December 25, in the 753rd year since the founding of the city of Rome – or so Dionysius Exiguus, working in AD 525, would have us believe – Yeshua ben Yoseph was born in Bethlehem, in what is now the West Bank, Palestinian Territories.
In Greek, his name (of which Joshua and Isaiah are also derivatives) became "Jesus." "Christ" is also a Greek word: "Christos" means "the anointed one."
Based on historical and astronomical evidence, and even passages in the Gospels themselves, this date is almost certainly incorrect. Besides, Jesus appears to be one of the last people in human history who would be concerned about people remembering his birthday. He'd rather we were good to each other.
December 25, 274: Christmas is still a minor celebration in Rome, not an official holiday. Instead, Emperor Aurelian dedicates a temple for Sol Invictus: "The Unconquered Sun." Previously, the Romans had called the god of the Sun "Apollo," and the Greeks had called him "Helios" -- although, in modern pop culture (such as on the Star Trek episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?"), even when he's depicted as a Greek god, he's usually called Apollo.
The name Sol Invictus has passed into history, although in 1888, British poet William Ernest Henley published a poem titled "Invictus," with its classic closing lines, "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul." Which would seem to fly in the face of any religion.
December 25, AD 336: The 1st recorded Christmas celebration in Rome occurs. Emperor Constantine the Great had legalized Christianity with the Edict of Milan in 313, and called the Council of Nicaea in 325.
December 25, AD 597: Augustine of Canterbury -- considered the 1st Archbishop of Canterbury, the founder of the Catholic Church in England, and not to be confused with St. Augustine (Augustine of Hippo) -- leads priests to baptize more than 10,000 Anglo-Saxons in Kent.
December 25, AD 800: Charles the Great (a.k.a. Charles Le Magne, Charlemagne and Carolus Magnus) is crowned Holy Roman Emperor in Rome. Not that there was much about him that was holy.
December 25, AD 820: Emperor Leo V of the Byzantine Empire is assassinated inside the Hagia Sophia, the cathedral in Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), by supporters of a rival, who becomes Emperor Michael II.
The new Emperor also orders the exile of Leo's mother and wife, and the castration and exile of Leo's 4 sons, to end Leo's family line and prevent descendants from trying to retake the throne. One of the sons dies soon thereafter, while the others live out their lives in exile.
December 25, 1000: The Kingdom of Hungary is founded by King Stephen I.
December 25, 1065: Westminster Abbey is consecrated in London. But the King of England, Edward the Confessor, who ordered and funded its building, is too ill to attend, and dies early the next year. Which leads us to…
December 25, 1066: William, Duke of Normandy, a.k.a. William the Bastard and William the Conqueror, is crowned King William I of England at Westminster Abbey.
As the saying goes, never go into battle against a man called "the Bastard," because he's probably got a chip on his shoulder. And never go into battle against a man called "the Conqueror," because, chances are, he earned that nickname.
December 25, 1184: In Santa Claus, A Biography, historian Gerry Bowler notes that the Yule Log was one of the most widespread Christmas traditions in early modern Europe, with the first recording of its appearance dating to this time.
Bowler notes that the tradition's roots are debated -- some saying it is an "enfeebled version of the ancient Celtic human sacrifices" and others saying it's simply related to a feudal obligation of acquiring firewood.
Nevertheless, the log was a huge block, lasting for the Twelve Days of Christmas, and it was not burned completely its first year: Part of it was saved to light the following year's Yule Log. While the mostly burned wood waited for its duty to light a new Yule Log, it was kept around the house to ward off a range of misfortunes, including toothaches, mildew, lightning, house fires, hail and chilblains (an inflammation of small blood vessels brought on from exposure to cold).
December 25, 1492: La Santa María de la Inmaculada Concepción -- The Holy Mary of the Immaculate Conception -- runs aground in what's now Cap-Haïtien, Haiti.
Seeing that his flagship is irretrievably damaged, Christopher Columbus orders his men to strip the timbers from the ship. The timbers were later used to build a fort which Columbus called La Navidad (Nativity, or Christmas), at Limonade. Today, it is part of Université D'Etat D'Haiti, Campus Roi Henri Christophe.
Despite several claims over the last 500 years or so, the wreck of the Santa María has never been found. The Pinta would also be wrecked on the return voyage. The Niña made it back to Spain, and made a trading voyage to Venezuela in 1501, but nothing further is recorded of her.
December 25, 1526: King Henry VIII orders that the main course of his Christmas feast be not a goose, which was traditional in England, but a turkey, a bird first brought to England that year. The 1933 film The Private Life of Henry VIII, with Charles Laughton in the title role, popularized the image of the Tudor monarch as a fat old guy gorging himself, with a turkey leg in his hand, even though he would have been just 35 at this point.
Turkeys became popular feast meals in England because they didn't have the usefulness of traditional English livestock: Cows for milk, chickens for eggs, sheep for wool. But up until the 1950s, a goose remained the traditional bird for the Christmas feast. A Christmas Carol, published in 1843, had Ebenezer Scrooge include as part of his redemption the ordering of the biggest goose in a butcher shop to be sent to the Crachit family. There's also an old song, going back at least that far:
Christmas is coming.
The goose is getting fat.
Please put a penny
in an old man's hat.
If you have no penny
a ha'penny (half-penny) will do.
If you have no ha'penny
then God bless you!
Other countries have their variations on Christmas dinner. Some English-speaking countries serve ham, which is also popular (as "hamón") in Spanish-speaking countries, including Mexico and the Philippines. Some use chicken, including India, and the Japanese began a tradition of going to Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas Day in the 1970s. Northern Italy uses poultry, while Southern Italy uses lamb or fish.
In Eastern Europe, including Poland (where the meal is held on Christmas Eve and is known as Wigilia, "vigil") and Austria, fried fish is often the meal of choice. Seafood is also common in French-speaking places, including Québec and New Orleans: The meal is called réveillon, or "waking," because you stay awake until midnight on Christmas Eve, and then the meal is served after midnight, when it's the 25th. Portuguese-speaking places, including Brazil, also tend to use fish.
And in Britain, the meal ends with a pudding -- but it's not what Americans call "pudding," be it chocolate, rice or tapioca. Whether black pudding, white pudding, Yorkshire pudding, bread pudding, blood pudding, or, celebrated in song, figgy pudding, it's a cake -- often recognizable to Americans as a "fruitcake."
And if you don't like fruitcake -- especially if you remember Johnny Carson's joke that there is only one fruitcake, and it gets eternally passed around -- well, do what I did when confronted as an adult with that other English classic, fish and chips: Presume that you didn't like it as a child because you'd never had it prepared and served the right way, and try it. You'll like it.
December 25, 1576: The earliest known firmly dated representation of a Christmas tree is on a sculpture at a home in Turckheim, Alsace, then part of Germany, but since 1918 part of France.
It may go back further than that. Martin Luther, who reached the height of his fame in the early 1520s, is said to have placed lit candles on an evergreen tree. This is not recommended. However, the tree's supposed German origins led to the best-known song about Christmas trees, "O Tannenbaum."
Tinsel has long been associated with Christmas trees. It used to be made out of lead, since it didn't tarnish like other metals. Of course, we now know that using lead for anything except pipes is a bad idea.
December 25, 1584: Princess Margaret of Austria is born in Graz, later to be the hometown of Arnold Schwarzenegger. She married King Philip III of Spain, and was thus Queen of Spain from 1598 until her death in 1611, from complications of childbirth, her 8th.
She was the mother of King Philip IV of Spain, Anne of Austria (later Queen of France under King Louis XIII, and mother of King Louis XIV), and Maria Anna of Spain (later Empress of Emperor Ferdinand III of the Holy Roman Empire).
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December 25, 1620: The Plymouth Pilgrims spend their 1st Christmas Day in the New World building their 1st structure in the New World, thus demonstrating their complete contempt for celebrating the birth of Jesus. To the Puritans, in America and in England, it was the death and Resurrection that mattered, not the birth.
December 25, 1635: Samuel de Champlain, the explorer known as "the Father of New France," dies from the effects of a stroke, at the city he founded, Québec -- which is still a capital, of the Province of Québec. He was 61.
December 25, 1642: Isaac Newton is born in Wolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, in the north of England. And, from what I've heard of his personality, Sir Isaac could be considered, as they say in English "football," a Dirty Northern Bastard. In other words, if you messed with him, clearly (Don't say it, Mike!) you didn't understand (Don't say it!) the gravity of the situation. (He said it... )
Actually, since England had not yet adopted the Gregorian Calendar, Newton spent his whole life believing that he was born on December 25, 1642, but science (which he did so much to advance) now shows him to have been born on January 4, 1643.
December 25, 1643: Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean is found and named by Captain William Mynors of the English East India Company vessel, the Royal Mary. It became a British possession in 1888, and was transferred to Australian control in 1958.
December 25, 1647: The Puritan-led English Parliament bans the celebration of Christmas, considering it "a popish festival with no biblical justification," and "a time of wasteful and immoral behavior." Oliver Cromwell, essentially the country's dictator from 1647 until his death in 1658, probably never spoke the words, but he would have agreed with Ebenezer Scrooge's assessment of Christmas celebration: "Bah! Humbug!"
Parliament replaces the "popish festival" with a day of fasting, although no one seems to have had the guts to tell Cromwell, "Um, yeah, Ollie? A day of fasting sounds like Yom Kippur. You know: A Jewish holiday."
Protests followed, as pro-Christmas rioting broke out in several cities. For weeks, Canterbury was controlled by rioters, who decorated doorways with holly and shouted royalist slogans.
The book The Vindication of Christmas, published in 1652, argued against the Puritans, and makes note of Old English Christmas traditions: Dinner, roast apples on the fire, card playing, dances with "plow-boys" and "maidservants," carol singing, and old Father Christmas, the English version of St. Nicholas, who still, in the 21st Century, bears as much of a resemblance to an old bishop as he does to the figure we have come to know as Santa Claus.
December 25, 1659: Christmas observance is outlawed in Boston, still a Puritan-controlled city. By this point, New Amsterdam (present-day New York) was a fully-functioning Dutch city, and, though also Protestant, celebrated Christmas.
This is not the source of either the New York-Boston rivalry, or of that classic New York phrase "Boston sucks." But if the New World Dutch knew what was going on up in Boston, they would have understood the sentiment.
December 25, 1660: With Cromwell dead, his son Richard refusing to take up his father's role as "Lord Protector," and the Restoration complete with the son of Charles I having been crowned as King Charles II, England's ban on celebrating Christmas is ended. Poor Robin's Almanack contained these lines:
Now thanks to God for Charles' return
Whose absence made old Christmas mourn
For then we scarcely did it know
Whether it Christmas were or no.
December 25, 1663: On December 19, in his now-famous diary, Samuel Pepys, a Member of Parliament in Britain, mentioned that it was a custom for tradesmen to collect "Christmas boxes" of money or presents on the 1st weekday after Christmas, as thanks for good service throughout the year.
This custom is linked to an older British tradition where the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families, since they would have to serve their masters on Christmas Day. The employers would give each servant a box to take home, containing gifts, bonuses, and sometimes leftover food. And so, December 26 became known in the British Empire as Boxing Day.
Other traditions involved with the day were masters and servants switching jobs for the day, the commensurate military version in which the enlisted men commanded the officers, and Football League (later Premier League) games.
December 25, 1681: The Puritan ban on Christmas in Boston is finally revoked, by the English-appointed governor, Edmund Andros. However, it would not be until the middle of the 19th Century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region.
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This custom is linked to an older British tradition where the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families, since they would have to serve their masters on Christmas Day. The employers would give each servant a box to take home, containing gifts, bonuses, and sometimes leftover food. And so, December 26 became known in the British Empire as Boxing Day.
Other traditions involved with the day were masters and servants switching jobs for the day, the commensurate military version in which the enlisted men commanded the officers, and Football League (later Premier League) games.
December 25, 1681: The Puritan ban on Christmas in Boston is finally revoked, by the English-appointed governor, Edmund Andros. However, it would not be until the middle of the 19th Century that celebrating Christmas became fashionable in the Boston region.
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December 25, 1717: Giovanni Angelo Braschi is born in Cesena, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The son of a count, in 1775 he was elected Pope, taking the name Pius VI. He was Pope throughout the War of the American Revolution.
He oversaw the establishment of the 1st Archdiocese in the new nation, that of Baltimore, as Maryland, named for St. Mary, was the one State founded by Catholics. Most of the places in this country founded by Catholic Frenchmen and Spaniards did not become States until taken by the English or the post-independence Americans.
Pope Pius VI condemned the French Revolution, for suppressing the Gallican Church. This did not please Napoleon Bonaparte, and he sent troops to occupy the Papal States in 1796. Pius refused to renounce the throne, and in 1798 he was arrested, brought to France, and imprisoned in Valence, dying there a year later.
Oddly, despite what can be argued was having been martyred for his faith, the Church has made no move to canonize him.
December 25, 1757: Benjamin Pierce is born in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, outside Lowell. A hero of the American Revolution, he served as Governor of New Hampshire twice between 1827 and 1830.
His son, Franklin Pierce, served New Hampshire in both houses of Congress, and was the 14th President of the United States, serving from March 4, 1853 to March 4, 1857. Benjamin died in 1839, having lived long enough to see Franklin elected to the Senate.
It is unknown if, when naming the character based on himself "Benjamin Franklin Pierce," Dr. Richard Hornberger (writing the book M*A*S*H: A Novel About Three Army Doctors under the name Richard Hooker) knew that Franklin Pierce's father was named Benjamin, although as a native of neighboring Maine, he might have known. (Franklin Pierce did go to Bowdoin College in Maine.)
December 25, 1776: George Washington, under cover of darkness, leads the Continental Army across the Delaware River. The next morning, when he's gotten all his troops across to the New Jersey side, he marches them 9 miles down the road, over which State Route 29 would eventually be built, and attacks the Hessians, German mercenaries fighting for Britain, who are sleeping off their Christmas revelry. Thus is won the Battle of Trenton, thus keeping the Patriot cause alive in the War of the American Revolution.
This crossing is memorialized in an 1851 painting by, with some irony, a German-born American, Emmanuel Leutze. In a further irony, the British got their revenge: In World War II, the Royal Air Force destroyed the original painting, by bombing its location, the Kunsthalle art museum in Bremen. Leutze also painted a copy that hangs in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
But, like Jacques-Louis David's portrait of Napoleon, on a horse rearing back, leading his troops over the Alps, the painting is factually incorrect and logistically ridiculous. Just as Bonaparte, a brilliant military tactician, would have ridden a mule over the mountains (and there is a painting depicting that), a smart military veteran like Washington would never have stood up in his boat. It would have made him too easy a target, and it might have made the boat tip over.
The Pennsylvania location of the start of the crossing, then known as Taylorsville, is now known as Washington Crossing, in the Township of Upper Makefield. The New Jersey location where it finished is now known as Ewing, after one of Washington's aides, General James Ewing.
Among those who took part in the crossing were some future legends of American statecraft:
* Alexander Hamilton, Washington's Secretary of the Treasury and, in a way, the father of American conservatism.
* Henry Knox, Washington's Secretary of War, for whom the Kentucky army base and gold depository Fort Knox, and the seat of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is named.
* John Marshall, the longest-serving and most influential Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
* And James Monroe, 5th President of the United States, and who, under 4th President James Madison during the War of 1812, had the unenviable task of serving as Secretary of State and War (Defense) at the same time, probably doing his country a greater service in that war than he did in the Revolution or his Presidency.
Monroe, who was 25 at the time, is often cited as the young man sitting behind Washington in the painting, holding the flag. That's another error: If any flags made the crossing, they would have been kept hidden, so as not to give their bearers away. Washington was a big believer in the element of surprise, hence the night crossing.
It was also around this time that kissing someone under mistletoe at Christmastime became a tradition, and that it was bad luck to refuse such a kiss. The plant is poisonous, and the word is believed to have come from German, "mist" meaning "dung," and "tang," meaning "branch." In other words, a stick of poop.
In the 1992 film Batman Returns, set right before Christmas, Batman (Michael Keaton) tells Catwoman (Michelle Pfeiffer), "Mistletoe can be deadly if you eat it." She tells him, "But a kiss can be even deadlier if you mean it." Later in the film, as Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle dance at a Christmas party, Selina repeats Batman's line, and Bruce repeats Catwoman's response -- thus do they give away each other's secret identities. It's hard to believe Batman could make such a rookie mistake, but it's in the script.
Similarly, holly has a darker beginning than most people realize. It refers not to Christ's birth, but his death: The sharp leaves to the crown of thorns, and the red berries to his blood. "'Tis the season to be jolly"?
December 25, 1799: Augustinam Hejnek is born in Germany, although it's not clear where. In 1870, at age 70, "Augusta" Hejnek moved to Chicago. Eventually, she moved to Casimir, Wisconsin, where she died on March 1, 1908, at age 108. She is believed to have been the last surviving person born in the 18th Century.
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December 25, 1806: A riot occurs in Lower Manhattan -- or what would have been considered "Midtown" at the time. Fifty members of the Hide Binders, a nativist gang of apprentices and propertyless journeyman butchers, gather outside St. Peter's Church at 22 Barclay Street, to taunt Catholic worshipers leaving Midnight Mass.
There would be no formal New York Police Department until 1845, so what we would now call "neighborhood watch groups" tried to preserve order. The night watch prevented a serious disorder on the Eve, but on Christmas Day, Irishmen fearing a Hide Binder attack arm themselves with cudgels, stones and brickbats. A skirmish breaks out, a watchman is killed, and the Hide Binders invade the Irishtown. The riot only ends when magistrates are able to restore order.
The only people to get arrested were Irish -- a far cry from the post-Civil War era, by which point the vast majority of the NYPD was Irish-born, and it remained manned largely by men of Irish descent well into the 20th Century.
Traditionally, new groups have always been viewed suspiciously by the establishment in America. The Irish, the Germans, the blacks, the Jews, the Italians, the Chinese, the Hispanics, and in more recent times the Arabs and the South Asians have all, against their will, taken their turns as the targeted group.
In the early days of the United States, Irish Catholics were particularly targeted and barred from holding office through a series of laws and requirements, such as a 1777 naturalization clause. The 1806 Christmas Riots occurred less than a year following the election of the 1st Irish Catholic member to the New York State Assembly.
December 25, 1815: The Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest continually operating performing arts organization in America, hosts its 1st performance, at King's Chapel in Boston. Given that Handel had written "Joy to the World," this is appropriate.
December 25, 1821: Clara Barton is born in Oxford, Massachusetts, outside Worcester. She goes on to found the American Red Cross. She lived on until 1912.
December 25, 1822: Clement Clarke Moore, a professor of literature and theology in New York, is asked by his children if there are any books about Santa Claus. He decides to find out, but discovers that no bookstore in town has any such book.
So he writes his own version of the story, "A Visit from St. Nicholas," which establishes so much of the Santa Claus legend that we know today. The story is published the following year. Moore was born in 1779, during the War of the American Revolution, and lived until 1863, during the American Civil War.
December 25, 1826: The Eggnog Riot, a.k.a. the Grog Mutiny, takes place at the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Twenty cadets were court-martialed. No. I am not making that up. There was an Eggnog Riot at West Point.
Among the cadets who took part, but was not punished, was Jefferson Davis, future U.S. Senator from Mississippi. He later served as Secretary of War under the aforementioned Franklin Pierce, and as President of the Confederate States of America.
December 25, 1831: The Great Jamaican Slave Revolt, also known as the Baptist War or the Christmas Rebellion, begins, led by the Reverend Samuel Sharpe. Up to 20 percent of Jamaica's slaves, 60,000 of them, mobilize. By January 4, 1832, British forces under the control of the inaptly-named Sir Willoughby Cotton put the rebellion down.
The "plantocracy" retaliates by killing 207 slaves during the revolt, and over 300 more through executions, including some for minor offenses such as theft. This infuriated the colonists' masters back in London, and the process of emancipation began. In 1833, slavery was banned throughout the British Empire, with a few exceptions, including Jamaica. That exemption was removed in 1838, and all others were by 1843 -- 22 years before America, and 46 years before Brazil became the last industrialized nation to ban it, in 1889.
December 25, 1835: Orville Elias Babcock is born in Franklin, Vermont. He went to West Point, and graduated 3rd in the Class of 1861. He was an aide to General Ulysses S. Grant during and after the American Civil War, and when Grant became President, he named Babcock his Secretary -- in modern terms, his White House Chief of Staff.
This was a mistake. He was indicted in 1875 as part of the Whiskey Ring, and again in 1876 as part of the Safe Burglary Committee. Both times, Grant's testimony gained him an acquittal, but damaged Grant's reputation. But the acquittals enabled him to serve as Inspector of Lighthouses in Florida under succeeding Presidents Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield and Chester Arthur. He died in 1884, still holding that job.
December 25, 1837: The Battle of Lake Okeechobee is fought in Florida, as part of the Second Seminole War. The Seminoles, under the command of Holata Micco (known to the U.S. government as Billy Bowlegs), defeats U.S. troops under the command of Colonel Zachary Taylor.
The problem was that Taylor's subcommander, Colonel Richard Gentry, was too timid to face the enemy, and was one of the American soldiers killed. Taylor's report back to Washington said so, and he was promoted to Brigadier General, and won the nickname "Old Rough and Ready." Though he lost the battle, it put him on the path to become the leading U.S. hero of the Mexican-American War of 1846-47, and to be elected President in 1848.
Eventually, the U.S. Army would win the war, and force the resettlement of the Seminoles to "the Indian Territory," present-day Oklahoma. Nonetheless, the name survives in Florida's Seminole County, and in the name of the sports teams at Florida State University, the Seminoles.
Holata Micco would live on until 1859, long enough to visit Washington, and to see a portrait of Taylor, who died in office in 1850, in the Capitol Building. Recognizing his old opponent, he pointed and said, "Me whip!"
December 25, 1843: With Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol having debuted earlier in the year, art shop owner Henry Cole prints up the first Christmas cards, costing one shilling each -- rather expensive by the standards of the time. But the debut in 1840 of the penny post -- a stamp costing 1 penny, 1/240th of a pound sterling at the time, could get your letter sent anywhere in the United Kingdom -- made the mailing, and thus the popularization, of Christmas cards possible.
At any rate, here's a picture of the very first Christmas Card. Note that a woman is feeding a child a glass of wine.
In 1973, Harry Chapin would write "Mr. Tanner," and his bass guitarist, John Wallace, would sing the song as the title character -- as Harry wrote, "He did not know how well he sang, it just made him whole" -- even though the song "Mr. Tanner" makes no mention of Christmas itself.
December 25, 1849, 170 yeares ago: James Rees, a Christian missionary from Philadelphia, publishes the short story "A Christmas legend." This is the 1st literature to explicitly say that Santa Claus has a wife.
Two years later, the Yale Literary Magazine printed a story that gives Mrs. Claus a name -- sort of. She's listed as simply "Mrs. Santa Claus." In 1889, Katharine Lee Bates, composer of "American the Beautiful," published the poem "Goody Santa Claus On a Sleigh Ride" -- "Goody" being short for "Goodwife," an old New England term with the same meaning as "Mrs." This fleshed out her character as a bespectacled, chubby old woman -- essentially, a feminine, beardless, but otherwise physical match for her husband.
She has since become part of the legend, helped by the Rankin-Bass TV specials, from 1964 and Rudolph onward. Yet she is rarely given a first name. In Rankin-Bass' 1970 special Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town, she was named Jessica. In 1985's Santa Claus: The Movie, she was Anya, suggesting an Eastern European origin, tying in with the fact that much of the Santa legend comes from tales from Russia. In the 2011 animated Arthur Christmas, she was Margaret.
December 25, 1852: Henry Tifft Gage is born in Geneva, in Central New York, grows up in Saginaw, Michigan, and becomes a lawyer in California. He was the State's Governor at the turn of the 20th Century, serving from 1899 to 1903, as a Republican. This included the founding of baseball's Pacific Coast League. He died in 1924.
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December 25, 1865: Fay Templeton (apparently, her entire name) is born in Little Rock, Arkansas. She was a prominent American stage actress of the turn of the 20th Century.
December 25, 1868: In one of his last official acts as President, Andrew Johnson pardons all Confederate soldiers from the American Civil War, for any crimes they may have committed against the United States.
This date is also the Christmas debut of "O Little Town of Bethlehem," written by Phillips Brooks, then rector of the Church of the Holy Trinity in Philadelphia.
December 25, 1870: This was the 1st year in which December 25 was officially a federal holiday in America, thanks to a bill passed by Congress, and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant.
Also on this day, Chaja Rubinstein is born in Krakow, Poland. Better known as Helena Rubinstein, she becomes a cosmetics tycoon, and lives on until 1965. Those of us who grew up on PBS' childrens' programming in the 1970s and '80s know her name from the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, which contributed funding for Sesame Street, The Electric Company, et al.
December 25, 1876: Muhammad Ali Jinnah is born in Karachi, British India. He becomes the founder of the nation of Pakistan in 1947, but lives only a year after its establishment.
December 25, 1878: Louis Chevrolet is born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland. A pioneer of auto racing, he founded the car company that bears his name. Which may also make his company the source of Eartha Kitt's Christmas 1953 request: "Santa baby, a '54 convertible, too, light blue." He did not live to hear that song, dying in 1941.
December 25, 1884: Evelyn Nesbit is born outside Pittsburgh in Tarentum, Pennsylvania. She became a popular Broadway actress after getting on the "casting couch" of architect, and friend of theater producers, Stanford White.
After marrying playboy Harry Thaw, a fellow Pittsburgher, she saw Thaw murder White, in the roof garden of the second Madison Square Garden (which White had designed), on June 25, 1906, resulting in "the Trial of the Century," making her the most familiar woman in America thanks to the era's "yellow journalism."
Her life was a disaster after that. Before her death in 1967, she said of the only man she truly loved, "Stanny White died. My fate was worse: I lived."
December 25, 1887: Conrad Nicholson Hilton is born in Socorro County, New Mexico Territory -- it wouldn't become a State until 1912. Sadly, the hotel icon, who lived until 1979, is now best known for his socialite great-granddaughters, Paris and Nicky. He was recently played by Chelcie Ross on Mad Men. (You may also remember Ross as Eddie Harris, the hypocritical grizzled veteran pitcher in Major League.)
Also on this day, Glenfiddich single malt Scotch whiskey is first produced. Merry Christmas, indeed. Of course, this may also bring us back to the subject of the Hilton sisters.
December 25, 1889, 130 years ago: Lila Bell Acheson is born in Virdon, Manitoba, Canada. In 1921, she married DeWitt Wallace, born 6 weeks before she was. In 1922, they founded Reader's Digest magazine. He lived until 1981, she until 1984.
December 25, 1890: Oklahoma Territorial Agricultural and Mechanical College is founded in Stillwater, a year after the former Indian Territory was taken over and settled by white people. In 1907, with the coming of Statehood, it became Oklahoma A&M. In 1958, the name was changed to Oklahoma State University.
The school was known for a basketball team that won the 1944 and 1945 National Championships under coach Henry Iba, and for building perhaps the greatest college wrestling program. Its football team has been considerably less successful.
OSU athletes have included: Baseball players Allie Reynolds, Joe Horlen, Jerry Adair, Gary WArd, Robin Ventura, Mickey Tettleton, Pete Incaviglia, Jeromy Burnitz, Matt Holliday, Josh Fields, and Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell; football players Sonny Keys, Walt Garrison, Jim Turner, Jerry Sherk, Dexter Manley, Thurman Thomas, Heisman Trophy winner Barry Sanders, Leslie O'Neal, Charlie Johnson, Jason Gildon and Dez Bryant, and coach Buddy Ryan (Rex' father); basketball players, Bob Kurland, John Starks, Bryant Reeves and Joey Graham, Kansas coach Bill Self, and Don Haskins, coach of the 1966 National Champion Texas Western (now Texas-El Paso) team; and the current wrestling coach, Olympic Gold Medalist John Smith. And, if you count golf, Bob Tway, Rickie Fowler and Scott Verplank.
Other alumni include: Oklahoma Senators Henry Bellmon, Don Nickles and Tom Coburn; Governors Bellmon and Mary Fallin; astronaut Stuart Roosa; oilman T. Boone Pickens, who donated enough money to the school to get the football stadium named after him; law professor and political figure Anita Hill; Dick Tracy creator Chester Gould; singers Hoyt Axton and Garth Brooks; and actors Gary Busey and James Marsden. It's also the alma mater of fictional character Ellie Bishop, part of the Special Agent team on CBS' drama NCIS.
Also on this day, Robert LeRoy Ripley is born in Santa Rosa, California. Yes, he was born on a Christmas Day – believe it or not!
Actually, a lot of the items he put in Ripley's Believe It Or Not were stone-cold lies that put in because he just plain liked them. But some of them were true. He died in 1949.
December 25, 1892: The Nutcracker Suite premieres at the Imperial Maliinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia the preceding week, December 18. The ballet, with music by Pyotr Tchiakovsky and a libretto and choreography by Marius Petipa, tells a Christmastime story of little Clara Stahlbaum, her doll, and a prince cursed to live as a nutcracker.
"The March of the Toy Soldiers," "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," and "The Dance of the Reed Flutes" have all become part of the lexicon of Christmas music.
Due to the fantasy nature of the story, most film versions have been animated: 1979 (stop-motion), 1988 (using the Care Bears as characters), 1990, 2001 (using the Barbie doll in place of Clara) and 2007 (with cartoon legends Tom and Jerry).
A live-action version was done in 2010 with Elle Fanning as Clara, and lyrics to Tchaikovsky's songs by Tim Rice, but it bombed. In 2018, Disney (which had used some of the music in Fantasia in 1940) released The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, moving the action to London, and starring Keira Knightley, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, and Mackenzie Foy as Clara.
December 25, 1895: The legend of "Stagger Lee" is born -- and it is definitely not a song of holiday cheer. Lee Shelton, a black pimp known as "Stack" or "Stacker" Lee, ran an, um, entertainment venue called the Four Hundred Club in St. Louis. He and William Lyons, also involved in the St. Louis underworld, were drinking in the Bill Curtis Saloon. They began to argue, and Lyons took Shelton's Stetson hat off his head. For this offense, Shelton shot Lyons, killing him. Shelton was convicted, served 12 years for murder, was imprisoned again for robbery, and died in prison in 1912.
As early as 1897, during Shelton's trial, the 1st song about the murder was performed. It spread throughout American music, black and white alike, and, depending on the singer's accent, the perpetrator (and thus the title) could be "Stack-o-Lee," "Stag-o-Lee," "Stacker Lee," "Stagger Lee," and so on. The legendary New Orleans pianist Mac "Dr. John" Rebennack claimed that there were so many versions, he could sing the song for half an hour and never repeat a verse.
Eventually, "Stagger Lee" became the best-known version of the man's name. But the song, as most people know it now, gets the details wrong: In most versions, "Stagger Lee" and "Billy" are shooting dice in an alley late at night, and Billy, having already won all of Stagger Lee's money and Stagger's brand-new Stetson hat, tries to cheat him. So Stagger Lee goes home, gets his gun, goes to the bar, and, despite Billy pleading for his life -- "I got three little children and a very sickly wife" -- shoots him.
Fred Waring & His Pennsylvanians became the 1st white act to record it, in 1923. Lloyd Price hit Number 1 with it in 1959, but there was a problem: It was on ABC-Paramount Records, and ABC not only owned the label, but aired American Bandstand. That show couldn't have the Number 1 song in the country played for teenagers, on live national daytime television, with the words, "Stagger Lee shot Billy, oh, he shot that poor boy so bad, 'til the bullet came through Billy and it broke the bartender's glass!" (How did that lyric get past 1950s censors in the first place?)
So they had Price record a cleaned-up version, in which Stagger Lee and Billy aren't gamblers with guns, but friends, until Billy stole Stagger Lee's girlfriend, but he feels bad and gives her back, and the guys make up, and are both alive at the end.
The way to tell the difference at the beginning: In the original version, Price begins the song singing, in his New Orleans accent, "The night was Claire"; while in the cleaned-up version, he sings it straight, "The night was clear." In both versions, "and the Moon was yellow, and the leaves came tumbling down." (It's a haiku: Five syllables, seven, five.)
December 25, 1897: Actually, the "Yes, Virginia" editorial was published in the New York Sun on September 21 of this year. Laura Virginia O'Hanlon was then 8 years old. She married briefly, keeping the name Laura Douglas after her divorce. She had a daughter with her brief husband, got a doctorate from Fordham University, taught in New York's public schools from 1912 to 1935, was a principal from then until 1959, and lived on until 1971, always answering letters from kids who asked about the story.
December 25, 1899, 120 years ago: Eugene Edward Robertson is born in St. Louis. A 3rd baseman, Gene Robertson played in the major leagues from 1919 to 1928, including winning the 1928 World Series with the Yankees. He finished his career with a .280 batting average, and lived until 1981.
Also on this day, Humphrey DeForest Bogart is born in Manhattan. Listen, sweetheart, if you don't show some Christmas spirit, you'll regret it. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of your life.
Bogie died from smoking in 1957, but he may still be the most beloved actor in American history. "Here's looking at you, kid."
Also on this day, Woolwich Arsenal travel to Lincoln City, and lose 5-0.
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December 25, 1900: Albert J. Trace is born in Chicago. A musician who played minor-league baseball, he wrote songs with his brother Ben Trace, including "You Call Everybody Darlin'" and "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake." He died in 1993.
December 25, 1901: Alice Christabel Montagu Douglas Scott is born at Montagu House in Central London. The daughter of Scotland's largest landowner, the 7th Duke of Buccleuch, she married Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester and son of King George V.
This made her the mother of Prince Richard, the current Duke of Gloucester -- a title once held by the villainous King Richard III -- and the sister-in-law of Kings Edward VIII and George VI, and an aunt of Queen Elizabeth II. One of several long-lived women in the House of Windsor, she lived until October 29, 2004, nearly 103.
December 25, 1902: Barton MacLane (no middle name) is born in Columbia, South Carolina. Like Bogie, he developed a reputation for playing tough guys, especially cowboys and cops. He died in 1969.
December 25, 1907: Cabell Calloway III is born in Rochester, New York. "Minnie the Moocher" is not exactly a Christmas carol, but on December 25, Cab Calloway might've sung it, "Hi-de-hi-de-hi-de-ho-ho-ho!" The jazz legend of the 1930s, introduced to a new generation in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers, died in 1994.
December 25, 1908: Denis Charles Pratt was born in Sutton, Surrey, England, outside London. He was better known as the author Quentin Crisp. He lived until 1999.
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December 25, 1913: Alvin Morris is born in San Francisco. Known professionally as singer and actor Tony Martin, he starred on the Burns & Allen radio show, and married Alice Faye and Cyd Charisse. He and Charisse were married from 1948 until she died in 2008. He died in 2012.
December 25, 1914: Upon hearing German soldiers sing Christmas carols in their trench on the Western Front of what was then called The Great War (later World War I), the British soldiers start to do so in theirs. Soon, the men on both sides come out of their trenches, and stop treating each other as enemies for a few hours, exchanging food, drinks, and trinkets. It becomes known as the Christmas Truce.
Legend has it that there was even a soccer game. Sorry, forgot to "speak English" there: A football match. It's not clear which side produced the ball, but according to most accounts that discuss the match, the Germans beat the English, 3-2.
This is the 1st time that Englishmen would be defeated by Germans at their national game. There have been many more. But, as England manager Alf Ramsey pointed out before the 1966 World Cup Final, twice in the 20th Century, the English (well, the British, and their allies) would beat the Germans at their national game (war), and on their soil no less.
Military historian Andrew Robertshaw (a technical advisor for the film version of the World War I story War Horse) says such a truce would have been unthinkable a year later: "This was before the poisoned gas, before aerial bombardment. By the end of 1915, both sides were far too bitter for this to happen again."
In 1997, Garth Brooks and Joe Henry wrote a song titled "Belleau Wood" for Brooks' album Sevens. It describes a Christmas truce between American and German soldiers at Belleau Wood in 1917. But this is fiction, as the battle of Belleau Wood took place in June 1918, in Aisne, Picardy, France.
December 25, 1916: Ahmed Ben Bella is born in Maghnia, in what was then French Algeria. He served in the French Army during World War II, and was personally decorated by Charles de Gaulle. But France's abuses in his homeland led to his joining the resistance, and in 1954 to the Algerian War, a bitter period for both sides.
Independence was achieved in 1962, and he was elected the country's 1st President in 1963, but was deposed and imprisoned in 1965. He essentially lived under house arrest until 1980, and remained leader of one political party or another until 1997, opposing one tyrannical government after another. He lived until 2012.
December 25, 1917: Arseny Mironov (no middle name) is born in Vladimir, Russia. He designed planes for the Soviet Union during World War II, and was still active in flight direction in 1985. He died on July 3, 2019, age 101.
December 25, 1918: Muhammad Anwar e-Sadat is born in Monufia, in what was then the Sultanate of Egypt. He was an officer that participated in the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, overthrowing King Farouk and installing Gamal Abdel Nasser as military dictator. He became part of Nasser's Cabinet in 1954, served as Vice President briefly in 1964, and was named Vice President again in 1969. When Nasser died on September 28, 1970, Sadat became President.
He was the leading figure against Israel in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, but lost. His brother Atef Sadat, a pilot, was killed. This seems to have changed him: Not only did he begin to reform Egypt domestically, making the nation more free than it had ever been, but by 1977 he was making overtures to Israel for a permanent peace between their nations.
With the assistance of President Jimmy Carter, Sadat and Prime Minister Menachem Begin signed the Camp David Accords on September 17, 1978. That peace has now held for 40 years, and he and Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize for it. But, as he well knew he might, he paid for it with his life, being assassinated at a military parade in Cairo on October 6, 1981, the 8th anniversary of the start of the Yom Kippur War. He was 62.
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December 25, 1924: Submitted for your approval: Rodman Edward Serling is born in Syracuse, New York, and grows up in Binghamton. Rod Serling died in 1975, at age 50, from smoking-induced heart attacks. But he hopes you have a Merry Christmas. He sends you this greeting… from The Twilight Zone. (His opinion of the "Twilight Saga" books and films is unrecorded.)
Also on this day, Atal Bihair Vajpayee is born in Gwalior, in what is now the State of Madhya Pradesh, India. He served as his country's Prime Minister from 1998 to 2004, including its entry into "the Nuclear Club." He died in 2018, at age 93.
December 25, 1925: Carlos Castaneda (no middle name) is born in Cajamarca, Peru. The anthropologist and author lived until 1998.
December 25, 1926: Emperor Yoshihito of Japan dies of a heart attack, brought on by pneumonia. He was only 47. He is succeeded by his son, who becomes Emperor Hirohito.
December 25, 1928: Michael John Blyzka is born outside Detroit in Hamtramck, Michigan. A pitcher, he played for the last St. Louis Browns team in 1953, and moved with them to play for the 1st Baltimore Orioles team in 1954.
After that season, he was part of the biggest trade in baseball history, 17 players, going to the Yankees, along with Don Larsen and Bob Turley. But he never played for the Yankees, or any other team again. He died in 2004.
Also on this day, Nellie Elizabeth McCalla is born in Pawnee City, Nebraska, and grows up in Iowa. Known professionally as Irish McCalla, she was a model, one of pinup artist Alberto Vargas' "Varga Girls." She got into movies in the early 1950s, and in the 1955-56 season starred in Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. By her own admission, "I couldn't act, but I could swing through the trees."
She left acting for art, her last role being on an 1963 episode of 77 Sunset Strip, and became an accomplished painter. But her status as an action-adventure hero -- the only female one on TV in those days -- kept her in demand at nostalgia and sci-fi/fantasy conventions. She died in 2002.
Also on this day, Walter Earl Brown is born in Salt Lake City. He wrote songs for TV shows in the 1960s and '70s, including "If I Can Dream" for Elvis Presley's 1968 NBC "Comeback Special." He died in 2008.
December 25, 1929, 90 years ago: The West Wing of the White House is stricken by a fire. Coming just 2 months after a stock market crash, this is not good news for President Herbert Hoover. It will take 4 months before he and his staff can move back in.
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December 25, 1931: This is the 1st Christmas with a Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center in New York, even though the project is still under construction. 30 Rockefeller Plaza -- a.k.a. 30 Rock, and known as the RCA Building, then the GE Building from 1988 to 2015, and now the Comcast Building -- opened on May 1, 1933, and the Rockefeller Center Skating Rink in 1936. The tree has been placed between 30 Rock's front entrance and the Rink ever since.
The tree is usually a Norway Spruce, nearly always cut from somewhere in New York State, and tends to rise to between 70 and 100 feet. It is decorated only with lights, not "ornaments" as we now understand that term. With 30 Rock's most famous tenant being NBC, the tree-lighting ceremony, presided over by the Mayor of New York, was televised locally beginning in 1951 and nationally since 1997.
Also on this day, Arsenal travel to Yorkshire, and lose to Sheffield United 4-1 at Bramall Lane. They go on to a dubious near-Double, finishing 2nd in the League and losing the FA Cup Final.
December 25, 1932: King George V delivers a Royal Christmas Message to the British Empire, broadcast live over the BBC and its Worldwide Service, thus beginning a tradition.
Also on this day, Mabel Elizabeth Washington is born in Charleston, South Carolina. We knew her as Mabel King -- although, as an American, it is a little odd that she went from being named Washington to being named King. Then again, it would have been even odder had her birthday been not Christmas but the 4th of July.
She played Mabel Thomas, a.k.a. Mama, on What's Happening!! and Evillene the Witch in The Wiz. She died in 1999.
December 25, 1934: The film Babes In Toyland, based on Victor Herbert's 1903 operetta of the same title, premiered on November 30, and it has become a Christmas classic. It stars the great comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, and is also known, due to a scene in it mimicking one in The Nutcracker Suite, as March of the Wooden Soldiers.
December 25, 1935: Anne Roth is born in Manhattan. We know her as Anne Roiphe, a novelist whose works include the "feminist classic" Up the Sandbox, published in 1970. She is still alive.
Also on this day, Sadiq al-Mahdi is born in Al-Abasya, Sudan. He was twice his country's Prime Minister, from 1966 to 1967 and again from 1986 to 1989. He is still alive.
December 25, 1936: Alexandra Helen Elizabeth Olga Christabel Windsor is born in Belgrave Square, West London. She is the daughter of Prince George, Duke of Kent, and thus a niece of King George VI. Thus also a 1st cousin of Queen Elizabeth II.
She served as one of the future Queen's bridesmaids when she married Prince Philip in 1947. She later married a son of the Earl of Airlie, and became known as Princess Alexandra, The Honourable Lady Ogilvy. She is still alive.
December 25, 1937: Arturo Toscanini conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra on radio for the 1st time, beginning an iconic tenure that lasts 17 years. His selections on this night include works by Antonio Vivaldi, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Johannes Brahms.
Also on this day, Newton Baker dies of a cerebral hemorrhage in the Cleveland suburbs. He was 66 years old. He was Mayor of Cleveland from 1912 to 1915. He served as Secretary of War under President Woodrow Wilson from 1916 to 1921, including the entire U.S. contribution to World War I. At 44 at the time of his appointment, he was the youngest member of the Cabinet.
He was so well-regarded that subsequent Republican Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover crossed party lines to appoint him to commissions. He was seriously considered as a candidate for the Democratic nomination for President in 1932, but refused to run, preferring to work, successfully as it turned out, for the nomination of Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York, whom he had known as Wilson's Assistant Secretary of the Navy. A law firm he founded, Baker Hostetler, is still considered one of the top firms in America.
Also on this day, O'Kelly Isley Jr. is born in Cincinnati. A very different kind of musical legend from Toscanini, he was the eldest of the singing Isley Brothers, he grew up and go their start in Teaneck, Bergen County, New Jersey -- eventually starting T-Neck Records.
He and his brothers Ronald and Rudolph (no, he wasn't born on Christmas, and didn't have a red nose) wrote "Shout!" (As in, "We-e-e-e-e-e-ll... You know you make me wanna shout!") They also wrote "Nobody But Me" (as in, "No no, no, no no, no no no no no... Nobody can do the shing-a-ling! like I do... "), which didn't chart for them, but became a hit a few years later for a Cleveland-based band called the Human Beinz. O'Kelly died in 1986, Ronald is now 78, and Rudolph (Isley, that is, not the reindeer) is 80.
December 25, 1938: Karel Capek dies of pneumonia in Prague, in what was then Czechoslovakia. The science fiction pioneer was only 48. His 1922 play, Rossum's Universal Robots, contained the first published example of the use of the word "robot." He claimed the word was coined by his brother Josef, meaning "serf labor," essentially labor without any choice, as a robot could be programmed to do.
Karel had refused to leave his homeland after the Nazis annexed it, and this stress, combined with a spinal condition that made life very painful, may have contributed to his early death. Josef, a painter and a writer in his own right, didn't live much longer, as the Nazis sent him to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where he died in 1945, age 58.
December 25, 1939, 80 years ago: This was the 1st Christmas to feature Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Robert L. May created the character, as an assignment for the retailer Montgomery Ward, based on Chicago. He was thinking about a Christmas-themed children's book that "Monkey Ward" could cheaply publish and sell, when a fog rolled in off Lake Michigan, but a ship's red light broke through it. He wrote the poem that became the song in anapestic tetrameter, because it was the same meter as Clement Clarke Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas."
The 1st mass-market edition was released in 1947, and that would also be the year that Gene Autry, the Singing Cowboy, recorded the song version. There have been new books about Rudolph, and at least 3 TV specials. Rudolph even got his own U.S. postage stamp in 2014, so, while, contrary to the 1947 version of Miracle On 34th Street, the U.S. Postal Service, and thus the U.S. federal government, does not officially recognize the existence of Santa Claus, they have honored both Santa and Rudolph with stamps.
The "eight tiny reindeer" are now nine in the public mind, to the point where, when Epic Rap Battles of History had Moses vs. Santa Claus right before Christmas 2012, rapper Snoop Dogg, playing Moses, tells Santa, played by ERB regular "Nice Peter" Shukoff, "It takes nine reindeers to haul your fat ass. You took the Christ out of Christmas, and just added more mass!"
Also on this day, Everett Ben Krug is born in Los Angeles. A catcher, Chris Krug (not to be confused with Kris Kringle) played for the Chicago Cubs in 1965 and 1966, and was an original San Diego Padres in 1969. He is still alive.
Also on this day, Robert McElhiney James is born in Marshall, Missouri. A jazz pianist, Bob James has been repeatedly sampled by hip-hop performers, but is best known for his composition "Angela," which was taken as the theme song for the TV sitcom Taxi.
Bob James is still alive, and should not be confused with his contemporary, the saxophonist Bob James, who played on several hits, including Billy Joel's "Just the Way You Are."
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December 25, 1940: Pal Joey, a musical based on the novel by John O'Hara, premieres at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre at 243 West 47th Street in New York. It includes the songs "Chicago" and "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered." It stars Gene Kelly, Vivienne Segal, June Havoc, Van Johnson and Stanley Donen.
It's better known for the 1957 film version, starring Frank Sinatra, Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak. In spite of Sinatra having done the best-known versions of both "My Kind of Town (Chicago Is)" and "Chicago (That Toddlin' Town)," the song "Chicago" in this musical is neither one of those.
The last surviving theatre built by the Shubert organization, the Ethel Barrymore is currently hosting The Inheritance, a play by Matthew Lopez, inspired by E.M. Forster's novel Howard's End.
Also on this day, Agnes Ayres dies of a cerebral hemorrhage. She was only 42, and had been one of the top actresses of the silent film era, starring opposite Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik and Son of the Sheik.
Also on this day, Peter Edward Brown is born in Ashtead, Surrey, England. A singer, and a cousin of actor Marty Feldman (What hump?), he once played with a Christmas theme and fronted a band he named Pete Brown & His Battered Ornaments.
He is best remembered for his collaborations with Jack Bruce, both in the band Cream and in Bruce's solo career. He and Bruce wrote "I Feel Free," "Sunshine of Your Love," and one of my favorite rock songs of all time, "White Room" -- which is definitely not to be confused with "White Christmas." He is still alive.
December 25, 1941: The British surrender Hong Kong to the Japanese, who had begun a siege of it on December 8, a day after bombing Pearl Harbor and other American targets in the Pacific region. The people of Hong Kong remembered it as "Black Christmas," and control would not return to Britain until August 30, 1945.
With China in control since July 1, 1997, the crushing of political demonstrations this year, and remembering its status as Britain's ally at the time and Japan's enemy at nearly all times, the "Black Christmas" continues.
Also on this day, Arsenal host Fulham and win 2-0, on goals by Kirchen and Lewis. Although both men's best years happened during The War (always Capital T, Capital W), Lewis would score twice to win Arsenal the 1950 FA Cup Final.
Also on this day, Katherine Kennicott Davis publicly debuts her song "Carol of the Drum." It would not be recorded until 1951, by the Trapp Family Singers -- the real-life version of the kids from The Sound of Music. The most familiar version would be made in 1958, by the Harry Simeone Chorale.
Also on this day -- or, at least, during this Christmas season -- Santa Claus appears on the cover of a comic book for the 1st time. It's Captain Marvel #19, with an issue date of January 1942, and it shows Santa on the back of Captain Marvel (usually known today as "Shazam"), with Mary Marvel flying beside them.
December 25, 1942: Françoise Dürr is born in Algiers, in what was then French Algeria. She was one of the top women's tennis players of the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly in doubles. In singles, she won the 1967 French Open. She is still alive.
December 25, 1944, 75 years ago: Jonathan Edwards (no middle name) is born in St. Louis. In 1977, John Edwards became the lead singer of the soul group The Spinners. A stroke forced him to retire in 2000. Nevertheless, he is still alive.
With China in control since July 1, 1997, the crushing of political demonstrations this year, and remembering its status as Britain's ally at the time and Japan's enemy at nearly all times, the "Black Christmas" continues.
Also on this day, Arsenal host Fulham and win 2-0, on goals by Kirchen and Lewis. Although both men's best years happened during The War (always Capital T, Capital W), Lewis would score twice to win Arsenal the 1950 FA Cup Final.
Also on this day, Katherine Kennicott Davis publicly debuts her song "Carol of the Drum." It would not be recorded until 1951, by the Trapp Family Singers -- the real-life version of the kids from The Sound of Music. The most familiar version would be made in 1958, by the Harry Simeone Chorale.
Also on this day -- or, at least, during this Christmas season -- Santa Claus appears on the cover of a comic book for the 1st time. It's Captain Marvel #19, with an issue date of January 1942, and it shows Santa on the back of Captain Marvel (usually known today as "Shazam"), with Mary Marvel flying beside them.
December 25, 1944, 75 years ago: Jonathan Edwards (no middle name) is born in St. Louis. In 1977, John Edwards became the lead singer of the soul group The Spinners. A stroke forced him to retire in 2000. Nevertheless, he is still alive.
December 25, 1945: With World War II over and victory belonging to the Allies, a man for the future was born: Richard Keith Berman is born in Manhattan. Rick Berman became the keeper of the Star Trek flame after Gene Roddenberry died, until it was foolishly given to J.J. "Jar-Jar" Abrams. He is still alive.
Also on this day, David Noel Redding is born in Folkestone, Kent, England. Noel Redding was the guitarist for the Jimi Hendrix Experience. He died in 2003.
Also on this day, Gary Lee Sandy is born in Dayton, Ohio. Dayton is not far from Cincinnati, where he played radio station manager Andy Travis on WKRP in Cincinnati – not to be confused with country singer Randy Travis. Gordon Jump, who played station operator Arthur "Big Guy" Carlson, was also from Dayton, but no other castmember was from anywhere near Cincy. Sandy is alive.
December 25, 1946: Legendary comedian W.C. Fields dies from the long-term effects of alcoholism. He was 66. In a 1941 film, titled Never Give a Sucker an Even Break after another quote of his, he said, "I was in love with a beautiful blonde once, dear. She drove me to drink. That's the one thing I am indebted to her for." This saying was eventually mixed up, and has become popularly known as, "'Twas a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the decency to thank her for it."
He might have agreed with quirky singer Jimmy Buffett, born James William Buffett on this same day in Pascagoula, Mississippi: "Some people claim that there’s a woman to blame, but I know it's my own damn fault."
December 25, 1947: This may be a landmark day in film history. As far as I know, this is the 1st time film companies premiered movies on Christmas Day, starting a tradition in which Jewish families would have something to do on a day when most places would be closed.
On this day, the biggest such film is The Road to Rio. Of the 7 "Road Pictures" starring Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, this was the most successful at the box office.
The day before was a landmark day in television history, featuring the 1st Christmas episode. At the dawn of the network TV era, many anthology shows were aired, because it was cheaper to have (mostly) unknown actors needing a quick buck than to have to pay regular performers star salaries.
On December 24, 1947, Kraft Television Theatre airs on NBC. Its installment is "The Desert Shall Rejoice," and is a modern retelling of the Nativity Story. In the American Southwest, A couple comes into a small hotel, Nick's Place, looking for a room. Nick says he hates Christmas, and is all booked up. He has a shed out back. The expectant wife goes into labor.
December 25, 1948: This was the year of the 1st Perry Como Christmas special, although, up until the 1960s, such TV shows weren't called "specials," they were called "spectaculars." (On the 1st episode of The Tonight Show, in 1954, original host Steve Allen explained to the audience, "It's not a 'spectacular.' It's going to be more of a 'monotonous.'"
Como's Christmas specials would be very popular, even after rock and roll replaced his crooning style as the dominant form of music. His last special would air in 1994, and he lived until 2001.
Actually on this day, Barbara Ann Mandrell is born in Houston. She, and her singing sisters Louise and Irlene, were country when country wasn't cool. And when it was.
December 25, 1949, 70 years ago: Leon Schlesinger dies of a viral infection at age 65. A film producer, he was a relative of the Warner Brothers, and founded their cartoon division, leading to Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and all the others. Including Porky Pig. So he died on a Christmas Day. Dare I say it? I dare: "Abadee, abadee, abadee, aba, That's all, folks!"
Also on this day, Mary Elizabeth Spacek is born in Quitman, Texas. "Sissy" Spacek also sang country music, playing Loretta Lynn in the film version of Lynn’s memoir Coal Miner’s Daughter.
Also on this day, Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif is born in Lahore, Pakistan. Known as Nawaz Sharif, he has been his homeland's Prime Minister 3 times: 1990 to 1993, 1997 to 1999, and 2013 to 2017. He is still alive.
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December 25, 1950: Ian Hamilton, Gavin Vernon, Kay Matheson and Alan Stuart, students at the University of Glasgow, steal the Stone of Scone (that doesn't rhyme: It's pronounced "stoan of skoon"), a.k.a. the Stone of Destiny, a symbol of Scottish heritage, from the coronation chair at Westminster Abbey in London.
The klutzy Jocks broke the Stone in two. Incredibly, they managed to get the pieces back to Scotland. On April 11, 1951, the culprits were caught, and the Stone was returned to Westminster.
The Crown declined to prosecute the thieves, and so they got away with it. With some irony, Hamilton became a lawyer, and is still alive, age 94. He is the last survivor: Vernon and Stuart died in 2004. while Matheson, the only woman in the plot, died in 2013.
In 1996, the British government elected to keep the Stone in Scotland, until necessary to crown a new British monarch. So far, Queen Elizabeth II (whose mother was Scottish) remains on the throne, for nearly 68 years now, a record, and the Stone's transport back to Westminster has not been necessary.
Unfortunately for all of humanity, on the same day, Karl Christian Rove is born in Denver, and grows up to prove himself Christian, literally, in name only.
December 25, 1951: A bomb explodes at the home of Harry T. Moore, President of the Florida branch of the NAACP, in Houston, Florida. Harry is killed instantly, at age 46. His wife Harriette is badly hurt as well, and dies of her injuries on January 3, 1952, age 49.
December 25, 1952: Carol Christine Hilaria Pounder is born in Georgetown, Guyana in South America. She became the actress CCH Pounder. (Like the Yankees' CC Sabathia, she does not use periods.) She played Dr. Angela Hicks on ER, Detective Claudette Wyms on The Shield, Caretaker Irene Frederic on Warehouse 13, and District Attorney Thyne Patterson on Sons of Anarchy. She now plays medical examiner Dr. Loretta Wade, a.k.a. "Miz Loretta," on NCIS: New Orleans.
And the Number 1 song in America is the original version of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," by Jimmy Boyd, then about to turn 14, much older than the character he's playing. Once married to "Batgirl" Yvonne Craig, and not to be confused with the actor of the same name who played J. Arthur Crank and Paul the Gorilla on The Electric Company, this Jimmy Boyd continued singing and doing standup comedy, often opening for the various members of the Rat Pack in Las Vegas, and died in 2009.
December 25, 1953: Carter Harrison Jr. dies in Chicago at age 93. The son of a Mayor, he was elected Mayor in 1897, 1901 and 1911. His tenure included the end of the era of Cap Anson as 1st baseman and manager of the team that became the Chicago Cubs, the turn of the 20th Century, and the birth and 1st Pennant of the Chicago White Sox.
December 25, 1954: Singer John Marshall Alexander Jr., a.k.a. Johnny Ace, kills himself while fooling around with a gun backstage at a concert at the City Auditorium in Houston. According to witnesses, he was not, as the legend says, playing Russian roulette, just goofing off, not intending to harm anyone, including himself. He was only 25.
The klutzy Jocks broke the Stone in two. Incredibly, they managed to get the pieces back to Scotland. On April 11, 1951, the culprits were caught, and the Stone was returned to Westminster.
The Crown declined to prosecute the thieves, and so they got away with it. With some irony, Hamilton became a lawyer, and is still alive, age 94. He is the last survivor: Vernon and Stuart died in 2004. while Matheson, the only woman in the plot, died in 2013.
In 1996, the British government elected to keep the Stone in Scotland, until necessary to crown a new British monarch. So far, Queen Elizabeth II (whose mother was Scottish) remains on the throne, for nearly 68 years now, a record, and the Stone's transport back to Westminster has not been necessary.
Unfortunately for all of humanity, on the same day, Karl Christian Rove is born in Denver, and grows up to prove himself Christian, literally, in name only.
December 25, 1951: A bomb explodes at the home of Harry T. Moore, President of the Florida branch of the NAACP, in Houston, Florida. Harry is killed instantly, at age 46. His wife Harriette is badly hurt as well, and dies of her injuries on January 3, 1952, age 49.
December 25, 1952: Carol Christine Hilaria Pounder is born in Georgetown, Guyana in South America. She became the actress CCH Pounder. (Like the Yankees' CC Sabathia, she does not use periods.) She played Dr. Angela Hicks on ER, Detective Claudette Wyms on The Shield, Caretaker Irene Frederic on Warehouse 13, and District Attorney Thyne Patterson on Sons of Anarchy. She now plays medical examiner Dr. Loretta Wade, a.k.a. "Miz Loretta," on NCIS: New Orleans.
And the Number 1 song in America is the original version of "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus," by Jimmy Boyd, then about to turn 14, much older than the character he's playing. Once married to "Batgirl" Yvonne Craig, and not to be confused with the actor of the same name who played J. Arthur Crank and Paul the Gorilla on The Electric Company, this Jimmy Boyd continued singing and doing standup comedy, often opening for the various members of the Rat Pack in Las Vegas, and died in 2009.
December 25, 1953: Carter Harrison Jr. dies in Chicago at age 93. The son of a Mayor, he was elected Mayor in 1897, 1901 and 1911. His tenure included the end of the era of Cap Anson as 1st baseman and manager of the team that became the Chicago Cubs, the turn of the 20th Century, and the birth and 1st Pennant of the Chicago White Sox.
December 25, 1954: Singer John Marshall Alexander Jr., a.k.a. Johnny Ace, kills himself while fooling around with a gun backstage at a concert at the City Auditorium in Houston. According to witnesses, he was not, as the legend says, playing Russian roulette, just goofing off, not intending to harm anyone, including himself. He was only 25.
Some have called him "the first dead rock star," although that title has also been given to country music icon Hank Williams, who died nearly 2 years earlier.
But the world of music breaks even, as Annie Lennox is born in Aberdeen, Scotland. With The Tourists, Eurythmics and on her own, she is one of the world's most beloved living singers.
Also on this day, Margaret Ann Williams is born in Kansas City, Missouri. She began her political career as an aid to Congressman Morris "Mo" Udall of Arizona, who finished 2nd to Jimmy Carter in the race for the 1976 Democratic Presidential nomination. Around here, she was an aide to Congressman, later Senator, Bob Torricelli of New Jersey.
She worked for the Children's Defense Fund, which was how she met Hillary Clinton, which was how she met Bill Clinton, which is how she got to be on his Presidential campaign staff in 1992. She joined Hillary's staff, and was alleged to have removed folders from the office of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster on the night of his suicide in 1993, in order to protect Bill and/or Hillary from suspicion. She has always denied this.
In 2008, she was Hillary's campaign manager in the Democratic Primaries. She is now a partner in Griffin Williams, a management-consulting firm.
December 25, 1955: Queen Elizabeth II delivers the 1st televised Royal Christmas Message, although it is in sound only, with only the royal coat of arms being seen by the television audience.
A couple of days before, Otis Blackwell, a black songwriter from Brooklyn, was walking in New York, with no money to buy Christmas presents for his family, or to get new shoes, and the ones he has on have holes in them, and it's cold and snowing.
He runs into a friend who works for a music publisher, who offers him $25 for any song he has. He has 6 written down on paper in his pocket, and hands them over. The man writes him a check for $150 -- about $1,440 in today's money. And if that had been the end of it, it would have been a great Christmas story.
That wasn't the end of it. A few weeks later, the friend calls and says that Elvis Presley is going to record one of the songs Otis gave him. Otis says that's nice. The friend says, "You don't understand: Elvis Presley!" Otis asks a question that, at the time, was still understandable outside the South: "Who the hell is Elvis Presley?" The friend says, "He's going to be the biggest thing ever in this business!" Otis says, "Okay, I've heard that before." The song was "Don't Be Cruel," and it was the biggest hit single of 1956.
Otis had another big hit in 1956, "Fever" by Little Willie John. Now, he could afford to rent an office to write songs. A friend came in one day, shaking a Coke bottle, and said, "Why don't you write a song called 'Shakeup'?" Otis immediately knew that this was a good idea for Elvis, and it became "All Shook Up."
He soon wrote 2 hits for Jerry Lee Lewis. No, not "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" -- that was by Dave "Curlee" Williams and Roy Hall -- but "Great Balls of Fire" and "Breathless." "Fever" was a hit again, for Peggy Lee. Otis had another Elvis hit with "Return to Sender." He died in 2002, age 71.
Also in 1955, but not on Christmas Day, C.S. Lewis published Xmas and Christmas: A Lost Chapter from Herodotus. It is a satire of the observance of two simultaneous holidays in "Niatirb" (that's "Britain" spelled backwards), from the supposed view of the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. He lived in the 5th Century BC, about 400 years before the Roman invasion of Britain, so this is a total fantasy.
One of the holidays, "Exmas," is observed by a flurry of compulsory commercial activity and expensive indulgence in alcoholic beverages. The other, "Crissmas," is observed in Niatirb's temples. Lewis' narrator asks a priest why they kept Crissmas on the same day as Exmas:
It is not lawful, O Stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not to keep it at all. For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left.
And when Lewis/Herodotus asked the priest why they endured the Rush, the priest replied, "It is, O Stranger, a racket... "
December 25, 1957: Charles Pathé, a pioneer in film and recorded sound, dies in Monaco, one day short of his 94th birthday.
The films premiering on this day include Old Yeller. Nice movie to take the family to on Christmas, right?
Also on this day, Queen Elizabeth II appears on television to deliver the Royal Christmas Message. Previously, she had only been heard, not seen, even in the TV broadcast.
Also on this day, Shane Patrick Lysaght MacGowan is born in Pembury, Kent, England. His Irish parents took him back to Tipperary, before returning to London when he was 6 years old. In 1982, he founded The Pogues, an anglicisation of the Gaelic insult, "póg mo thóin," meaning "kiss my ass."
He and bandmate Jem Finer wrote "Fairytale of New York," and released it in 1987. It's a duet between Shane and British singer Kirsty MacColl. Not a hymn by any stretch of the imagination.
While Shane has beaten heroin addiction, with help from fellow Irish rocker Sinéad O'Connor, he remains a heavy drinker, and has had great difficulty getting around since a 2015 incident in which he fell and broke his pelvis. Sadly, Kirsty was killed in a boating accident in 2000. She was only 41.
He and bandmate Jem Finer wrote "Fairytale of New York," and released it in 1987. It's a duet between Shane and British singer Kirsty MacColl. Not a hymn by any stretch of the imagination.
While Shane has beaten heroin addiction, with help from fellow Irish rocker Sinéad O'Connor, he remains a heavy drinker, and has had great difficulty getting around since a 2015 incident in which he fell and broke his pelvis. Sadly, Kirsty was killed in a boating accident in 2000. She was only 41.
December 25, 1958: Bell, Book and Candle premieres. A movie about a witch, premiering on Christmas Day?
Also on this day, Alannah Myles (no middle name) is born in Toronto. Essentially a one-hit wonder, the singer of the 1990 Number 1 hit "Black Velvet" has suffered nerve damage and has difficulty moving, but she still records. She says "medical marijuana" has helped her condition.
Also on this day, Alannah Myles (no middle name) is born in Toronto. Essentially a one-hit wonder, the singer of the 1990 Number 1 hit "Black Velvet" has suffered nerve damage and has difficulty moving, but she still records. She says "medical marijuana" has helped her condition.
Also on this day, Cheryl Hudock (no middle name) is born in Manville, Somerset County, New Jersey. She uses her married name, Cheryl Chase. You may not know her name, her face, or her real voice, but she's the voice of Angelica Pickles on Rugrats.
December 25, 1959, 60 years ago: Michael Phillip Anderson is born in Plattsburgh, New York, not far from the Canadian border. He rose to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and flew on the Space Shuttle Endeavour in 1998. Unfortunately, he also flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia, and was 1 of the 7 astronauts killed on re-entry on February 1, 2003. He was only 43 years old.
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December 25, 1961: If President John F. Kennedy is to be believed, Santa Claus delivered presents on this day. On the preceding October 28, JFK responded to a letter from 8-year-old Michelle Rochon of Marine City, Michigan. She had heard that the Soviet Union was going to test a 50-megaton atomic bomb above the Arctic Circle. She wrote to JFK, "Please stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole. Because they will kill Santa Claus." He wrote back:
Dear Michelle:
I was glad to get your letter about trying to stop the Russians from bombing the North Pole and risking the life of Santa Claus.
I share your concern about the atmospheric testing of the Soviet Union, not only for the North Pole but for countries throughout the world; not only for Santa Claus but for people throughout the world.
However, you must not worry about Santa Claus. I talked with him yesterday and he is fine. He will be making his rounds again this Christmas.
Sincerely,
JOHN KENNEDY
Interestingly, Kennedy's name was typed on the letter, rather than signed with a pen.
As of Christmas 2018, Michelle was still alive, age 65, using her married name, Michelle Phillips -- not to be confused with the singer and actress of the same name -- and still living in Marine City. In a 2014 interview, she said that, after the letter was published, she got thank-you letters from people claiming to be Santa Claus -- postmarked from all over the country.
"I don't know why it didn't hit me that there were all these different Santa Clauses," she said. "I just figured it was all the one Santa Claus." As the 1947 film Miracle on 34th Street suggested was possible, the federal government seemed to be recognizing Santa's existence: "I had proof there was a Santa Claus. The United States told me they talked to Santa Claus, and he was fine."
In the film The Aviator, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Hughes -- and premiering on Christmas Day 2004 -- Brewster is played by Alan Alda, who once again plays a native of Maine, but one whose politics are diametrically opposed to those of his real-life self and those of Hawkeye Pierce.
December 25, 1962: The film version of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird premieres, starring Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, and, in their film debuts, 10-year-old Mary Badham (sister of film director John Badham, and now an art restorer), William Windom, Alice Ghostley, and, as the mysterious Arthur "Boo" Radley, Robert Duvall, about to turn 32 but with a lot of stage work to his name.
December 25, 1963: Although it's not specified, a Christmas party could be the "Oh What a Night" that produced the Four Seasons song "December 1963," a Number 1 hit in March 1976. In real life, at Christmas '63, the Seasons -- Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Nick Massi and Tommy DeVito -- had a hit with their version of "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town."
This was also the year of A Christmas Gift for You, a.k.a. The Phil Spector Christmas Album, featuring several acts produced by Spector, including The Ronettes, whose lead singer, Veronica Bennett, was his girlfriend, and later wife, better known as Ronnie Spector.
Unfortunately, it was released on November 22, 1963, mere hours before President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and didn't sell well in the dreariest Christmas season in American history. It would be "rediscovered" in the 1970s. David Letterman often brought Ronnie (by then free from Phil's evil clutches) or Darlene Love onto his show to sing selections from the album.
What Phil did to Ronnie, and other women, eventually landing him in prison for what could well amount to a life sentence, puts him in the same category as Ike Turner, Roman Polanski, Bill Cosby and others, where we ask the question, "Does the creator being a monster mean we have to stop enjoying his genius artwork?"
December 25, 1964: The TV special version of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" premiered on December 6, produced for CBS by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass. They would produce many animated Christmas specials, some in the traditional cartoon format, some (like this one) with stop-motion animation. Rankin died in 2014, at age 89. Bass is still alive, at 84.
Johnny Marks, writer of the song, was enlisted to write new songs, the best-known of which became "Holly Jolly Christmas," sung by Burl Ives in character as the special's narrator, Sam the Snowman. Marks died in 1985, at 75; Ives in 1995, at 85.
The movies released on this day aren't exactly family-friendly. The Pleasure Seekers, essentially a remake of Three Coins in the Fountain, stars Ann-Margret. It is also the last film for Gene Tierney. And Sex and the Single Girl stars Natalie Wood and Tony Curtis. Wood plays a fictionalized version of Helen Gurley Brown, who wrote the book of the same title, published 2 years earlier.
December 25, 1965: The BBC airs a Christmas Day, and a Christmas-themed, episode of Doctor Who for the 1st time. It's still the First Doctor, William Hartnell, so there's no need to identify him by number.
The episode, "The Feast of Steven," takes place in 1921. The TARDIS arrives outside a police station, and hilarity ensues. They end up meeting Charlie Chaplin (M.J. Mathews), and Bing Crosby (Robert Jewell), whom The Doctor thinks will never make it as an entertainer, due to his "stupid name."
At the episode's conclusion, there is a toast to Christmas inside the TARDIS, and Hartnell turns to the camera and says, "Incidentally, a Happy Christmas to all of you at home."
December 25, 1967: Jason Matthew Thirsk is born in the Los Angeles suburb of Hermosa Beach, California. The bass guitarist for the punk band Pennywise, he fell victim to depression and alcoholism, and shot and killed himself in 1996, only 28 years old.
December 25, 1968: The Apollo 8 astronauts become the 1st people of Earth to see the far side of the Moon. Upon seeing a phased Earth, appearing as the Moon usually does, from lunar orbit, the astronauts -- Bill Anders, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman -- take turns reading from the Bible, but the opening, the Creation story of Genesis, rather than the First Christmas story.
But all is not well on planet Earth. There was one last horrible moment in a horrible year. In what becomes known as the Kilvenmani Massacre, 44 Dalits -- known in the West as the Untouchables -- are burned to death in Kizhavenmani, Tamil Nadu, in retaliation for a campaign for higher wages by their laborers.
Also on this day, Helena Christensen (no middle name) is born in Copenhagen, Denmark. She is one of the most heralded models of the last 30 years.
Also on this day, a film version of William Faulkner's novel The Reivers premieres, a coming-of-age story set in 1905 Mississippi.
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December 25, 1970: Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town first aired on December 13, 1970.
December 25, 1971: Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong is born in the Kensington section of London. Best known for her song "Thank You" and her guest appearance in Eminem's video "Stan," Dido also sang one of the sexiest songs I've ever heard, "Who Makes You Feel."
Also on this day, Justin Trudeau is born in Montreal to Canada's Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau, and his much-younger wife Margaret. Two years later to the day, another son would be born to them, Alexandre Trudeau.
Both brothers would become journalists, and Justin now serves in Parliament, as Leader of the Liberal Party, his father did before him. On October 19, 2015, the Liberals were returned to power in a federal election, making Justin the Prime Minister, and making the Trudeaus Canada's 1st father-and-son national leaders since Britain's Kings George III and IV (and William IV, another son of George III).
December 25, 1972: Adrian Scott dies in the Los Angeles suburb of Sherman Oaks, California at age 60. The native of Kearny, Hudson County, New Jersey was a screenwriter, one of the "Hollywood Ten," blacklisted in 1947 for refusing to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, investigating Communist influence in the American film industry.
He produced 3 films directed by another of the Ten, Edward Dymytryk, all film noirs, including the 1944 film Murder, My Sweet. He had just begun to be credited under his own name again when he died, just barely beating the blacklist.
Also on this day, Johnny Mac Powell is born in Clanton, Alabama. The gospel singer, lead singer for the band Third Day, doesn't use his first name, and won the 2001 Gospel Music Association award for Male Vocalist of the Year.
December 25, 1973: The film The Sting premieres, starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford as con men in 1936 Chicago. The theme song is Marvin Hamlisch's arrangement of Scott Joplin's 1902 song "The Entertainer" -- although my mother and a lot of people in her generation still call the song "The Sting."
Also on this day, Magnum Force premieres, the 2nd film to feature Clint Eastwood as San Francisco Police Inspector "Dirty" Harry Callahan. I know what you're thinkin', punk: "Not a great holiday film for the whole family." So you gotta ask yourself one question: "Was I naughty or nice?" Well, which were ya, punk?
Also on this day, Match Game '73 airs an episode taped on December 14. Panelist Charles Nelson Reilly dresses up as Santa Claus, and does so every year through 1981, the last Christmas the show had. The exception was the December 23, 1977 edition -- the 25th was a Sunday that year -- because he was upset with CBS over some slight. For the episode taped to air on December 26, he dressed up.
Also on this day, Robert James Elliott is born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in the North-East of England. A left back, he starred for his hometown team, Newcastle United, and also played the 2006-07 season for their arch-rivals, Sunderland. Since 2009, he has worked with the United States Under-20 national team.
December 25, 1975: Two very different Boston legends are born. Hideki Okajima is a Japanese-born pitcher for the Red Sox, who helped them win the 2007 World Series.
And Rob Mariano is born in Canton, Massachusetts. "Boston Rob" continually wore a Red Sox cap while appearing on the CBS series Survivor, and ended up marrying his season's winner, Amber Brkich. Together, they went on to compete on another CBS series, The Amazing Race. They now live in Pensacola, Florida, and have 3 children, all girls.
Also on this day, the rock band Iron Maiden is formed. Not exactly a musical act one would associate with a Christian holiday. Lead guitarist Dave Murray and bass guitarist Steve Harris are 63. Guitarist and main songwriter Adrian Smith and original drummer Doug Sampson are 62. Original lead singer Paul Di'Anno and the most familiar lead singer for the band, Bruce Dickinson, are 61.
December 25, 1976: Armin Jozef Jacobus Daniël van Buuren is born in Leiden, the Netherlands. The DJ is one of the world's leading figures in "trance music." I am not a fan.
December 25, 1977: Charlie Chaplin dies as a result of a stroke. The most renowned of all silent-film actors is truly silenced, at age 88.
Also on this day, as neither man's faith celebrates Christmas, Prime Minister Menachem Begin of Israel and President Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt meet in the latter's country, beginning the discussions that will lead to the Camp David Accords 9 months later.
Also on this day, High Anxiety premieres, Mel Brooks' spoof of Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers. Hitchcock, still alive at the time, not only liked it, but sent Mel a case of wine in appreciation.
Mel had previously spoofed Broadway musicals in The Producers (1968), Westerns in Blazing Saddles (1974), classic horror films in Young Frankenstein (also in 1974), and silent movies in Silent Movie (1976). He would later spoof historical epics in History of the World, Pt. 1 (1981), science fiction in Spaceballs (1987), Robin Hood films in Robin Hood: Men In Tights (1993), and vampire films in Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995).
December 25, 1979, 40 years ago: Actress Joan Blondell dies of leukemia. She was 73, having been born on August 30, 1906 in New York, the same day and in the same city as my grandfather, George Goldberg, who later changed his name to George Golden. (His wife, my grandmother, Grace Darton, was born on the same day as actor Dennis Weaver, although not in the same city.)
As her name suggests, Blondell was a blonde, and is best remembered for her "gold digger" roles in early 1930s films, including the legendary Busby Berkeley production Gold Diggers of 1933, in which she sings "We're In the Money" and "Remember My Forgotten Man."
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December 25, 1980: The film First Family premieres. Bob Newhart plays the President of the United States -- as if any man could get elected with a face like Newhart's, a bald head like Newhart's, and a name like Manfred Link. Madeline Kahn plays the alcoholic First Lady, and Gilda Radner plays their easy daughter.
Also on this day, Altered States premieres. It is the film debut of both William Hurt and Drew Barrymore. It is not a suitable film for Christmas viewing.
December 25, 1981: Willy Taveras -- apparently, his entire full name -- is born in Tenares, Dominican Republic. A center fielder, he reached the postseason with the 2004 and '05 Houston Astros, and the 2007 Colorado Rockies, playing in the 2005 and '07 World Series. In 2008, with the Rockies, he led the National League in stolen bases.
But he was one of these players who simply didn't get on base often enough to make his speed a useful weapon. Although he has kept his career going by playing in the Mexican and Dominican leagues, but hasn't appeared in Major League Baseball since 2010, with the Washington Nationals.
December 25, 1982: The 1st Aloha Bowl is played at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu, Hawaii. The University of Washington, then ranked Number 9 in the nation, defeats the University of Maryland, then Number 16, 21-20.
Honolulu had previously hosted the Poi Bowl from 1936 to 1939, and the Pineapple Bowl from 1940 to 1952, but those games were held on New Year's Day. The Aloha Bowl would be held on Christmas Day, and would feature a man in a Santa Claus suit parachuting onto the field to present the referee with the game ball. In 1991, the ABC sitcom Coach would feature a 2-part episode about the show's fictional Minnesota State University playing in the Pineapple Bowl on Christmas Day.
In 1998, 1999 and 2000, Aloha Stadium hosted a doubleheader, with the Aloha Bowl preceded by the Oahu Bowl. But that game quickly folded. The last Aloha Bowl was played in 2000. It was a commercial failure: Of the 19 games played, only the 1989 edition was a sellout of the 50,000-seat Aloha Stadium.
Having quickly gone from hosting 2 bowl games in 2000 to none in 2001, Hawaii tried again. The Hawaii Bowl was established in 2002, and was played on Christmas Day that year and the next, but has usually been played on Christmas Eve since. This year, it will be played on Christmas Eve, between Brigham Young University and an opponent to be determined.
Also on this day, Shawn Cornelius Andrews is born in Camden, Arkansas. A guard, he starred at the University of Arkansas, made 2 Pro Bowls with the Philadelphia Eagles, and played in Super Bowl XXXIX. He is a member of the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame and the Eagles' 75th Anniversary Team. He played with the Giants in 2010, but a back injury soon ended his career.
December 25, 1983: Spanish artist Joan Miró dies of heart disease. He was 90. Yes, in the Spanish region of Catalonia, "Joan" is the masculine form of "John," so, unlike Joan Blondell, he was male.
December 25, 1984: Jack Balmer dies in Liverpool at age 68. A forward, he helped Liverpool F.C. win the Football League title in 1947.
Also on this day, Alastair Nathan Cook is born in Gloucester, England. I don't know what makes a cricket player great, but Cook holds the records for most caps (appearances) and most caps as Captain for the England national team. He was named International Cricket Council Player of the Year in 2011. He is 5th on the all-time list for most runs in Test cricket, with 12,472. (Sachin Tendulkar of India holds the record, with 15,921.)
He currently plays for Essex County Cricket. That's Essex County in England, not in New Jersey. England does have a city named Newark, but, unlike in New Jersey, it isn't in the County of Essex, but in the County of Nottinghamshire. However, he retired from international cricket before the 2019 Cricket World Cup, and was not a member of the England team that won it.
Also on this day, Limas Lee Sweed Jr. is born outside Houston in Brenham, Texas. A receiver, he was with the University of Texas when it won the 2005 National Championship, and the Pittsburgh Steelers when they won Super Bowl XLIII. He last played in 2012, with the CFL's Saskatchewan Roughriders.
Also on this day, Jessica Louise Orgliasso and Lisa Marie Origliasso are born in Albany Creek, Queensland, Australia. The twin sisters formed the singing duo The Veronicas.
December 25, 1987: Empire of the Sun premieres, a World War II story produced and directed by Stephen Spielberg.
Also on this day, Demaryius Antwon Thomas is born in Montrose, Georgia. A receiver, he was with the Denver Broncos when they won Super Bowl 50. Now with the Jets, the 5-time Pro Bowler has caught 722 passes for 9,735 yards and 62 touchdowns.
December 25, 1988: Eric Ambrose Gordon Jr. is born in Indianapolis. Named Indiana's "Mr. Basketball" in 2007, the guard played just 1 season at Indiana University before declared for the NBA Draft. It took a while to become a big pro player, including 3 years with the Los Angeles Clippers and 5 years with the New Orleans Pelicans, but in 2017, with the Houston Rockets, he was named NBA Sixth Man of the Year.
December 25, 1989, 30 years ago: Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is overthrown, in the latest chapter of the anti-Communist revolutions of Eastern Europe of that amazing year. He and his wife Elena are executed.
Also on this day, legendary Yankee manager Billy Martin is killed in a drunken-driving crash near his home in Johnson City, New York, outside Binghamton. He was 61.
Also on this day, Walter Ris dies in Mission Viejo, California, just short of his 66th birthday. A swimmer, the Chicago native won 2 Gold Medals for the U.S. at the 1948 Olympics in London. He is a member of the International Swimming Hall of Fame.
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December 25, 1990: What would become known as the World Wide Web gets its 1st trial run.
Also on this day, The Godfather Part III premieres. Yes, that's what you want to do on Christmas Day: Go see a Mob movie. And, unlike the 1st 2 parts, which are beloved classics, the 3rd time was definitely not the charm.
Also on this day, Garrett Nicholas Cooper is born in Auburn, Alabama, where his father was teaching at Auburn University. His father later got a teaching job in Los Angeles, and that's where Garrett grew up, although he returned to Auburn to play baseball. He made his major league debut in 2017, as a 1st baseman for the Yankees, but has since been traded to the Miami Marlins.
December 25, 1991: Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union. He had become the opposite of "a man without a country": He was, in effect, a one-man country. The next day, the Supreme Soviet dissolved, its last act being to dissolve the Soviet Union itself after 74 years.
A right wing, he played the original Senators from 1923 to 1934, including being an integral part of their 1927 Stanley Cup win. Due to the Great Depression, the Senators did not play in the 1931-32 season, and the Toronto Maple Leafs were allowed to sign him, enabling him to win that season's Stanley Cup with the Leafs. He was the Senators' Captain upon their return. In the 1933-34 season, he played in the Ace Bailey Benefit Game in Toronto.
But after that season, they moved to St. Louis, already known for good support of a minor-league team. Finnigan scored the final goal in the history of the old Senators. The St. Louis Eagles were terrible in 1934-35 and folded, selling him back to the Leafs, for whom he played until 1937. He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II and managed hotels.
Finnigan was the last surviving Senator from the Stanley Cup winners of 1927 -- still the last Cup won by an Ottawa team -- and participated in the "Bring Back The Senators" campaign. On October 8, 1992, before their 1st regular-season home game, at the Ottawa Civic Centre, his Number 8 was raised to the rafters, and his son Frank Finnigan Jr. was invited to drop the ceremonial puck before the 1st home game.
His brother Eddie Finnigan also played in the NHL, including for the St. Louis Eagles after they were no longer the Senators, but was mostly a career minor-leaguer. His daughter Joan Finnigan was a noted Canadian writer, including writing a book about the Senators' re-establishment, and several books about the Ottawa Valley.
Also on this day, The Prince of Tides premieres. Barbara Streisand had long wanted to adapt Pat Conroy's novel, and does so as director, and stars along with Nick Nolte.
December 25, 1992: Monica Dickens, great-granddaughter of Christmas champion Charles Dickens, and a best-selling author and broadcaster in her own right, dies at age 77.
Also on this day, Arin Gilliland (no middle name) is born in Lexington, Kentucky. Now using her married name of Arin Wright, she plays left back for the Chicago Red Stars of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). She is currently expecting her 1st child, and will likely miss the 1st half of the 2020 season on maternity leave.
Also on this day, Tanner Scott Rainey is born outside New Orleans in Folsom, Louisiana. He debuted with the Cincinnati Reds in 2018, making 8 appearances for them. He was a member of the Washington Nationals this past season, making 52 regular-season appearances, and entering 4 games of the World Series, which the Nats won.
Also on this day, Hoffa premieres, written by David Mamet, directed by Danny DeVito, and starring Jack Nicholson as Teamsters union boss Jimmy Hoffa. Although exactly what happened to him after he was last seen on July 30, 1975, in the parking lot of a restaurant in the Detroit suburbs, is still debated, the film suggests that he and an associate were shot and killed, and their bodies taken away.
Also premiering on this day is Trespass. As far as I know, this is is the only collaboration between rappers-turned-actors Tracy Marrow and O'Shea Jackson, a.k.a. Ice-T and Ice Cube.
December 25, 1993: Cole Croston (no middle name) is born outside Omaha in Sergeant Bluff, Iowa. An offensive tackle for the New England Patriots, he was with them last season when they won Super Bowl LIII.
Also on this day, the films Tombstone (centered on the 1881 Gunfight at the OK Corral), Philadelphia (about a man's fights with AIDS and the legal system) and Grumpy Old Men premiere.
At least the last of those has snow and comedy in it.
December 25, 1994, 25 years ago: As part of the annual NBA Christmas Day doubleheader (now a tripleheader), the Knicks beat the Chicago Bulls 107-104, in overtime at the United Center in Chicago. Of course, this was during Michael Jordan's hiatus...
Also on this day, the film I.Q. premieres. I would never have cast Walter Matthau as Albert Einstein, but he did a great job. The film was shot on location in Princeton, New Jersey, where Einstein lived the last 22 years of his life, teaching at the Institute for Advanced Study.
Meg Ryan plays his niece (a character made up for the movie), Tim Robbins plays the decidedly "town not gown" mechanic who falls for her before finding out who her uncle is, and famously bald actor Keene Curtis plays President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
There is a scene where Einstein is driving a Volkswagen Beetle convertible, with Little Richard's song "Tutti-Frutti" blasting out of the car radio. I don't think Einstein ever drove a car. If he did, I doubt it would be the Hitler-championed "People's Car," which was only beginning to become popular in America when Einstein died on April 18, 1955. "Tutti-Frutti" wasn't recorded until September 14, 5 months later. And, as a violinist trained on classical pieces, I doubt that Einstein would have had much use for rock and roll.
Also premiering on this day is a live-action version of Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book, starring Jason Scott Lee as Mowgli.
December 25, 1995: Dean Martin dies of emphysema at age 78. It is unfortunate that one of the leading singers of Christmas songs -- or "Christmas" songs, as I explained in my entry on Problematic Christmas Songs -- died on a December 25.
December 25, 1996: JonBenet Ramsey is found murdered at her home in Boulder, Colorado. She was 6. Her killer has never been definitively identified. Had she been born a few years later, she likely would have been a child beauty pageant opponent of Alana Thompson, a.k.a. Honey Boo Boo.
Also on this day, a pair of not-exactly-family-holiday-friendly films is released. John Travolta stars as Michael. As the tagline says, "He's an angel – not a saint." Boy, am I glad this film didn't come out when I was in school. It could have: Thanks to Welcome Back, Kotter, Saturday Night Fever and
Grease, Travolta was already a star.)
And Woody Harrelson stars in The People vs. Larry Flynt, while Richard Paul, a character actor who generally played chunky Southerners, but was one of the best impressionists of his time, plays the Rev. Jerry Falwell. This is a film in which a redneck porn mogul is the good guy, and one of America's most famous clergymen is the bad guy. Great holiday-season film for the whole family.
December 25, 1997: Denver Pyle, best known as Uncle Jesse on The Dukes of Hazzard, dies of lung cancer at the age of 77.
Also on this day, Bill Hewitt dies in Port Perry, Ontario at age 68. The grandson of sportswriter W.A. Hewitt and the son of sportscaster Foster Hewitt, he was a longtime TV voice of the Toronto Maple Leafs. As far as I know, the Hewitts are the only family with 3 generations in any sport's Hall of Fame.
Premiering on this day are the films As Good As It Gets, Jackie Brown, and a live-action version of Mr. Magoo, starring Leslie Nielsen. I am serious, and don't call me "Shirley."
Also premiering is The Postman, set in postapocalyptic Oregon in 2013. Twice before, Kevin Costner had demanded big funding and total control on a movie: On 1990's Dances With Wolves, and on 1995's Waterworld.
Both of them, in reference to Heaven's Gate, a Western whose costs ran out of control and bankrupted United Artists in 1980, were nicknamed "Kevin's Gate." But Dances With Wolves was a home run (winning the Oscar for Best Picture), and Waterworld a single (despite its enormous cost, in made a profit).
This time, the man who starred in Bull Durham and Field of Dreams, and would later star in For Love of the Game and The Upside of Anger, strikes out: The Postman becomes one of the biggest bombs in film history. He has never recovered, and while he's made successful movies since, none have had him as the leading man.
December 25, 1998: Alec Baldwin hosts Saturday Night Live. He participates in the recurring sketch in which Ana Gasteyer and Molly Shannon play Margaret Jo McCullen and Teri Rialto, hosts of the fictional National Public Radio show The Delicious Dish. Baldwin plays noted baker Pete Schweddy, who has made a Christmas treat: Assortments of spherical treats made out of anything from meat to cake to candy. He calls them "Schweddy Balls," and sells them in a little bag he calls a "Schweddy Ball Sack."
The episode aired on December 12, 1998, just 1 week before President Bill Clinton (then played by Darrell Hammond) was impeached for... I don't know, something apparently worse than lying the nation into a war or stealing a Presidential election, with or without a foreign government's help.
The monologue shows Baldwin deciding that he can't do the show that night, because the whole impeachment saga is ruining his Christmas spirit. So John Goodman -- who, along with Steve Martin, appears to be in a running competition with Baldwin for the record for most SNL apperances outside of the regular cast -- plays the Ghost of Christmas Future.
He shows Baldwin what happens right before Christmas 2011: The host is Jimmy Fallon (a current castmember in 1998), and he's making fun of Baldwin. Goodman, prematurely aged, is shown as a current castmember. (It was possible: Billy Crystal and some others were regulars for a year after they'd already been big stars.) And the announcer was "Robot Dan Pardo," as it was presumed that the real Pardo, who'd been working for NBC since getting a radio job in 1938, wouldn't still be announcing at age 93. Anyway, it shocks Baldwin into going ahead with the show.
Unfortunately, also on this date, the aforementioned Richard Paul dies of cancer. He was only 58. Had he lived a little longer, he could have played a nasty Southern politician on The West Wing, the way he played a nice but clueless Southern Mayor on the sitcom Carter Country in the late 1970s, and a considerably smarter New England Mayor on Murder, She Wrote.
December 25, 1999, 20 years ago: Galaxy Quest premieres. Tim Allen stars as an actor who starred in a 1970s science fiction TV show, playing the Captain of a starship and its heroic crew. The show-within-the-movie is obviously meant to be a parallel to Star Trek, and Allen's Jason Nesmith is a parody of the difficulties that people -- fans and co-stars alike -- have had with William Shatner.
But when the actors have to save an alien race for real... Let's just say that it's a better version of Star Trek than anything J.J. Abrams or CBS have done. It's also a better film, and a considerably less creepy one, than any of Allen's Santa Clause movies.
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December 25, 2001: The film Ali premieres, starring Will Smith as Muhammad Ali, depicting his life from the 1st time he wins the Heavyweight Championship of the World, in 1964 against Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, to the 2nd time he wins it, in 1974 against George Foreman in Zaire, and all the magic and all the madness in between.
Also on this day, Kate & Leopold premieres. Meg Ryan plays a New York advertising executive, and Hugh Jackman plays an 1876 British duke who inadvertently ends up in the present day.
December 25, 2002: Catch Me If You Can premieres, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as 1960s con man Frank Abagnale, based on his memoir.
December 25, 2003: A new live-action version of Peter Pan premieres, starring Jeremy Sumpter. Also premiering is Cold Mountain, starring Jude Law as a soldier in the American Civil War, and Nicole Kidman as the woman he left behind.
Also on this day, UTAGE Flight 141, a Boeing 727-223 used by the national airline of the African nation of Guinea, crashes at Cotonou Airport in the nearby nation of Benin, killing 151 people.
December 25, 2004: Eddie Spicer dies in Rhyl, Wales at age 82. In 1939, the centreback signed for his hometown soccer team, Liverpool F.C., at just 17 years old. But World War II was underway, and he served in Britain's Royal Marines. He didn't make his official debut for the Mersey Reds until January 30, 1946, at 23.
In the 1946-47 season, he made 10 appearances for the club, which won the Football League title, but that was 1 game short of qualifying for a winner's medal under the rules of the time. He played for Liverpool in the 1950 FA Cup Final, but they lost to Arsenal. He broke his leg late in the next season, missing the entire 1951-52 season, and retired a year later, just 31.
Also on this day, The Aviator premieres. Yeah, that's what you want to do on Christmas Day: Go see a movie about a nut like Howard Hughes. Leonardo DiCaprio pulls it off, though.
Superbly bringing screen legends back to life are Katharine Hepburn by Cate Blanchett, Ava Gardner by Kate Beckinsale, and Jean Harlow by No Doubt singer Gwen Stefani. She may not be a hollaback girl, but she made a good throwback girl. As he did on M*A*S*H, Alan Alda once again plays a character from Maine, but, this time, it's Senator Owen Brewster, a nasty Republican who hauled Hughes before a Congressional hearing.
Another film premiering on this day is a live-action version of Fat Albert. Albert and the rest of the Cosby Kids are brought from cartoons into "the real world," and Albert (played by Kenan Thompson) meets his maker. No, he doesn't die: He meets Bill Cosby, who faints upon seeing him for the first time.
Of course, knowing what we now know about Cosby, it's hard to see him as either the creator of Fat Albert or Dr. Cliff Huxtable from The Cosby Show.
The cartoons featured a character named Dumb Donald, whose name was borrowed for questions on the CBS game show Match Game, after panelist Brett Somers objected to so many questions starting with, "Dumb Dora is so dumb!" (Followed by the audience yelling, "How dumb is she?") She wanted a masculine equivalent. Hence, "Dumb Donald" was allowed, since CBS also aired Fat Albert. In Match Game questions, Donald was usually depicted as a grown man (several questions mentioned his wife, and one involved him having a handlebar mustache), but his race was never specified.
When Match Game, which ran on CBS from 1973 to 1982, was revived on ABC in 2016, Dumb Dora was still used, but Dumb Donald was replaced by Dumb Derek -- despite the fact that the host was Alec Baldwin, who plays Donald Trump (who is so dumb) on Saturday Night Live. And Dumb Derek is gay. I'm not sure that's progress.
December 25, 2006: James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, dies of pneumonia. He was 73.
In the "Great holiday-season film for the whole family" department this was the premiere date for Black Christmas, Notes On a Scandal, and Children of Men. Okay, the last of these did feature the birth of a baby that signaled a new hope for humanity.
December 25, 2007: Jim Beauchamp dies of leukemia at age 68. An outfielder, he was named Most Valuable Player of the Texas League in 1963, but that success didn't carry over into the major leagues. He debuted with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1963, was part of the Houston Astros' youth movement in 1964 and '65, was with the Milwaukee Braves when they moved to Atlanta in 1966, was traded away by the Cincinnati Reds right before they started winning Pennants again, and finally saw the postseason with the Pennant-winning 1973 Mets.
He then managed in the minor leagues, and was promoted to bench coach by the Braves in 1991, a part of 5 World Series with them, winning in 1995. His hometown of Grove, Oklahoma named its baseball field for him while he as still alive and well enough to enjoy it. "Beauchamp" is French for "beautiful field."
Also on this day, The Bucket List premieres, a fun film, but a painful reminder that, someday, even Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman will die.
December 25, 2008: Eartha Kitt dies of cancer. The singer of "Santa Baby," and 1 of 3 women to play Catwoman on the 1960s Batman series, apparently had used up her 9th life, but what a life it was. She was 81.
Also on this day, a bunch of movies are released: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, starring Brad Pitt as a man who ages backwards; Marley & Me, about a man and his troublesome dog (not a retelling of the story of Ebenezer Scrooge and Jacob Marley); Valkyrie, about the plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944; and The Spirit, the 1st attempt to turn Will Eisner's early (1940-52) comic book hero into a live-action film, and it doesn't do well.
December 25, 2009, 10 years ago: al-Qaeda operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a 23-year-old native of Nigeria, tries and fails to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear while on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253, going from Amsterdam, the Netherlands to Detroit. Because he failed, the plane landed safely, and all 289 people on board survived.
"The Underwear Bomber," having one of the most ridiculous nicknames of any criminal ever, is now surviving multiple life sentences at the "supermax" federal prison in Florence, Colorado.
Also on this day, Sherlock Holmes premieres, Guy Ritchie's retelling of Arthur Conan Doyle's legend, with Robert Downey Jr. as a Holmes who is impossible to be around, and more of a man of action, but still brilliant. Jude Law plays Dr. John H. Watson, and Rachel McAdams plays Irene Adler.
The villain is played by Mark Strong, previously in the film version of Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby's memoir about being a fan of Arsenal. There is an inside joke: Among the villain's business holdings is the Woolwich Arsenal, the place where the team was founded in 1886. The film depicts Tower Bridge still under construction. It opened in 1894.
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December 25, 2011: Jimmy Fallon, now the host of NBC's Late Night (and, starting in 2014, NBC's The Tonight Show, taking the show back to its 1954-72 roots, in the same 30 Rockefeller Plaza building as SNL), hosts Saturday Night Live on December 17. And he makes jokes about Alec Baldwin. Who shows up. Just as that Christmas 1998 episode said would happen 13 years later.
The prophecy from 1998 doesn't fully come true, however: Don Pardo was still alive and announcing for the show. He died in 2014, at age 96, after 76 years of working for NBC, and was replaced as announcer by former castmember Darrell Hammond -- who had played Bill Clinton in that 1998 episode.
December 25, 2012: Quentin Tarantino's film Django Unchained premieres, reminding us of how bad slavery was. And a film version of the musical version of Victory Hugo's novel Les Misérables
premieres. More great entertainment for the family in the holiday season....
Also on this day, a Russian private jet, an Antonov An-72, crashes outside Shymkent, killing 27 people.
Also on this day, a Russian private jet, an Antonov An-72, crashes outside Shymkent, killing 27 people.
December 25, 2013: A man dressed as Santa Claus -- the brother of the husband of a friend of my sister's -- showed up at my sister's apartment, and presented my 6-year-old nieces Ashley and Rachel with new bicycles. They were so happy. This was the best Christmas ever!
Or it will be, until they can do something like that for their own children. Or even, God willing, before that can happen, they could help me do it for their cousin, my own as yet hypothetical child.
December 25, 2014: This was my 1st Christmas without my father. He was the hardest person in the family to shop for, but I'd take that problem in a heartbeat if it meant still having him around to shop for.
December 25, 2015: The Revenant premieres. This is the film that finally got Leonardo DiCaprio his Oscar for Best Actor. ("Finally"? He was 41 years old. Henry Fonda had to wait until he was 77 and dying.)
Also on this day, George Clayton Johnson dies in Los Angeles at age 86. He wrote the Twilight Zone episodes "Nothing in the Dark," "Kick the Can," "A Game of Pool" and "A Penny for Your Thoughts."
He also wrote the 1st episode of Star Trek that aired, "The Man Trap" (a.k.a. "The Salt Vampire"). He also wrote the story on which both versions of Ocean's Eleven were based, and, with William F. Nolan, wrote the novel Logan's Run, later turned into a sci-fi film and a short-lived TV series.
December 25, 2016: This was the 1st Christmas for my niece Mackenzie, born 7 months earlier. She was into it: She loved looking at Christmas trees, and other things with Christmas lights. On Christmas Eve, at a the United Methodist Church of Milltown, in Middlesex County, New Jersey, she made her acting debut, alongside Ashley and Rachel. All 3 played angels in a Christmas pageant.
Also on this day, a Russian Defense Ministry plane, a Tupolev Tu-154 (similar in design to the American L-1011 jet), en route from Sochi International Airport to Khmeimim Air Base in Syria,
crashes into the Black Sea shortly after takeoff.
All 92 people aboard are killed, including 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, a.k.a. the Red Army Choir, who were going to the Russian army base in Syria to entertain the troops, on January 7, which is the day that the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas.
Also on this day, a Russian Defense Ministry plane, a Tupolev Tu-154 (similar in design to the American L-1011 jet), en route from Sochi International Airport to Khmeimim Air Base in Syria,
crashes into the Black Sea shortly after takeoff.
All 92 people aboard are killed, including 64 members of the Alexandrov Ensemble, a.k.a. the Red Army Choir, who were going to the Russian army base in Syria to entertain the troops, on January 7, which is the day that the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas.
December 25, 2017: Ridley Scott's film All the Money In the World, about the 1973 kidnapping of oil heir J. Paul Getty III, premieres. Because of a sex scandal, Scott had to replace Kevin Spacey, whose scenes as Getty Sr. were already shot, with Christopher Plummer.
December 25, 2019: The world is a mess. Our country is a mess. The economy is getting dicey. Dictators are on the march all over the world. Not all of that, but a bit of it, is the fault of the #OrangeScrooge at the head of our government, and the people who still support him.
But Christmas is a day of new beginnings, of tolerance, of togetherness. Mackenzie, despite being just 3 1/2 years old, assisted my sister (her mother) and her sisters (now 12) in decorating the house, and was rightly proud of herself.
May your days be merry and bright. God bless us, every one. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. Sleep in heavenly peace.
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