Oh Christmas Bush, Oh Christmas Bush: The History of Christmas Trees

Way back when I was small, my father brought home a fresh pine Christmas tree. However, it was small and sort of bushy. My brother Dave decided it needed its own song, so taking a nod from Oh Christmas Tree, it became Christmas Bush. And it was, despite the decorating and the old 50s angel on top.

Similar to the one we had - that dead look was popular.

That began to make me think: Why? When did humans start cutting down trees and putting them up to shed all over in their house? 

Since we figured out how nice they were to have around! Evergreen trees have been associated with seasonal celebrations since ancient times, especially during the winter solstice. People would put boughs, trees and rings of plants that remained green in the winter remind people that spring will return and that once again the land would be lush and abundant. Where our Western traditions originate, the shortest day and longest night of the year falls on December 21 or December 22 and is called the winter solstice. Many ancient peoples believed that the sun was a god and that winter came every year because the sun god had become sick and weak. They celebrated the solstice because it meant that at last the sun god would begin to get well. Egyptians, Romans, Druids, Vikings, Anglo-Saxons, Spaniards and Slovaks are some of the people that used evergreen trees to decorate their homes.

The Christians took over the trees!

In the 7th century a monk named Boniface from Devonshire, went to Germany to convert them to Christianity. Legend has it that he used the triangular shape of the Fir Tree to describe the Holy Trinity of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to the pagans. The converted people began to revere the Fir tree as God's Tree, as they had previously revered the Oak. By the 12th century it was being hung, upside-down, from ceilings at Christmastime in Central Europe, as a symbol of Christianity. The first documented decorated tree was at Riga in Latvia, in 1510. In the early 16th century, Martin Luther is said to have decorated a small Christmas Tree with candles, to show his children how the stars twinkled through the dark night.

Modern Trees: thank Royalty! 

In 1846, Queen Victoria and her German Prince, Albert, put up a Christmas tree as he did when he lived at home. They were sketched in the Illustrated London News standing with their children around a Christmas tree. Her British subjects - who actually liked her- thought that this was very cool and fashionable and started to do the same.

Fashionable but seriously somber here.

By the 1890s Christmas ornaments were arriving from Germany and Christmas tree popularity was on the rise around the Western world. It was noted that Europeans used small trees about four feet in height, while Americans liked their Christmas trees to reach from floor to ceiling. Canadians don't really care as long as there is nothing living in it. People mostly made their own ornaments, while the German and their descendants use apples, nuts, and marzipan cookies. Popcorn joined in after being dyed bright colours and interlaced with berries and nuts. Electricity brought about Christmas lights, making it possible for Christmas trees to glow for days on end. With this, Christmas trees began to appear in town squares across the country and having a Christmas tree everywhere took hold.

One of the largest public Christmas trees ever was put up last year in Coeur d’Alene Resort in Idaho. It is 162 feet (49.5 m), with the star on top adding another 10 feet (3 m) high. These people are serious about Christmas in Idaho.

But not the fullest.

The Imperialist: Grey and the Canadian Football League

This weekend my home town team won a spot in the Grey Cup - Go Stamps!

The Stampeders originally were the Bronks, glad they changed the name. Sounds like a horse snorting.

I type this as a sad and dejected Eskimo fan with a toque on sits down across from me in the coffee shop. Next time guys!

It will be the 102st Grey Cup, the Canadian Football League's Superbowl, filled with history and pageantry in Vancouver. I really didn't pay much attention to the history of the game in Canada until the game's centennial in 2010. And while I learned a lot, I noticed the media had only a few words on the imperialist father of the Grey Cup, Albert Grey.

Whose this Grey guy anyways?

Lord Albert Grey, wearing fur because he is in Canada. Picture:LAC

Lord Albert Grey was your quintessential Victorian imperialist elite gentleman. Like most of the elite class in Canada. he was born in England in 1851 to rich parents and had a career in politics. His tireless promotion of the Crown and the supremacy of imperialism underlined every action he ever took. He remained in England until the call of money and power came from Africa, where he became an administrator in Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). Rhodesia was controlled by the British South African Company, and therefore controlled the people and the land. However, the government called Grey back to serve as Governor General (the King's representative) to Canada in 1904. He also needed a job as his investments in the region failed.

At this time, Canada was trying to forge itself as an independent nation, but also keep their British overloads happy. Canada was a dominion, meaning we still had to look to mother Britain for the okay to all our laws. This was alright to Grey, who liked to impose his ideas on others, be it in South Africa or in Canada. Funny enough his hard core temperance ideas and pro church stance did not go down well in Canada. He had to be reigned in a lot by Prime Minster Laurier, because even back then Canadians really just liked life without too much interruption. His idea that Canada should be the crowning jewel in British imperialism meant he pushed hard for a navy and a larger military as a tool for expansionism.

Grey's ability to cock up diplomatically was of epic legend. One failure was trying to get Newfoundland into confederation with Canada in 1905: he acted more like a bully than a appeaser and so the newfies told him to bugger off. The biggest failure was the Plains of Abraham in 1908: he wanted to purchase the Plains of Abraham and turn them into a national park under a battlefield commission for Quebec's 300 year birthday.

His endeavours to elevate the project into a grand imperial enterprise fell short but nevertheless made it difficult to sell in Quebec. In the end Laurier was persuaded only by the intervention of Quebec mayor Georges Garneau to pass the potentially controversial legislation in March 1908 creating the National Battlefields Commission. During this campaign Grey had discovered a citizens’ committee making modest plans to mark the tercentenary of Samuel de Champlain’s founding of Quebec. Fresh from his battlefield victory, he decided to transform the event into an international celebration of Franco-Anglo-American friendship. The visit of the Prince of Wales, the Atlantic fleet, American and French warships, and a host of official representatives required coordination, diplomatically, by the governor general’s office and took arrangements well out of the hands of the local committee. In addition, the elaborate historical pageants promoted by Grey and staged in July threatened, despite their interpretative accommodations, to turn the event into a celebration of the arrival of British general James Wolfe in 1759 rather than Champlain. The criticism voiced  was understandable, but not to Grey, who blamed the reaction on an unenlightened element in the Catholic church.

One thing that he was successful at was smoothing over the rough waters between Canada and American after the latter purchased Alaska from the Russians. He also promoted, supported and loved sports and the arts, assisting a ton of organizations in Ontario and Quebec during his tenure.

Why did he like football so much?

Grey believed that cultural institutions were an excellent vehicle to promote imperialism. One of these paths was through sports.His interest in physical well-being came from his work in social reform and imperial wholesomeness, as well as from his own attachment to sport and the outdoors. He promoted overseas clubs backed the Boy Scout and cadet movements, and persuaded Lord Strathcona to amend the terms of his trust fund (set up in 1909 to promote physical and military training in Canadian public schools) to permit the remuneration of women cadet instructors.

He donated various cups to all sorts of sports, but the biggest was to the new amateur rugby football league in 1909. Originally he wanted to donate a cup to the newly formed Canadian hockey club but was beaten to it by Sir Allen.

The first winners of the Grey Cup was the University of Toronto who trounced Toronto Parkdale 26-6.

But Grey soon forgot about his promise. There was no trophy to present when the University of Toronto won but they did receive it in time for their photo. Weeks before the game, organizers sent a letter to the governor general reminding him of his promise, according to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame and Museum. A hurried order was sent to silversmiths to create the sterling silver cup with a wooden base. The total bill: $48.

Having researched so much on Albert Grey now, I wonder what he'd think of modern Canada, our looking more to America for our policies, and our attitudes towards our colonial past that gives us so much shame and trouble now? More importantly, what would he think of our CFL now, with multi-ethnic players and owners, and a lack of imperialistic fevour?

Going Home: World War I Solidiers Identified

First off, much thanks to you all for reading my little blog. I finally have about ten of you reading it on a daily basis, and that's really nice. I just love history so I'm glad to share some of this love with you.

Now, enough of the mushy stuff...oh actually there is more. Get your Kleenex out.

Sidney Halliday

Good news from the field of muck. No, not the much-embattled CBC, but their report on the identification of soldiers from WWI from the mud of France. The remains of a unknown soldier have now been identified as Canadian Pte. Sidney Halliday. The Department of National Defence (DND)announced today that they had identified Halliday's remains. His remains was one of eight discovered together in France in 2006. DND revealed the identities of four others September 27.

The feel good part is how he was identified.  His sweetheart Lizzie gave him a locket with her hair. He carried that all though the war and it remained on his body when he was killed by a bullet to the head in 1918. When they found the locket, they could see her name etched on it.  Thanks to meticulously written war records, Sidney's records indicate that he had left most of his meagre wealth to his mother but at some point had asked for a change to be made. He asked that $10 go to Lizzie Walmsley of Winnipeg. The researches put all of it together and realized that these were the remains of Sidney.

How'd he get there?

 

Tim Cook write in Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting The Great War 1917-1918 about the Battle of Amiens, where Haillday died. It began before dawn on Aug. 8, 1918.That offensive included four Canadian divisions and the Canadian Cavalry Brigade. Canadian troops would be the spearhead of the attack.There were 300,000 Allied troops in total, a third of them Canadian. The Allies also had "the largest tank force ever assembled to that point in history," he writes. Cook also says that on Aug. 11, near the eastern edge of the battle, infantrymen in Canada's 78th Battalion found themselves surrounded as they tried to hold on to the village of Hallu. 100 men were killed or went missing that day. These men were unknown and were buried there where they fell. 

Hallu, France today. Yeah war has a funny way of destroying everything

How did they do this after he and his fellow soldiers were in the dirt for 96 years?

 

First thing is someone has to find them. France is littered with the bits and bones of the dead from two world wars. A teenager in this case, Fabien Demeusere, was poking around in his backyard which use to be the town of  Hallu for military belts and other items. Surprise: He found their bodies instead. I imagine he pooped his pants at finding some dead guy's skull in his yard.


He did the right thing and called the police and government, They realized these were probably Canadians and called the Department of National Defence. The task of identifying the remains fell to Casualty Identification Coordinator, Laurel Clegg. Using official war records that contained ages and heights of the missing, Laurel was able to narrow down the possibilities. Genealogist Janet Roy helped find descendants of the missing men from the 78th. DNA was used to positively identify five of the eight: Lieutenant Clifford Neelands and Privates Lachlan McKinnon, William Simms, Sgt. John Lindell, and now Halliday.

 For more on the men of his regiment, I suggest the documentary Forgotten No More, The Lost Men of the 78th, which will be broadcast on CBC on November 7th.

Why you should give a toss?

 

I always like to give a reason why you should give a shit about a 96 year old dead guy. For one, the amazing work of the team at DND should be recognized and celebrated. No way was this easy to do as they crawled through documents and details for the last six years.

Also he's just not a name - Halliday was a human being who died from a gun shot to the head in a stupid war. He had dreams, friends, a girlfriend, family who missed him and never got to bury a body. His surviving nephew Jim Halliday said to the CBC:

"I guess it makes you feel as if he just passed away, instead of all those many years ago...it's a strange feeling. It's one you can't really explain all that well, brought some sense of closure, as they say."

And maybe when we honour all our dead, we find maybe we think long and hard if we want to add to the list of our war dead with our modern wars and military actions.

She's Got It: Pin Ups Before World War Two

My question today comes from the twitters online: "Were pin up girls invented during the Second World War in the1940s or did they have them in World War I?"

What your great-grandad went to war for.

As long as there has been eyes, there have been pin up girls, in art and photography. Pin ups implies the type of girl pictures up somewhere so you could look at her all the time, hence the name. That term did not come into use until the 1940s. There are many girl pictures pre-1940s however that would have caught the notice of the men in the first World War.

The concept of mass produced pictures of ladies in various states of undress were popular advertisements among burlesque performers in the 19th century. An example of this are Boudoir Cards, almost exclusively from France, that the young men in the trenches could look at. The French were not so worried about the naked female form as other countries, but they still had to be sold under the table. One very popular model was Fernade Barrey, who we know very little about. Postcards from the 1910s state that she was a courtesan who used the cards to advertise.

Another kind of pin up was Bathing Beauties, pictures and films that were focused on pretty girls who wore bathing suits. Mack Sennett, a Canadian filmmaker and founder of Keystone studios, was a major player in early comedies, giving us the pie in the face jokes and those Keystone cops running around like mad. He also in 1915 gave the world girls showing their knees:

These bathing beauties and their pictures were very popular until their end in 1928. These were mild compared to the new genre of nudist publications that surfaced. The idea of linking sex and humour, a component of pin-ups, and using drawings to illustrate their stories and jokes evolves during the early 1930's. As well, a much more graphic female body was now being drawn, compared to earlier "oh my god I saw her ankle" photos that the general population was seeing. Major artists including George Petty and Alberto Vargas created calendar girls that very soon adorned the walls of garages and workshops everywhere. 

Earl MaPherson's work late 1930s, because you really need a calendar that small...

 For some amazing pre-war pin ups, check out pinterest, oddly enough.

And All That Jass? - Questions From the Twitter-verse

This has to be my favourite question ever. I'm a huge fan of Jazz music, and love nothing better than to put on an album, or sing, jazz. A fellow fan, Laurie from Russia, sent me a note on twitter:

I love to play Jazz piano, but I don't know much about the history except the basics. One question I have is why do we call this music Jazz? Where did such a weird name come from? I can see why it's called the blues, but jazz? Thanks!

Hi Laurie! Thanks for the question, because you know how much I love etymology. First, the bad news. There's no consensus among scholars or musicians on who first coined it, when, or how. The good news: it's fuzzy origins makes the story much more interesting.

Sheet music from 1906, thanks to Dr. Lewis Porter for his research

The original spelling was Jass, and can be seen in early pictures of bands at the turn of the 20th century. One story is that it comes from the African languages. In the Congo, certain dances were called jasm or in the language Mandingo, jasi,  Many people reject these stories however. 

Buddy Bolden, with his horn, second from left at the top. He was the first cornetist and gave jazz its real earthy, upbeat and deep sound. He also developed schizophrenia, and was forgotten until historians started giving a crap.

The musical form we now call Jazz began in 1870s, and slowly emerged from blues, work songs, gospel and traditional European music. 'Jass' came from New Orleans, the birthplace of this music, and was a term probably coined by the local Creole musicians. Creoles are descended from White Europeans immigrating to the American South and African American taken as wives or who were slaves. These people had their own mix of European and African music. Jass in their slang meant "strenuous activity", usually of the sexual kind. 

They may have got this from their french ancestry. J. E. Lighter’s monumental Historical Dictionary of American Slang, includes an entry from an 1896 French-English glossary: “Jaser(or Jazer). To copulate.”

If the truth were known about the origin of the word 'Jazz' it would never be mentioned in polite society. - Clay Smith, jazz musician in "Étude," Sept. 1924

Another story, was that Jass was a name of the perfume used by the prostitutes of Storyville in New Orleans. Jazz musicians got their start in Storyville, playing to the whores dancing, because that was where they could get the best tips and get the best views.  But the story related by the great Jazz musician Winston Marsalis in the documentary, Jazz, was that it was about sex. The origins of the word relating to sex ring true to the culture surrounding the music. A great example of the sexual nature of jazz is the story of Creole musician Jelly Roll Morton. People laugh today and wonder why a father of Jazz music would name himself after a sweet roll. Ahem. He's not talking about a pastry, people. Jelly Roll was slang for the best sexual position a man could get with his penis. Typical jazz musician. He was awesome.

When did Jass become Jazz? The spelling seems to have changed very quickly, and by 1910 there change was complete in signs and advertisements used by bands. But many continued to use the old spelling, as seen in the record labels still using Jass.

This is the first jazz band that ever recorded, 1917, and they just didn't care how they spelt it!

The first time the term jazz appears in print was not in reference to music, but baseball. A pitcher for the Portland Beavers, Ben Henderson, was quoted in the Los Angeles times in April 2, 1912: "I got a new curve this year...I call it the jazz ball because it wobbles and you simply can't do anything about it." For Henderson to use the term jazz so casually, means it was already in the local vernacular of where he was from, as well as where he was interviewed. 

My final recommendation to Laurie and to everyone else: Go watch Jazz: A Film by Ken Burns. It is an amazing and important documentary on the history and power of jazz music. I found myself tapping my feet and singing along the whole time.

Friday's Monday Post - Lost History of Computer Icons

I was busy Friday with returning to work after getting my gallbladder out...eeeek! But I did manage to find some interesting forgotten history. Much thanks to Priceonomics for giving me something cool to read.

Computers are now like other appliances: we use them in our daily lives, almost everyone in North America has one or access to one, and we take it for granted that it will be easy to use. Part of why it's so easy is the interface, including the icons we've come to know and mostly love. (I still can't stand that Microsoft magnifying glass that would talk to you)

Who designs these icons? Why do we never mention them in reference to the history of computing?

Susan Kare is one of the few who have received some recognition in geek circles, but not enough in the wider world for my taste.

As a fine artist with a PhD, Kare was hoping to get commissions for high end art works, when an old friend called up and asked if she'd work on some graphics for a new computer company he was working for. That was Apple in 1980. She admits that she had no computer graphic experience but learned on the job while at Apple, and then following Steven Jobs to his next venture at NExt.  She designed the first proportionally spaced digital font family, and icons. The garbage can, the paint brush, the little scissors, the OS icons...that was all Kare. All in little pixelated dots. It was an art form now, with character and whimsy. So much of what we see today on a Mac is because of her initial icon work.

One of Kare's early sketches

Kare continues to work in the field. She has designed the icons for Logitech, Paypal, IBM and Facebook - including the gifts we use to send to each other like mad. About her current work, she said -

“My philosophy has not really changed -- I really try to develop symbols that are meaningful and memorable. I started designing monochrome icons using a 32 x 32 pixel icon editor that Andy Hertzfeld created. Subsequently I've been able to take advantage of more robust tools and higher screen resolution, and also design vector images in Illustrator. But design problems are solved by thinking about context and metaphor -- not by tools.”

I strongly urge you to go check out Kare's website and look at all the amazing graphics she has created and continues to produce. You will recognize many from your daily internet life!

Articles on Kare:

The woman behind apple's first icons

The Sketchbooks of Susan Kare

Wednesday's Strange History - Humanzee!

It's going to get weird, isn't it?

My question this week comes from Mark in Red Deer, Alberta. Mark asks about an experiment he heard about in his 20th Century Russian history class. "There was a project where a human was grafted onto a chimp, or bred with one or something like that. It was some crazed Russian experiment sometime in the early 1900s to make a super army of apes. Any non-google info on it?"

Heck yes, Mark. This weird Island of Dr Moreau tale is true, but not quite the way you recall.The primary researcher was Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov (1870-1932), a Soviet biologist who was a pioneer in artificial insemination for domestic animals. He set up the world's first centre for artificially knocking up horses in 1901. This guy is important because so many of our current livestock is created and eaten because of Ivanov's innovations.

If you want me to thank the guy for bypassing my sex life, forget it.

But things got mad scientist crazy after 1910. Ivanov was already thinking about the possibility of human and chimp hybrids as he knew they were genetically close to each other, thanks to German scientist Hans Friedenthal's work, and confirmed later on with DNA research. (Personally I though my family were related to gorillas). He took matters into his own...hands...and applied for research funding for the project. Because he was a respected scientist, and the USSR formed in 1922 was beginning a hyper-love phase of scientific enquiry, Ivanov received the money and use of Institut Pasteur’s facility in French Guinea in Western Africa. He began his artificial insemination experiments in March, 1926 with no results. Nothing he did worked, and reports filtered back to the homeland that he had tried to inseminate African women with the chimp sperm. Other reports state he did also try with Russian women, with no results.

Super racist and sexist colonialism, right little buddy?

 This report may have been true or fabricated, because Ivanov was now on the wrong side of the political-science battle. He and the other geneticists hoped that Ivanov’s research could lead to a better understanding of what qualities to choose for in the emerging ideal of eugenics. Stalin and his minion scientists rejected genetic research as bourgeois and pushed for the study of inheritance of acquired characteristics. Ivanov lost big time, he was shipped off to Kazakhstan where he died in 1932.

Contrary to some misguided reporting (looking at you, creationist), there is no evidence at all that Ivanov or Stalin ever tried to create ape-man super-warriors.This strange report came about when creationists tried to link communism with evolutionary theory, thereby disproving it in their minds.

For more reading on Soviet Science, may I recommend Stalin and the Soviet Science Wars by Ethan Pollock, this great article from Scientific America,

Hope that helps you sleep at nigh, Mark from Red Deer!