An Essay On Christmas

Tags

Christianity, Christmas, Happiness, Humanity, Liberty, Love, Progress, Religion

My family and I regard Christmas as a holiday – that is to say, a day of rest and pleasure – a day to get acquainted with each other, a day to recall old memories, and for the cultivation of social amenities. The festival now called Christmas is far older than Christianity. It was known and celebrated for thousands of years before the establishment of what is known as our religion. It is a relic of sun-worship. It is the day on which the sun triumphs over the hosts of darkness, and thousands of years before the New Testament was written, thousands of years before the republic of Rome existed, before one stone of Athens was laid, before the Pharaohs ruled in Egypt, before the religion of Brahma, before Sanskrit was spoken, men and women crawled out of their caves, pushed the matted hair from their eyes, and greeted the triumph of the sun over the powers of the night.

There are many relics of this worship – among which is the shaving of the priest’s head, leaving the spot shaven surrounded by hair, in imitation of the rays of the sun. There is still another relic – the ministers of our day close their eyes in prayer. When men worshiped the sun – when they looked at that luminary and implored its assistance – they shut their eyes as a matter of necessity. Afterward the priests looking at their idols glittering with gems, shut their eyes in flattery, pretending that they could not bear the effulgence of the presence; and today, thousands of years after the old ideas have passed away, the modern parson, without knowing the origin of the custom, closes his eyes when he prays. There are many other relics and souvenirs of the dead worship of the sun, and this festival was adopted by Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, and by Christians. As a matter of fact, Christianity furnished new steam for an old engine, infused a new spirit into an old religion, and, as a matter of course, the old festival remained.

For all of our festivals you will find corresponding pagan festivals. For instance, take the Eucharist, the communion, where persons partake of the body and blood of the Deity. This is an exceedingly old custom. Among the ancients they ate cakes made of corn, in honor of Ceres and they called these cakes the flesh of the goddess, and they drank wine in honor of Bacchus, and called this the blood of their god. And so I could go on giving the pagan origin of every Christian ceremony and custom.

The probability is that the worship of the sun was once substantially universal, and consequently the festival of Christ was equally wide spread. As other religions have been produced, the old customs have been adopted and continued, so that the result is, this festival of Christmas is almost world-wide. It is popular because it is a holiday. Overworked people are glad of days that bring rest and recreation and allow them to meet their families and their friends. They are glad of days when they give and receive gifts – evidences of friendship, of remembrance and love. It is popular because it is really human, and because it is interwoven with our customs, habits, literature, and thought. For my part I am willing to have two or three a year – the more holidays the better. Of course, I am in favor of everybody keeping holidays to suit himself, provided he does not interfere with others, and I am perfectly willing that everybody should go to church on that day, provided he is willing that I should go somewhere else.

– RGI

Most people imagine that men have always talked; that language is as old as the human race.

Tags

Humanity, Intelligence, Language, Liberty, Progress

It is also supposed that a language was taught by some mythological god to the first pair. But we now know, if we know anything, that language is a growth; that every word had to be created by man, and that back of every word is some want, some wish, some necessity of the body or mind, and also a genius to embody that want or that wish, to express that thought in some sound that we call a word.

At first, the probability is that men uttered sounds of fear, of content, of anger, or happiness. And the probability is that the first sounds or cries expressed such feelings, and these sounds were nouns, adjectives, and verbs.

After a time, man began to give his ideas to others by crude pictures, drawings of animals and trees and the various other things with which he could give crude thoughts. At first he would make a picture of the whole animal. Afterward some part of the animal would stand for the whole, and in some of the old picture-writings the curve of the nostril of a horse stands for the animal. This was the shorthand of picture-writing. But it was a long journey to where marks would stand, not for pictures, but for sounds. And then think of the distance still to the alphabet. Then to writing, so that marks took entirely the place of pictures. Then the invention of movable type, and then the press, making it possible to save the wealth of the brain; making it possible for a man to leave not simply his property to his fellow-man, not houses and lands and dollars, but his ideas, his thoughts, his theories, his dreams, the poetry and pathos of his soul. Now each generation is heir to all the past.

If we had free thought, then we could collect the wealth of the intellectual world. In the physical world, springs make the creeks and brooks, and they the rivers, and the rivers empty into the great sea. So each brain should add to the sum of human knowledge. If we deny freedom of thought, the springs cease to gurgle, the rivers to run, and the great ocean of knowledge becomes a desert of barren, ignorant sand.

– RGI

The cause nearest my heart, is the absolute – the absolute – enfranchisement of the human mind.

Tags

Compassion, Education, Equality, Family, Government, Greed, Liberty, Progress

I believe that the family is the unit of good government, and that every good government is simply an aggregation of good families. I want to do what little I can while I live to strengthen and render still more sacred the family relation. I believe the real temple of the human heart is the hearthstone, and that there is where the sacrifice of life should be made; and just in proportion as we have that idea in this country, just in that proportion we shall advance and become a great, glorious and splendid nation.

I am also in favor of granting every right to every other human being that I claim for myself; and when I look about upon the world and see how the children that are born today, or this year, or this age, came into a world that has nearly all been taken up before their arrival; when I see that they have not even an opportunity to labor for bread; when I see that in our splendid country some who do the most have the least, and others who do the least have the most; I say to myself there is something wrong somewhere, and I hope the time will come when every child that nature has invited to our feast will have an equal right with all the others. There is only one way, in my judgment, to bring that about; and that is, first, not simply by the education of the head, but by the universal education of the heart.

The time will come when a man with millions in his possession will not be respected unless with those millions he improves the condition of his fellow men. The time will come when it will be utterly impossible for a man to go down to death, grasping millions in the clutch of avarice. The time will come when it will be impossible for such a man to exist, for he will be followed by the scorn and execration of mankind.

– RGI

There should be no great historic picture of the signing of the Constitution, never!

Tags

Equality, Liberty, Slavery

It was fit, it was proper, to have a picture of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. That was an honest document. Our people wanted to give a good reason for fighting Great Britain, and in order to do that they had to dig down to the bed-rock of human rights, and then they said all men are created equal.

But just as soon as we got our independence we made a Constitution that gave the lie to the Declaration of Independence, and that is why the signing of the Constitution never ought to be painted. We put in that Constitution a clause that the slave-trade should not be interfered with for years, and another clause that this entire Government was pledged to hand back to slavery any poor woman with a child at her breast, seeking freedom by flight. It was a very poor document.

A little while ago they celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of that business and talked about the Constitution being such a wonderful thing; yet what was in that Constitution brought on the most terrible civil war ever known, and during that war they said: “Give us the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was.” And I said then: “Curse the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was. Don’t talk to me about fighting for a Constitution that has brought on a war like this; let us make a new one.”

No, I am in favor of a painting that would celebrate the adoption of the amendment to the Constitution that declares that there shall be no more slavery on this soil.

– RGI

For many generations the mind of man has been traveling in a circle.

Tags

Bible, Christianity, God, Liberty, Origins, Progress, Reason

For generations people have accepted without question the dogma of a First Cause – of the existence of a Creator – of an Infinite Mind back of matter, and sought in many ways to define its ignorance in this behalf. The most sincere worshipers have declared that this being is incomprehensible – that he is “without body, parts, or passions” – that he is infinitely beyond their grasp, and at the same time have insisted that it was necessary for man not only to believe in the existence of this being, but to love him with all his heart.

Christianity having always been in partnership with the state – having controlled kings and nobles, judges and legislators – having been in partnership with armies and with every form of organized destruction – it was dangerous to discuss the foundation of its authority. To speak lightly of any dogma was a crime punishable by death. Every absurdity has been bastioned and barricaded by the power of the state. It has been protected by fist, by club, by sword and cannon.

For many years Christianity succeeded in substantially closing the mouths of its enemies, and lived and flourished only where investigation and discussion were prevented by hypocrisy and bigotry. The church still talks about “evidence,” about “reason,” about “freedom of conscience” and the “liberty of speech,” and yet denounces those who ask for evidence, who appeal to reason, and who honestly express their thoughts.

Today we know that the miracles of Christianity are as puerile and false as those ascribed to the medicine-men of Central Africa or the Fiji Islanders, and that the “sacred Scriptures” have the same claim to inspiration that the Koran has, or the Book of Mormon – no less, no more. These questions have been settled and laid aside by free and intelligent people. They have ceased to excite interest; and the man who now really believes in the truth of the Old Testament is regarded with a smile – looked upon as an aged child – still satisfied with the lullabys and toys of the cradle.

– RGI