Top 10 Real-Life Grinches
These historical humbugs rival Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch in their lack of Christmas spirit
- By T.A. Frail
- Smithsonian.com, December 07, 2009, Subscribe
1. Brock Chisholm was a distinguished Canadian psychiatrist who, as the first director-general of the World Health Organization, came to be called the “doctor to the human race.” But he was also known for telling an Ottawa home-and-school association in 1945: “Any child who believes in Santa Claus has had his ability to think permanently destroyed. … Can you imagine a child of 4 being led to believe that a man of grown stature is able to climb down a chimney…. That Santa Claus can cover the entire world in one night distributing presents to everyone! He will become a man who has ulcers at 40, develops a sore back when there is a tough job to do, and refuses to think realistically when war threatens.” When a reporter gave him a chance to clarify his remarks, Chisholm said that “Santa Claus was one of the worst offenders against clear thinking, and so an offense against peace.”
2. The Rev. Paul Nedergaard raised a furor in Copenhagen in 1958 when he denounced a Danish child-welfare agency’s fund-raising effort because it involved the sale of Christmas seals bearing an image of Santa Claus. “These seals bear a symbol of a pagan goblin,” he said. “You should refuse to buy them. Find some other way to aid the welfare organization.” Danes were already up in arms over some remarks on Santa made in Copenhagen just 10 days earlier by…Dr. Brock Chisholm.
3. The British officer who ended the Christmas truce of 1914 might have lived in infamy—if someone had recorded his name. The unsanctioned truce erupted after British and German troops, upon listening to each other’s caroling throughout that Christmas Eve, left their trenches at dawn to fraternize, trading cigarettes and plum pudding and even kicking around a soccer ball. But then the British officer ordered his men back to their posts; firing resumed a few hours later. And officers on both sides kept a vigil against similar outbreaks of humanity every December for the rest of the war.
4. Diamond Jim Brady approached the recession-wracked Christmas of 1896 with a resolve to spread his wealth, and so he did, lavishing gifts on acquaintances around the country. But his generosity was fueled by ill-gotten gains. On election night that year, biographer Harry Paul Jeffers writes, Brady won about $180,000 (about $4.7 million today) by making crooked bets on the McKinley-Bryan presidential election. Then he put some of those winnings into a pump-and-dump scheme involving stock in the Reading Railroad, which was had just emerged from receivership. Brady, Jeffers writes, sold out in time to enrich himself by $1.25 million (or about $33 million today).
5. DJ Dick Whittinghill of KMPC in Los Angeles refused all requests that he play cuts from Elvis’s Christmas Album, a monumental release in November 1957 that included not only “Blue Christmas,” “White Christmas” and “I’ll Be Home for Christmas,” but also “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” According to Linda Martin and Kerry Segrave’s book Anti-Rock, Whittinghill said that exposing the youth of L.A. to the Presley versions of such songs would be “like having Tempest Storm give Christmas gifts to my kids.” (Tempest Storm was then one of the biggest names in burlesque.)
6. The U.S. Coast Guard had to add rumrunners to its list of coastal threats after Prohibition began in 1919, and by December 1924 there were ominous signs that the Coasties’ vigilance was wreaking havoc in the trade. “Rumrunning has altered almost unbelievably,” New York Times reporter James C. Young wrote that year, reprising a story he had written the year before. “The holiday aspect is gone. The rules are changed. The amateur is no more. Bargain days along Rum Row have ended.” Better enforcement, Young reported, had made the business unsafe for the little guy—and left an opening for criminal syndicates.
7. Ambrose Bierce was as famous for his misanthropy as he was for his short stories. He called Christmas a “bogus holiday,” and his baleful outlook extended to his own mother, according to Bierce biographer Roy Morris Jr. As a young boy Bierce asked her if there really was a Santa Claus, and she told him there was; he soon found out otherwise. “I proceeded to detest my deceiver with all my little might and main,” he recalled as an adult. “And even now I cannot say that I experience any consuming desire to renew my acquaintance with her in that other life to which, she also assured me, we hasten hence.”
8. Oliver Cromwell, the author of England’s interregnum, did not ban Christmas, but he led the movement that did. In 1647—six years before Cromwell established the English Protectorate—the Puritan-minded Parliament, fearful that feasting, caroling and wassailing was leading to disorder (or enjoyment), outlawed Christmas celebrations. Trees? Gone. Nativity scenes? Gone. Decorations? Gone. The whole dreary ban lasted until Cromwell was overthrown in 1660.
9. The General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, another Puritan-minded institution, in 1659 ordered that “whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way…shall pay for every such offense five shillings as a fine to the county.” This ban lasted 22 years, and Christmas celebrations in Boston didn’t really recover for a century or more.
10. First James Jameson of Los Angeles stole a set of ivory-and-gold false teeth in December 1907. (“They are showy,” reported the Los Angeles Times, “the kind a man may wear on state occasions, to weddings, dinner, or to the club. They are also working teeth, fit to chew plain corn[ed] beef and cabbage as well as quail on toast.”) Then Jameson tried to sell the gold to a jeweler. And then he got arrested, meaning, as the Times noted, that the teeth, which a “toothless individual had hoped to use in chewing up his Christmas turkey,” would now be “marked with a big sign, ‘Exhibit A,’ and they will be put on some dusty shelf in the courtroom and have a rest for a while.”
Editor's Note: An earlier version of this article included a photo of film actor Edward Arnold portraying Diamond Jim Brady. That photo has been replaced with one of the real-life Diamond Jim.
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Comments (56)
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Fascinating. Here's what I learned. There are those who have fun with creative imagination, and those who worry that creative imagination 'damages the mind'. Two opposite groups. The first can easily understand the deprivation of the second. But, the second just doesn't get it. Yet, the second group, with less range in thought, not only calls the first group 'brain damaged' but worries that wars will be less easily joined because of them. I can now postulate with some confidence that less imagination equals more war.
Posted by Wilson on December 22,2011 | 11:03 AM
Thanks for the share. Good to see a psychiatrist at the top of the list. I have an interesting post at Lime Bucket. Please leave your comment.
http://www.limebucket.com/healthy-snacks-ideas-smart-healthy-snacks-for-weight-loss.html
Posted by Vivek Srivastava on December 30,2010 | 08:27 AM
What a dreary bunch of naysayers...this column has given me a stomach ache. My God, what happened to the warmth and humanity of yesteryear...God help us!
Posted by Richard on December 24,2010 | 10:39 AM
Bierce and the other anti-Santa "Grinches" were right. Actually, the lesson that one can't trust one's parents- especially if they're religious types- is a valuable one (at least it was in my case). As for the original significance of December 25th, I'm a traditionalist to the core: keep Saturn in Saturnalia!
Posted by Tom Carr on December 12,2010 | 12:58 AM
Actually, Virginia, yes there really was a Saint named Nikolaus - a real person upon whose actions of generosity, kindness and piety the character of Santa Claus was based. My kids know his story and are excited when it's their turn to take part in being Santa for others.
There's nothing wrong with believing in beauty, kindness, generosity and even justice and selflessness. Though these qualities may be hard to find - they are, in fact, real despite being so rarely exemplified. Just because the examples are infrequent and often imperfect does not mean that the ideal is false.
Posted by B Madden on December 10,2010 | 08:07 AM
Hey "Christmas" IS a contrived holiday. The Catholic Church tried to incorporate pagans into the church by arbitrarily setting Christ's birth (which historians believe happened in August or September) on top of the pagan celebration of winter solstice (when the days finally quite getting shorter and started getting more sun). Over the last century, big business got into it and used it as an excuse to shore up sagging sales for the year, and to dump year-end inventory.
The word "Grinch", per Merriam-Webster dictionary, was coined by the Dr. Seuss' story "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and is defined as "killjoy, spoilsport". If I remember the movie correctly, it's about someone who stifles goodwill and works to create misery. That's what the current holiday does -- lies to small children, threatens them with punishment, creates stress in the family, fosters financial hardship, and is the one time of year that the highest rates of domestic violence occur. Is this something that YOU would support?
Not me. I'd prefer to remember Christ's birth as it was, and even more what he did the three and a half years of his ministry. His message of love, kindness, justice, and caring for our fellow man should be carried out year-round. His paying for the sins of Adam and Eve, his giving us the hope of freedom from Stan's rule and an everlasting life in a paradise earth as God had originally planned -- well, that I'll celebrate. That, I'll remember. That, I'm grateful for and will try to pass along to others -- on a daily basis, not just one day out of the year.
Posted by Claire Talltree on December 9,2010 | 05:38 PM
Ok, I am adding to my list of "don't talk to strangers about" both christmas, and santa clause. Apparently the pagan roots of all Xtian holidays don't make a dent in what is done.....
Posted by Jazz on December 9,2010 | 04:59 PM
An article apparently worthy of bringing out the staunchest of Grinches out of the woodwork. Enough said, I have a letter to Santa to compose...
Posted by Pensacola on December 9,2010 | 04:19 PM
Professor Pat, you are the one that is mistaken. Larry is mostly correct, except for the facts that Cromwell died in late 1658, not 1659, and Richard was Lord Protector from his father's death to 1659. Oliver Cromwell was named Lord Protector in 1653 by the "Instrument of Government," and was never overthrown in his lifetime. I suggest you get your facts straight before correcting others.
Posted by Andy on December 9,2010 | 03:40 PM
Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Jesus Christ walk into a bar...
Posted by Sam Hill on January 9,2010 | 01:08 AM
Actually, we need to believe the little lies to believe the big lies later on in life. You know, justice, mercy, that sort of thing. These are lies, yet we believe in them. Why? Because we could not live in a world where justice and mercy don't exit; and yet we do. The fact that Saint Nick does exist in a congruent reality must disturb most of you, but there it is. Terry Prachett had it correct when Death looks at the angel Azrael and says: There is no justice; there is just us.
Besides, what is wrong with a little magic?
Posted by Robert on January 7,2010 | 10:33 PM
I think you should up to follow up each of those peoples backgrounds. They might have been enemies of progress.
Posted by Camdy on December 23,2009 | 12:00 PM
I am sick and tired of seeing Santa Claus given a bad reputation. My family has followed the Santa Claus legend since before I was born 76 years ago. When my own children were approaching the questioning age, I taught them that Santa was the "personification" of the spirit of love in Christmas. The true meaning of Christmas, the birth of the Christ Child, was always the centerpiece of our celebration. But, I would never have robbed our children, grandchildren or great grandchildren of the Santa legend. It became increasingly precious to the older children as they grew old enough to know "the truth," and became the helpers on Christman eve setting up "Santa's gifts" for their younger siblings.
Posted by Ila Toney on December 15,2009 | 05:31 PM
I found the whole santa story a profound revelation that my parents would lie to me.
I found this disturbing as a child.
Posted by S.N. Bratt on December 14,2009 | 02:23 AM
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