehem Ha Galilit”, Bethlehem of Galilee, just about 7 miles to the west of Nazareth. It seems far more likely that Jesus of Nazareth was born in Bethlehem Ha Galilit, than in Bethlehem Judea. But because Bethlehem Ha Galilit no longer existed in the fourth century of the common era, when the Byzantine Christians came looking for Jesus' birthplace, they jumped to the wrong conclusion and picked the wrong Bethlehem. So did the followers of Islam, when they first captured the region in year 627 B.C.E.  After all, Jesus is one of their prophets. But after this, things got really complicated.

See, after the Crusaders were driven out of the Holy Land in 1187 the Muslim rulers had enough respect for Christianity that they were willing to protect the Christian holy sites, and, of course, tax them. But they
did not trust the Roman Catholics, who had invaded them and now made up a majority of Bethlehem Judea’s population.  So the Muslim rulers split control of the profitable tourist sites in Bethlehem Judea between the Greek and Armenian Orthodox churches, in particular the church built upon the “traditional” site of the birth of Jesus. The Greek Orthodox were given control of one part of the building, the Armenian Orthodox control of another part. This allowed the Muslims rulers to play the two Christian sects one against the other, and to play them both off the Roman Catholics, who were now the poor relations in town.

And thus some calm was achieved in a region not famous for calm, at least until 1852, when a “firman” (or edict) was issued by Abdulmecit I, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire and Caliph of the Muslim World (above). Abdulmecit issued his edict because…well, because first, in 1847 some thug stole the silver star which marked the “traditional” spot of Jesus’ birth, in the floor of the Church of the Nativity, and, more importantly, because the Sultan was weak and because Louis Napoleon III of France was a pompous political hack, who believed that he had been chosen by God to fix, first France, and then rest of the world.

Louis Napoleon III was elected to a ten year term as the first President of the Second Republic of France in December of 1848. He immediately started plotting to follow in his uncle’s imperial boot prints. By early in 1852 Louis had helped to restore the Vatican’s independence in Rome (which pleased French Catholic voters), but he had also insisted that the new Papal government be drawn up along “liberal” lines, to placate the liberal (meaning non-Catholic) French voters. But no Church ever likes to be lectured about liberal policies from secular politicians. Just try it some time and see.

In an attempt to placate the now angry Catholic voters, Louis III suggested that the theft of the star from the Church of the Nativity (five years earlier) proved that the Church of the Nativity was no longer “safe”, and control should be handed over to the Roman Catholic Church for protection - yet another politician declaring a crises which needed his genius to solve. This particular crises pleased Pope Pius IX., who had come to the conclusion that Czar Nicholas I of Russia was intent upon wiping out Catholicism in his country - which Nicholas was, the Czar being the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Louis' demand also pleased Abdulmecit I, because Albdulmecit had the distinct feeling that Czar Nicholas was about to invade Turkey - which he was. So,  under Abdulmecit's edict, the keys to the Church of the Nativity were now handed over the representatives of the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time the edict also required the Vatican to maintain the church “in statu quo res errant”, or, “as it was before”. This edict is linguistically important because it popularization the English phrase “status quo”.

Now, all of his life Russian Czar Nicholas I had been told that Russia was a military superpower and protector of the true faith, that faith being Russian Orthodoxy. And Nicholas was not about to allow a mere “politician”, least of all a trumped up “Bonaparte”, to usurp his regal and holy authority. Nicholas demanded the keys to the Church of the Nativity be returned to the Armenian and Greek priests, who would, he was certain, be controlled by him. And when the keys were not handed over,  he declared war on Turkey - of course, he had been planning on doing that anyway.  Britain and France then came to Turkey’s defense. And so Louis’ gambit to impress French voters led directly to the Crimean War, and 118,000 dead; of whom 20, 000 were French, and 73,000 were Russian.

In his rise to power Napoleon III (above) had shamelessly played one political faction off another, and eventually abolished democracy in his own state, created a throne for himself, invaded Algeria and Vietnam - both of which actions came back to haunt France a century later - and was finally goaded into the 1870 Franco-Prussian War,  which resulted in his humiliating defeat, the creation of Germany,  Louis’ own overthrow and his death. This guy was the George Bush of 19th century French diplomacy.

The Crimean War also cost Nicholas I his life. While on campaign against Turkey he caught a chill and died of pneumonia on 2 March, 1855. The Ottoman Sultan, Abdülmecit, lived long enough to see his nation plunged into debt by that same war.  By Abdulmecit's death from tuberculosis in 1861, Turkey was flat broke. His successor was dethroned.

Amazingly, the same war left Pope Pius IX alive but very frustrated. Because France had been distracted by the Crimean War, there was no help from France when Victor Emmanuel took control of Italy in 1860 from the Catholic Church and established the modern semi-secular nation of Italy.  But Pius achieved a measure of revenge when, in 1869 he issued the decree of Papal Infallibility and declared the dogma of Immaculate Conception. Together these meant that Mary, mother of Jesus, was born without sin because the Pope said she was without sin. And the Pope was never wrong, because he said he was never wrong. Neither of these were official Roman Catholic dogma until 1869, but it has been church dogma ever since. The last American President to declare this was Richard Nixon, and he got impeached anyway - so evidently it only works for religious leaders.

But, let us finally return to the Church of the Nativity on 27 December, 2007. According to the Associated Press; “....dozens of priests and cleaners came to the fortress-like church to scrub and sweep the floors, walls and rafters ahead of the Armenian and Orthodox Christmas, celebrated in the first week of January...  But the clean-up turned ugly after some of the {Greek) Orthodox faithful stepped inside the Armenian church's section, touching off a scuffle between about 50 Greek Orthodox and 30 Armenians. Palestinian police, armed with batons and shields, quickly formed a human cordon to separate the two sides so the cleaning could continue...Four people, some with blood running from their faces, were slightly injured.”

Traditionally both the Orthodox and Armenian churches have recruited their priests for this sacred post from tiny isolated villages scattered across Greece and the Balkans, where Christians (and Muslims) have been slaughtering each other for a thousand years. These naive young men now suddenly found themselves working in intimate contact and sharing the most precious artifacts of their faith with heretics. Nothing in their lives or their training prepared them for any kind of peaceful coexistence.

And the whole thing was Louis Napoleon III’s idea.  But try explaining that to a bunch of uneducated foreigners.

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A ROMANTIC CHRISTMAS

I find it curious that Ernst Theodore Hoffman (above) is considered a romantic. I think of him as a manic depressive, and justified at that, considering that Napoleon spent most of Ernest’s life turning Europe into a slaughterhouse. As a young man Ernst did fall in love, but the lady was married. And when she turned up pregnant Ernest’s family shipped him off to Poland, where he labored as a petty bureaucrat. But he spent his free time composing classical music and writing vaguely creepy stories. One of his more successful tales was a sort of 19^th century “Jaws”, except instead of a 25 foot Great White Shark, Ernest’s villain was a mouse bent on revenge. In Hoffman's story seven year old Maria receives a mechanical doll as a Christmas present, which her older brother Fritz promptly breaks. She sits up late trying to repair the toy, until an army of mice attack her doll. She saves the toy by throwing her shoe at the rodents. Now, maybe I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop, but I think this idea has ballet written all over it. Interestingly, that idea never occurred to Ernst.

Nor did it occur to Alexander Dumas (above), the vulgar and prolific son of a French nobleman and a Haitian slave woman. See, Alex liked the Parisian good life a lot more than he liked writing. He had at least 40 mistresses, but he made enough to afford his profligate lifestyle by out doing Andy Warhol at marketing his art. Alex kept a warehouse full of writers who ground out stories under his direction, such as “The Count of Monte Cristo” and “The Three Musketeers”, and its sequels. And one of his minor best sellers was a direct steal of Ernst's hallucination, which Dumas changed just enough to avoid a lawsuit – like changing Maria's name to Clara.

Then, seventy years after Ernst died of syphilis (the ultimate romance disease), and 12 years after Alex died of a stroke in 1870, the ballet idea finally did occur to Marius Petpa (above), celebrated head of the Bolshoi Ballet Company in Russia. In 1882 the Imperial Theaters hired Marius and Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky to create the “Sleeping Beauty” ballet. This was such a critical and financial success that it established the Bolshoi as the world's premier ballet company, and Marius as a world class genius. And then like a modern Hollywood producer looking for a project to fit the marquee talent, in 1890, the theatre brought the pair together again. But this time, having over inflated these two monumental egos, the management merely suggested a sort of theatrical sandwich – a double header, both a serious opera and a light ballet staged on the same night..

The one act opera was clearly intended to be the meat in this theatrical happy meal, and being the foremost Russian composer of the day, Pyotr (above) got first choice of subject matter. He decided on a Danish story of a blind princess named Iolanta.. But then, early in February of 1891, in Saint Petersburg, Marius handed Pyotr a detailed synopsis and bar-by-musical bar outline for a two act classical ballet based the story Dumas had filched. Pyotr was appalled. He though it childish and unworthy of serious application. But, if it meant he got paid to write another opera, he would somehow make the silly ballet work. After struggling for a month he tried to remain optimistic. He wrote to one of this brothers, “I am working with all my strength and reconciling myself to the subject of the ballet.” But he also admitted “I am experiencing a kind of crisis.” This was good, since Pyotr had a lot of experience with those.

See, Pyotr had a secret that held the potential to turn every problem in his life into a crises. He was approaching fifty, and had reached an uneasy equilibrium with his homosexuality. He had tried to go straight but his marriage to Antonina Ivanova (above) had blown up after little more than a month. This raised again the threat of exposure by envious and bigoted court and church officials, who at any moment could end his career. Each contract, including this one, could be his last. What little stability existed in his life was supplied by his younger sister Aleksandra and her seven children with Lev Davydov. Pyotr wrote many of his 11 operas, six symphonies and three ballets on their Ukrainian estate near Kamenka. And now, in March, while on his way to a concert tour of America, and still trying to come up with something presentable for Marius's ballet, he learned of Aleksanda's death.

He had just seen Aleksandra (above) over the Christmas holidays, so he must have known how ill she was. Still, Pyotr was hysterical. And then, pausing in Rouen, France, he managed his agony by putting it to work. His genius was always his ability to combine the Russian musical themes with Western ones, and to subjugate his true identity into the restraints of his art. And in the “grand pas de deux” for the lead dance character of Clara, he weaved in threads from the Russian Orthodox funeral service  The musical themes of the entire ballet became darker and more nuanced. As one critic has put it, “In Clara, he found a parallel for his sister.” A ballet about wealthy Victorian children, became, with the talent of Pyotr's genius, a work for people of all ages and for all time.

When Pyotr returned from his wildly successful 25 day American tour (he inaugurated Carnegie Hall in Manhattan) he delivered his musical score to Marius in St. Petersburg, to be animated. But as the opportunity approached, the world renown genius, Marius, suffered his own crises of self confidence. The primary symptom of this understandable panic was an attack of Pemphigus vulgaris, a debilitating skin disease, usually afflicting Ashkebazi Jews – of which Marius was one. Scratching his itching skin produced open sours, which made it impossible for Marius to concentrate on the ballet. So his assistant, Lev Ivanov, took over.

Lev (above) had been with the Bolshoi since he was eight, and had a natural talent as a musician, as well as being an excellent dancer. But where Marius was a classical ballet master, Lev was, like poor Ernest, a romantic. He followed Marius's general guidelines. He had to, the music had already been composed based on them. But Lev also arranged his dancers like an impressionist painter, throwing patterns of sugar plumb fairies and swirling lines of snowflakes on point, about the stage. It was the shape and flow of the dance that interested Lev, and somehow the combination of all these hearts and souls, the romantic Ernst and the hedonist Alexander, the classicist Marius and the dark Pyotr, and now that other romantic Lev, they all gave birth, on 15 January, 1890, to the premier of “The Nutcracker” ballet at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The audiences seem to have been enthusiastic, giving five curtain calls to the Sugar Plum Fairy. The next morning Pyotr wrote to his brother, “The opera in particular was to everyone’s liking ... The productions of both...were superb” But it was a very long evening, with the Nutcracker not ending until well after midnight. 

The weary critics took it out on the dancers, calling the lead ballerina (above) corpulent and pudgy. The battle scene between the mice and the nutcracker confused them: “Disorderly pushing about from corner to corner and running backwards and forwards – quite amateurish.” The Grand Pas de Deux, so inspiring to the composer, was labeled ponderous and “completely insipid”. A week later Pyotr wrote to another brother, “Once again I am not embittered by such criticism. Nevertheless, I have been in a loathsome spirit, as I usually am...in such circumstances.” After 11 performances the double bill was closed.

Less than a year later, in October 1893 Pyotr would die during a cholera outbreak, his secret still secure. Although many have suggested he committed suicide, he did not. Lev Ivanov followed nine years later. Finances forced him to work until his death “in harness”, in December of 1901. About the same time the Bolshoi brought in the upstart Alexander Gorsky to replace the aging Marius (above) as director. While watching his intended replacement rehearsing on his stage, Marius was heard to shout, “Will someone tell that young man that I am not yet dead?!.” Within a year it did not matter; Marius was quietly retired. He did die in 1910, at the age of 92.

A year after its premier the opera Iolanta would be preformed by itself in Hamburg, Germany. But although still performed occasionally, it is now largely forgotten. The Nutcracker, on the other hand, had to wait almost 20 years before it would be performed again, staged this time by the Bolshoi's new director Alexander Gorsky, in Moscow. He saved it. Alexander savaged Marius choices, paring away minor roles, replacing the children cast as Clara and the prince, with adults, thus adding a romantic story line for them. Standing alone, the ballet was now far better received, and short enough for modern attention spans. And after the Second World War, it became the classical Christmas season production for every ballet company in the world, responsible for up to 40% of their income.

It just goes to show you – those silly romantics may be naive simpletons, but their ideas grow stronger with time because they are positive and simple, and keep being reinvented. When in doubt, we are always inspired by the romantics within us.

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HERE WE COME A CAROLING

I strongly suspect that the 6^th century Christian theologian Benedict of Nursia was completely tone deaf. Its the only way I can explain why his Rules of Saint Benedict left Christianity trying to tap its toes to the monophonic Gregorian Chant – lavishly described as a melody with no harmony. This was music invented to pacify the spirit, almost to put it to sleep, to pledge devotion with no emotion - and in Latin, which limited its popularity. It would take another 800 years, until Francis of Assisi, for Christianity to break free from its acoustic prison.

Phillippe de Vitry is the man responsible. He was a 14^th century poet and musician, and evidently in his spare time the Bishop of Meaux. He could afford to spread himself thin because there just wasn't that much music to know in 1350. Syncopation and Baroque pop had yet to be invented. But Phillippe was also credited with the Ars Nova, or the “new technique” for writing music, although I suspect Phillippe was more of a Phil Spector than a Brian Wilson in this regard. Anyway, the primary new idea in “Ars” was to combine folk tunes with bible stories, a perfect fit considering how many whores with hearts of gold and cheating alcoholic husbands filled the sacred texts. And like The Beach Boys, the Ars advocated above all else, harmony. Western music begins with the Ars Nova, including our subject here, Christmas Carols, and one choral in particular.

The Motown of the early Christmas song was medieval France, and the 14^th century Chubby Checker was Chretien de Troyes, using the refrain and verse style as advocated by the Ars Nova. Chretien's hard driving lyrics for his “Legands of King Arthrur” made people want to get up on their feet and move, in a sort of communal “twist”, the circle dance or the Bransles, also called a carol. And just like disco, the name of the dance would label the entire genre of music. In the absence of recordings, Chretien's music was preformed by traveling minstrels, who would sing the verse, while the simple refrains (also called “the burden”), was usually something like “Fa la la, la la,”. This could even be sung by the village idiot, thus avoiding the Mick Jagger mumbled lyrics problem. Of course when the top 1% held a party, they were not required to sing along. That would have been undignified, particularly if they couldn't sing well. So, they hired somebody else to sing for them, thus inventing girl groups and boy bands – the choir.

We should still be singing the mega-hits written during this golden age of Christmas music, when songs like “That Was My Woo”, by the artist formally known as Robert Faiyrfax, ruled the top 40 charts, but we aren't, at least not in English. In fact we have little record (except Fairfax's two beat rhythms) of the exciting English plainsong tunes from the Golden Age of Christmas because at the beginning of the 17^th century came the biggest buzz-kill in Christmas history, an English religious fanatic named Oliver Cromwell and his band, the Puritans. They outlawed Christmas and dancing entirely, and burned every page of music they could lay their anti-aria hands on. It was as if Mr. Scrooge had turned pyromaniac after being left in charge of the office Christmas party. Not much was left.

After the Reformation stuffed the Puritans back into their music-less box, English Christmas started again, from scratch. The first reborn popular hit was “The Wassail Song”, which was not much of Christmas carol, since it starts, “Here we come a-wassailing, Among the leaves so green”. Leaves have not been green in England during December since the island was a lot closer to the equator, about 240 million years ago. So the Carol Kings and Paul McCartneys of the 18^th and 19^th centuries began looking for tunes and lyrics in those places the Puritans had not reached - France.

“Angels from the Realms of Glory” was translated from its original French in 1816, and sung to the tune which would later be used for “Angles We Have Heard on High”. And then there is the cheerful, “Un flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle!”, or “Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella!” All these France to English carols were huge hits and even more profitable because there were no royalties to pay. In music circles this whole sale theft from dead writers is referred to as “adaptation”. And it took a politician, Davies Gilbert to recognize the legal advantages of that. In 1822 he published a collection of previously French carols, and the flood gates were opened. Over the next decade “The First Noel” and “Hark the Herald Angles Sing” were rescued from France to be published in English for free. And then in 1840 the young Queen Victoria married Prince Albert from Germany, revealing to English “adapters” a new source. In fact, German sources became so popular that the original Protestant Martin Luther was credited with writing “Away In A Manger”, but that was just a marketing gimmick. And by the end of the 19^th century, German “adaptations” had been sucked dry, and tune hungry carol composers were forced to look farther east.  And, it turned out, to the west, as well.

Katherine Kennicott Davis was born on the cusp of this shift in searching, in 1892 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was raised a Methodist, and composed her first piece of music at 15. She studied at Wesley College in Massachusetts, and in Paris with the extraordinary Nadia Boulanger. She then made Massachusetts her home, teaching music at the girl's Concord Academy. And in 1939 she “adapted” the traditional Welsh hymn called “Ash Grove”, originally written in 1802. She wrote new lyrics and relabeled it. “Let All Things Now Living”, AKA ” The Thanksgiving Song”. It proved to be a minor hit, encouraging her to continue looking. In a collection of traditional Czech carols, she found the rhythmic “Rocking Carol”. ( All Things Living), and her skills and talents discovered in this intricate melody the core of her next hit, a lead soprano with an alto harmony tenor and base - with keyboard for rehearsal only – which Katherine titled “The Carol of the Drum.”

I need to mention here, that Katherine appears to have been, as she was raised, a perfect Victorian lady. She humbly listed her name on the published sheet music as “C.R. W. Robinson”, since even in 1941 women were not expected to have public achievements. She had published “Let All Things” under the name “John Cowley”. In fact most of the 600 songs she wrote were originally published under various false names, to disguise her sex. I get the feeling Katherine was always more comfortable in hiding, and she would later claim the melody for “Carol of the Drum” came to her while she was trying to take a nap. Or, maybe it really did.

And it was now that the economics of the music industry took Katherine's song out of her hands. In 1955 “The Carol of the Drum” was recorded by the Von Trapp Family Singers, of “Sound of Music” fame. The Austrian immigrants retired shortly there after, and the song went no where until 20^th Century Fox Records contracted with Harry Simeone to record a Christmas album of choir music. Simeone liked Katherine's tune, but he felt he could improve it. And so he did. He did enough of a re-write that he felt the song should be renamed, and when the Harry Simeone Choral group released their album “Sing We Now of Christmas” just before Christmas 1958, the new title of Katherine's adapted carol was “The Little Drummer Boy”.

It literally rocketed to the top of the charts, the “single”, a sort of vinyl MP3 download (for those of you born after 1990)  went number one with a bullet. As Katherine herself put it, her little song was “done to death on radio and TV". In 1963 Fox re-released the album but re-titled it “The Little Drummer Boy; A Christmas Festival”. Again it went to number one. The song was covered by everybody from Bing Crosby and the Beverly Sisters to Marlene Dietrich and the Royal Scots Guards. By 1962 it was one of the top 40 Christmas songs, and it has remained there ever since. Quite an accomplishment for a shy lady like Katherine. (Little Drummer Boy)

Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum

A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum
Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum
To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

So to honor Him, pa rum pum pum pum,

When we come.

Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum

I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum
I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum
That's fit to give the King, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum,

On my drum?

Mary nodded, pa rum pum pum pum

The ox and lamb kept time, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my drum for Him, pa rum pum pum pum
I played my best for Him, pa rum pum pum pum,
rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum,

Then He smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum

Me and my drum.

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