Christmas 1779

Christmases tended to be tough on the Father of Our Country.

In 1740, George Washington's boyhood home burned to the ground on Christmas Eve. The family sheltered in the cook-house for what the eight-year-old later called "a cheerless Christmas Day."

In 1753, while stationed on the frontier with the Virginia militia, Washington spent Christmas Eve at a trading post named Murdering Town, where his troops did battle with the French and Indians.

In 1759, during the couple's first Christmas together, George and Martha Washington stayed in separate rooms at Mount Vernon, because Martha was violently ill with the measles.

In 1776, on the darkest Christmas of the American Revolution, Washington crossed the Delaware.

In 1799, only two weeks before Christmas, Washington caught a wicked head cold and died.

Washington's Christmas of 1779 was quite a bit better.

The day saw the commander-in-chief and his Continental Army hunkered down in bucolic Morristown, New Jersey. 

Three weeks before, Washington had chosen the village as his army's winter quarters, because a nearby mountain chain made it invulnerable to British attack. He summarily ordered his troops to build log cabins to live in, and threatened the villagers with martial law, if they failed to open their homes to his officers. 

A merchant named Ford loaned his home to Washington, a house so luxurious it prompted George to ask Martha to travel from Mount Vernon to the Ford Mansion, to join him there for the holidays.

On Christmas Day, the couple dined in comfort in the Ford home; and while they dined, in a tavern two blocks away Benedict Arnold stood trial for war-profiteering—a charge he'd be cleared of, but barely.

Nine months later, Arnold would betray Washington, committing the deed that still makes his name synonymous with treason: conspiring to surrender West Point to the British.

A Cunning Plan

George Washington died of a throat infection 221 years ago this week.

But he almost didn't.

Aware he was dying—and afraid of being buried alive—Washington begged his personal secretary to assure him his body would not be interred until three days after his death. 

Accordingly, Washington lay on view in the "saloon" of Mount Vernon for the three days after his last breath.

But a certain Dr. William Thornton wasn't having it.

He had a cunning plan.

A European-trained physician, Thornton had been summoned to Washington's bedside three days before, in order to save the dying president through tracheotomy. Arriving late, Thornton found Washington not in bed, but "laid out a stiffened corpse" in a wooden casket in the saloon.

So the good doctor pivoted, as he described years later in a scientific paper:

"The weather was very cold, and Washington remained in a frozen state for several days," Thornton wrote. "I proposed to attempt his restoration, in the following manner: first to thaw him in cold water, then to lay him in blankets, and by degrees and by friction to give him warmth, and to put into activity the minute blood vessels, at the same time to open a passage to the lungs by the trachea, and to inflate them with air, to produce an artificial respiration, and to transfuse blood into him from a lamb."

Washington's relatives rejected Thornton's ghoulish plan, asking would it be right "to recall to life one who had departed full of honor and renown; free from the frailties of age; in the full enjoyment of every faculty; and prepared for eternity?”

Scorned, Thornton asked the family to consider replacing Washington's wooden casket with a lead one, so the dead president might some day be removed from Mount Vernon to the new US Capitol.

The family gave the late president his lead coffin; but the body still lays in the family vault, just a stone's throw from the saloon.

Above: George Washington's life mask.

December 1943

You are the fairy tale told by your ancestors.

― Toba Beta

Think you have it rough this Christmas, snowflake?

Our forebears had it rougher.

I wouldn't trade all of 2020 for a day during 1943.

In December of that year, a planetary war was raging and America was "in the midst of fully mobilizing," says archivist Kevin Thomas.

"For families looking forward to celebrating, if such a sensation were practicable, the resources to do so were as strained as they would be for the entire war—both materially and emotionally."

In December 1943, Thomas notes, the buildup to D-Day was in full force. Americans heard the president on the radio on Christmas Eve announce that General Eisenhower would lead the invasion.

Around the country, Americans not in uniform competed for jobs and housing. Paychecks were frozen. Inflation was rampant. Unions were striking and Blacks rioting. The government had to nationalize the railroads and coal mines to assure their operation. And women had to go to work full time in shipyards and tank factories.

In December 1943, you had to use stamps to buy meat, coffee, bread and butter—and you couldn't buy a new pair of shoes, an icebox, tires, or a car. 

Often you ate meatless dinners from your Victory Garden, and your Christmas dinner likely came from a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese. You didn't dare drive anywhere for the holidays—there was no gas, your tires were bald, and the cops were on the lookout for "nonessential travelers." 

If you had any money and wanted to give someone a Christmas gift, it was likely going to be a war bond.

But you knew you had it a lot better than the millions of Americans in uniform stationed overseas—particularly those in the combat theaters.

Above: Freedom from Fear, Norman Rockwell. 1943.

Party of the Rich

This would fix what is a significant burden on our society.

— Kenny Turnage

The very week a 50-year study of tax-cuts for the rich hammered the final nail in trickle-down economics' coffin, a rising Republican star in California was fired from his appointed office for advising governments to let Covid-19 "cull the herd" of children and the poor—a firing that came the same day we learned Trump and his toadies at HHS had been advocating the very same policy all summer.

It's hard sometimes to tell whether Republicans have been reading Ayan Rand or Madison Grant. But, being Christmastime, more likely they've been feasting their eyes on Charles Dickens.

You'll recall from A Christmas Carol Scrooge's embrace of GOP-style Malthusianism in response to a charity canvasser:

“At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute."

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

“And the union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”

“The treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigor, then?” said Scrooge.

“Both very busy, sir.”

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge.

“Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude,” returned the gentleman, “a few of us are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the poor some meat and drink, and means of warmth. What shall I put you down for?”

“Nothing!” Scrooge replied.

“You wish to be anonymous?”

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Economist Thomas Malthus, popular when A Christmas Carol appeared in 1843, believed that global famine was inevitable, given population growth, and that governments should therefore promote mass human extinction.

Why so many members of the GOP today embrace Malthus's "life-boat ethics"—and do so proudly—should come as no surprise to anyone.

Since the Gilded Age, the GOP has—and always shall remain—the party of the rich, the party of the greedy, the party of Scrooge.

What's in a Name?

American code names since 1989 have been designed for PR value.

— Matthew Stibbe

Few members of the public know that, when the White House couldn't find a name for its vaccine rapid-development program, 14-year-old Barron Trump came up with "Operation Warp Speed." 

With a nod of the head, his family voted to adopt the name around the Sunday evening dinner table.

The program has delivered, but the name has not, turning millions of Americans off to the vaccine.

The worry they consistently invoke: the vaccine was rushed, and therefore isn't safe.

Now the hapless Administration is scrambling to launch a $300 million trust-building ad campaign.

If only Trump had been more at home on Pennsylvania Avenue, and less on Madison Avenue, he'd have listened to his career scientists instead of a 14-year-old. 

Many more Americans would be sanguine about their shots.

Career scientists, after all, named "The Manhattan Project, "Gemini," and "The Genome Project."

A perfectly pedestrian code-name like "Luke," "Operation Jade" or "The Bethesda Project" would have calmed nerves, saved lives, saved money, and sped reopening.

We can thank the Germans for pioneering the use of code-names for military operations during World War I. 

Their use really took off during World War II, when Churchill—a man of words (and deeds)—took the time to instruct his government on the wise choice of code-names.

In a typewritten memo, Churchill advised that operations should not be named by code-words that convey overconfidence; disparage the operation; trivialize the operation; or reveal the nature of the operation.

He advised, instead, that code-names derive from ordinary words used out of context; or from proper names, such as those of the gods and heroes of antiquity, famous racehorses, and British and American warriors of the past.

"Care should be taken in all this process," Churchill concluded. "An efficient and a successful administration manifests itself equally in small as in great matters."

In keeping with Churchill's dictums, Alan Turing's codebreaking operation at Bletchley Park was named "Station X;" the invasion of North Africa was named "Operation Torch;" and the Yalta Conference was named "Argonaut."

Churchill himself came up with the code-name for D-Day, "Operation Overlord."

"American code names since 1989 have been designed for PR value," says brand consultant Matthew Stibbe. 

And the danger therein? 

That the name undoes the accomplishment.