History Now: International History News (Includes Canada)

It's been a busy spring for me personally but also professionally. While I've been working like a dog, (a small pug I think), let's see what's been making the news the last few months in local and world history.

First, a tip of the pink stetson to Calgary! 

It's the 25th anniversary of the Calgary Pride Festival. The festival and the events surrounding it (including the parade) is run by Calgary Pride. The CPF is a not-for-profit organization that exists to promote equality and acceptance of Calgary’s LGBTQA community. My friend Kevin Allen wrote in the Gay History Project blog that Calgary’s first “Pride Week” started as a weekend of workshops in 1988.  In 1990, Calgary’s 3rd Annual “Pride Festival” had a political rally that drew 400 at Memorial Park, on the steps of the library. The first real parade was in 1991, and was actually part of the 4th Annual Pride Festival. This year's parade will be September 6 down 9 Avenue SE to SW downtown.

We thank you: Stephen Lock, Nancy Miller & Richard Gregory: 1990 Pride Rally Organizers. From Gay History.

Why do I know so much about Queer (Gay) history in my hometown? I'm one of the researchers for the Gay History Project and will be presenting at the Glitter Gala next month. Come have fun and hear me make history interesting!

I'm On the Road to Stonehenge

Next, I want you to take some deep breaths before you read this next news story.

 The brilliant people who are road planners in the UK are hoping to get a traffic tunnel dug under Stonehenge. In 2013, a major roadway near the giant rock circle was partly closed, because it was damaging the site. However, traffic has been insane as there is a major road corridor near the site. The answer: build a tunnel: The BBC Reports:

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said the plan to "tackle the bottleneck at Stonehenge" would "get the funds it needs". English Heritage, which runs the Stonehenge site, has previously described the bottleneck road as "highly detrimental" to the ancient monument. Senior Druid King Arthur Pendragon has also backed the idea of a tunnel, but only if there are "cast-iron" guarantees that any human remains found "are reinterred as close as possible to what should have been their final resting place".

A group that advises World Heritage body Unesco has warned a tunnel could have an "adverse impact" on the Stonehenge landscape. In a letter seen by the BBC, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (Icomos) said it wanted a solution that "respects and maintains" the value of the "iconic and unique site". Ralph Smyth of the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) said it was "calling for a longer tunnel", as the proposed tunnel was too short and would create two "huge holes" which would affect the landscape around the World Heritage site.

OOOOOH....now where's the MacDonald's?

Screw You Labour History

Let's head back to Canada for the next bit with some serious controversy. The Museum of History in Ottawa has announced that they are excluding a display on the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike will be excluded from the renovated areas, but officials promise the labour movement will still have a home in its halls.

According to a document obtained by the Ottawa Star in response to an access to information request, the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que., saw there were few risks (???) surrounding the decision to shut down the exhibit.

Here is the part that pisses me off...

“Changes can be made to the module with few political or institutional risks,” reads the summary of a draft renovation risk assessment, revised Aug. 22, 2014. "Some comments by academics cite the closure as evidence of the museum’s lack of interest in working class history . . . . The removal of this module represents minimal risk to the museum, though it will entail communications challenges to the academic community,” says the document.

OK - WAIT A MINUTE. So academics are the only people interested in working class/labour issues? Classes of school kids that have it in their curriculum to learn about the history of the strike and other labour issues are dismissed as "academics"? Thank you for your condescending air. Sorry that as a working class person you want to know more about our history, or recall how mostly soldiers were the ones striking as they were promised things the govt. and businesses never delivered for dying on the fields in WWI.

Go fuck yourself History Museum. Never thought I'd say that.

The exhibit, which opened in 1999, was modelled after a meeting room in the Labour Temple on James St. in Winnipeg, where union members met to debate, organize and vote in the months leading up to, and during, the massive strike. It's being removed to make room for the Canadian History Hall, which is scheduled to open July 1, 2017. I'll be dammed if I go.

Because 30,000 people is just not that important. Sorry guys.

The Canadian Museum of History has come under public scrutiny in the past couple of years, following a controversial change in name — it was formerly known as the Canadian Museum of Civilization — and mandate that had critics accusing the Conservative government of using the Crown Corporation to rewrite history in its image.

Chinese Tomb Reveals Awesome Bling

Lastly, something less depressing and way more flashy. After workers discovered the brick tomb by chance at a construction site in Nanjing, China, archaeologists from Nanjing Museum and the Jiangning District Museum of Nanjing City excavated it back in 2008. Their findings, originally published in Chinese in the journal Wenwu, have recently been translated into English and published in a recent issue of the journal Chinese Cultural Relics. (Reported by History TV)

The archaeologists found that water had damaged the tomb, but the occupant’s skeletal remains remained inside. In addition, the tomb’s interior sparkled with gold baubles, including hairpins, bracelets and a small fragrance box. All are intricately engraved in designs of lotus petals, chrysanthemums and flames, and all are inlaid with precious gems, including rubies, sapphires and turquoise.

BLING!

 
The owner of the tomb had a beautifully adorned but challenging life. Her story really tells a lot about women in Traditional China, their lives and their deaths.

Two stone inscriptions, or epitaphs, found inside the tomb identify its occupant as one Lady Mei, and tell the story of her life in Ming Dynasty China more than five centuries ago. Born around 1430, she was probably a teenager when she married the decades-older Mu Bin, a duke of Qian who ruled Yunnan province in southwestern China. A former concubine, she would probably have been lower in status than Mu Bin’s two other wives.

Ten months after she gave birth to a son, Mu Zong, her husband died. According to her epitaphs, Lady Mei was then only 21 years old, “unwashed and unkempt, and called herself the survivor.” She dedicated herself to the care of her infant son, and began carefully grooming him to become a third-generation duke. Among other things, she “urged him to study hard mornings and evenings, and taught him loyalty and filial devotion, as well as services of duty.”

When it was time for Mu Zong to take the reins in Yunnan, Lady Mei traveled with him to meet the Chinese emperor, who was impressed by Lady Mei and later awarded her the title “Dowager Duchess.” Her son gave her much respect, and turned to her for advice on being a judicious leader and a faithful representative of the emperor. Specifically, as the epitaphs relate, she provided Mu Zong with “strategies for bringing peace to the barbarian tribes and pacifying faraway lands.”

Lady Mei was only in her mid-40s when she died of illness in 1474. She was brought to Nanjing for burial; the city served as the capital of China during the early Ming Dynasty. The emperor himself apparently ordered officials to prepare for Lady Mei’s funeral and burial. Meanwhile, the epitaphs describe widespread mourning for the Dowager Duchess back in her son’s province: “On the day of her death, the people of Yunnan, military servicemen or civilians, old and young, all mourned and grieved for her as if their own parents had passed.

Digging in the Dirt: Canadian WWI Soliders Grave located in France

Richard Jack's painting of the Canadian's at Vimy Ridge, Library and Archives Canada. No zombies were present.

We often think that World War One is in the far off land of the past: a place we read about but has no affect on our daily life. Well, we're wrong. Not only does the outcomes of the war still affect us today, as my rant about Israel and Palestine covers, but the men who died still keep popping up. No: I don't mean some tacky war-splotation (my new word) zombie film like Dead Snow where the Nazis live again. Because nothing makes my skin crawl more than real suffering being reduced to zombie SS eating Sweeds.

Oh...some tacky bastards did make at WWI horror film...with Jamie Bell. So disappointed in you Mr. Bell.

Norm Christie, an Ottawa historical researcher, has located the remains of possibly 44 members of the Canadian Scottish Regiment (16th Battalion, 3rd Brigade, 1st Canadian Division) who were buried in a shell crater following the Battle of Vimy Ridge in April 1917. Their deaths were registered, but their remains were never exhumed and reburied in any of the military cemeteries established after the First World War.

The Canadian Encyclopedia states that:

The Battle of Vimy Ridge, during the First World War, is Canada's most celebrated military victory — a sometimes mythologized symbol of the birth of Canadian national pride and awareness. The four divisions of the Canadian Corps (see Canadian Expeditionary Force), fighting together for the first time, attacked the ridge from 9-12 April, 1917 and succeeded in capturing it from the German army. More than 10,500 Canadians were killed and wounded in the assault. Today an iconic white memorial atop the ridge commemorates the battle and honours the 11,285 Canadians killed in France throughout the war who have no known graves.

In an interview last month with the National Post, Christie states that it is time to exhume these men and place them in properly marked graves.“One of the key aspects of history is the spiritual dimension. How you treat your dead is very reflective of the spiritual state of your society. We should be honouring our dead because they are so much a part of our history.”

That spiritual aspect is physically represented by the amazingly beautiful Vimy Ridge Memorial. Work began on the monument in 1925 and eleven years later, on July 26, 1936 it was unveiled by King Edward VIII. It cost approximately $1.5 million, including site preparation and the building of roads.

Wow.

Finding this possible grave site also brings up the issue of ongoing duty to these men: the call for the re-burial of these men, and the continual search for others lost in both world wars, is expensive, but necessary in many people's opinion. The Government of Canada is always under pressure to fund these initiatives, but mostly rely on the Commonwealth Graves Commission, which Canada is a member of.

The other issue is of glorifying way: modern opinions may not be to many modern people's taste of military history. Christie cites the attitude of dismissing our military history in the 1950s onwards as deplorable. “History is the heart and soul of your society. That is where you get your pride from, your sense of identity, and because Canadians lack a sense of their history, they lack a certain pride.” Christie has certainly done what he can to instill historical pride. Over the last two decades, the former Commonwealth War Graves Commission’s chief records officer has written nearly 20 books on Canada’s military history.

For my two cents: I'm biased as hell. Two great-grandfathers fought in the war, my father and brother are ex-Canadian military. The idea of them not being honoured or buried properly would bother me forever. These were men whose families loved them and despite the dangers, did their lives to a cause they believed in, whether you agree or not with that cause.

And as we all know, war is horrific and as a hard core pacifist, I don't want Canada ever involved in anything like this again. But we were, and I don't think honouring the dead is promoting any idea of how we should be conducting our military now. This was suppose to be the War that Ended All Wars because it was such a horrific loss. So while we re-bury the dead, let's recall how they got there in the first place and maybe we won't be so quick to send people to their deaths again.

Smack of Jellyfish: The History of Collective Nouns

Last week at work, a co-worker originally from Vietnam asked me, "I don't get it. I get why in English you have groupings: Collective nouns, like a flock of seagulls. But a murder of crows? A pack of hounds? Who came up with this crap?"

It was the 1980s, a lot of crap was flying around. But I liked A Flock of Seagulls...just not the hair.

I'm inclined to agree with the crap part. English is weird enough without all the superlatives. Thanks to the BBC History Magazine, we can blame the bored people in the 1400s. Many were first recorded in the 15th century in publications known as Books of Courtesy: manuals on the various aspects of noble living, designed to prevent young aristocrats from embarrassing themselves by saying the wrong thing at court.

The earliest of these documents to survive to the present day was The Egerton Manuscript, dating from around 1450, which featured a list of 106 collective nouns. Several other manuscripts followed, the most influential of which appeared in 1486 in The Book of St Albans – a treatise on hunting, hawking and heraldry, written mostly in verse and attributed to the nun Dame Juliana Barnes (sometimes written Berners), prioress of the Priory of St Mary of Sopwell, near the town of St Albans. This list features 164 collective nouns, beginning with those describing the ‘beasts of the chase’, but extending to include a wide range of animals and birds.

According to the Oxford dictionary, most are fanciful or humorous terms which probably never had any real currency, but have been taken up by antiquarian writers, notably Joseph Strutt in Sports and Pastimes of England (1801).

Some of my favorites:

a blush of boys

a bevy of ladies

a faith of merchants

a pity of prisoners

a clowder or glaring of cats

a herd of cranes

a busyness of ferrets

a fluther or smack or jellyfish

a watch of nightingales

an unkindness of ravens

a drift of wild pigs

a zeal of zebras

A cute clowder of cats! Mew!

Kiss Me We're All Irish: St. Paddy's Day

At the Montreal Parade, because there's a lot of Leprechauns there...

Happy Green Beer day everyone! Many Canadians and Americans, regardless of their heritage, will be out celebrating Saint Patrick’s day. Modern festivities include Irish and Celtic music, lots of food, and lots of beer. While this is the tradition in Canada, the saint’s day was originally a day of prayer.

Someone actually made a St. Patrick crochet doll. Where's the snakes?

For centuries, St. Patrick’s day was celebrated as a holy day. St. Patrick was a Roman-British priest that brought Christianity to Ireland. He also is credited with driving all the snakes out of Ireland, but we know where they all went (looking at you, England). He is said to have died on 17 March 461 AD. His popularity in Ireland grew to being named the country’s patron saint. By the 900s, the Irish celebrated his memory by attending church and holding feasts. It was made a recognized Catholic feast day in the 1600s. It falls during the Christian season of Lent, and Lent’s tight prohibitions against the eating of meat were released. After attending mass, people would dance, drink and enjoy the traditional meal of corned beef (Irish bacon and just awesome) and cabbage.

One big part of modern celebrations is massive parades. The first one was not in Ireland, but was held in America, on March 17, 1762. Irish soldiers serving in the English military marched in New Amsterdam (New York), were trying to keep their own culture alive in this new country. New York City became a major centre for Irish Diaspora, and the parades continued and spread to all parts of North America. More than one hundred parades are now held, and have expanded into Irish festivals such as the Irish Association of Manitoba three-day festival of culture in the week of St Patrick's Day.

At the Boston Parade: "Bloody hell, Bobby! That ain't St. Nick - he just gave us a bag of snakes!"

Another tradition is to wear green on the day of; it is said that St. Patrick taught the Irish about the trinity (Father, son and the holy spirit) by using a clover. This may be where the North American tradition of wearing green and clovers came from. However, the color was long considered to be unlucky in Ireland. Irish folklore holds that green is the favorite color of the fairies. In modern celebrations, however, the Irish use the clover green in celebrations.

The more modern drinking aspect of St. Patrick’s day happened in North America, not Ireland, until very recently. Up until the 1970s, St. Patrick’s was seen as a holy day only and pubs were closed. When that rule was lifted, more people went back to the tradition of feast and lifting a few drinks. A major St. Patrick’s festival is held in Dublin to bring tourists and locals together to celebrate Irish culture. So as my Great-grandad would have said: sláinte! (Cheers and get wasted)

Whiskey, music, dancing, rugby with an edge of cool castles: these are my kind of people. Could do without the Bono though.

History of Yoga: And Yoga Cats!

Part of a serious practice is corpse pose. Feel the ahhhhhh.

Yoga is the answer for a lot of my pain, mentally and physically. A good workout or a deep yoga nidra and I'm less likely to try and chew off my own arm, or someone else. But I'm not crazy and think it's going to cure all: not once have I heard a real teacher say, "Screw modern meds for your cancer of the eyelash, just do yoga." Recently I'm reading a lot of crap on line where they claim just that. I call bullshit.

I went to a class to get some help with my alignment (because if you do it wrong, it's all sorts of bad). There I asked my teacher what his understanding of the history of yoga. He said that while many people try to say it's ancient, and that's partly true. However, the modern form with all these funky town moves were invented in the 1960s. We had a great chat, and this article came out of our discussion. His basic points, and what texts I've been reading are pretty clear: it's not about the clothes, the props, the hip inner city studios, or putting your foot behind your head. But it is fun, there's cats!

Cookie the Buddha Cat in the beginnings of a forward fold.

You Keep Using That Word...

...but I don't know if you know what it means. Yoga is a Sanskrit term, the language of ancient India. In A History of Indian Philosophy, commentators on the ancient Sanskrit texts like the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, can't quite agree on its original meaning. The root yuj samādhau derived from either of two roots, yujir yoga (to yoke) or yuj samādhau (concentrate, concentration).

The term "yoga" has been applied to a variety of practices and methods. The majority are based in the Hindu schools of thought:  Jnana Yoga, Bhakti Yoga, Karma Yoga, Laya Yoga, Hatha Yoga, and Ashtanga Yoga (also called Raja Yoga.). I'm not going into all of them or you'll wonder if I'm a little yoga nuts, but all you need to know is that it's closely associated with the meditative practices in Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and yoga is viewed differently by each of these schools of Hindu philosophy. The earliest signs of yoga appear in ancient India. Evidence of yoga postures were found on artifacts that date back to 3000 B.C. Evidence of yoga is found in the oldest-existing text, Rig-Veda. Rig-Veda is a composition of hymns. Topics of the Rig-Veda include prayer, divine harmony, and greater being. But for me, the quote that sums it all up:

"The traditional purpose of Yoga, however, has always been to bring about a profound transformation in the person through the transcendence of the ego," (Feuerstein 3)

Yoga and Independence

To get an overall idea, my teacher directed me to the excellent material by Mark Singleton online and books. He writes that the modern practice is a branch of the giant tree of yoga. In India, the practice was focused less on the physical and more on Pranayama (expansion of the vital energy by means of breath), dharana (focus, or placement of the mental faculty), and nada (sound). At the end of the 19th century, yoga was introduced to Europe and North America by English educated Indians as a practice of meditation, breath and positive thinking. A lack of interest in poses was a high case, low caste issue, as the only ones who practiced them were mendicants who performed severe and rigorous postures for money, and partly to the centuries of hostility and ridicule by Western colonialists, journalists, and scholars.

Singleton believes that the fusion of poses and the mental came together in India as part of the struggle for national independence. By building better bodies, the leaders believed it would make for a better nation and improve the chances of success in the event "of a violent struggle against the colonizers". They used a wide variety of exercise systems melding Western areobatics with traditional Indian practices like wrestling. The name given to these strength-building regimes was “yoga.”

One nationalist physical culture reformist Manick Rao, blended European gymnastics and weight-resistance exercises with revived Indian techniques for combat and strength. Rao’s most famous student was Swami Kuvalayananda (1883-1966). During the 1920s, Kuvalayananda, along with his rival and gurubhai (“guru brother”) Sri Yogendra (1897-1989), blended asanas and indigenous Indian physical culture systems with the latest European techniques of gymnastics and naturopathy.The other highly influential figure in the development of modern asana practice in 20th-century India was, of course, T. Krishnamacharya (1888-1989), who studied at Kuvalayananda’s institute in the early 1930s and went on to teach some of the most influential global yoga teachers of the 20th century, like B.K.S. Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois, Indra Devi, and T.K.V. Desikachar.

I agree with Singleton 100 percent when he speaks on the purpose of knowing yoga's history:

Beyond mere history for history’s sake, learning about yoga’s recent past gives us a necessary and powerful lens for seeing our relationship with tradition, ancient and modern. At its best, modern yoga scholarship is an expression of today’s most urgently needed yogic virtue, viveka (“discernment” or “right judgment”). Understanding yoga’s history and tangled, ancient roots brings us that much closer to true, clear seeing. It may also help to move us to a more mature phase of yoga practice for the 21st century.

On the note of maturity...

 

They're Not Dolls: History of Action Figures

This week's history question comes from a fan of action figures: "How old are actions figures? Are they a recent invention? Did they have them in the ancient world?"

Boy playing with dolls goes way back people...

The first sort of action figure would be figurines: statuettes that represents a human,deity or an animal. That does not mean kids got to play with the statue of the baby Jesus. Unless you were like me and I kept stealing the little guy at Christmas out of his nativity scene. Figurines were and are for art or religious purposes. So no chewing on that miniature of Zeus now, ok?

When they have movable parts that can be posed, they are either dolls or action figures. The earliest example of a 'doll' is from Italy. In 2004, archaeologists dug up a 4,000-year-old stone doll head in the ruins of a village on the Italian island of Pantelleria. That the head wasn't found in a ceremonial ground made it different than most ancient human figures and suggests that it was probably a toy. It had curly hair and was buried with miniature kitchenware.

Action figures: A modern invention. 

 

A prototype GI Joe from 1963. He's seen a lot. Because war is hell, children.

While toy company Mattel was kicking ass with it's new Barbie dolls in the early 1960s, its competitor, Hasbro, realized they have nothing going on except Monopoly and Tonka. According to legend, a licensing agent named Stan Weston brought the concept to Don Levine at Hasbro, with the idea of creating a poseable soldier for boys. Hasbro saw its chance and in 1963, they began development on a military-themed line of 12" dolls that, like Barbie, could be accessorized with different outfits and equipment. He would be called G.I. Joe, the World War II shorthand symbol for the typical serviceman, or "Government-Issue Joe." The term doll was replaced with "Action Figure"by someone at Hasbro, because as we know, boys don't play with dolls. Please read this with a sarcastic tone.

Don Levine, who served in the Army in Korea, said he got the idea for the moveable figure as a way to honour veterans. G.I. Joe was launched in1964 during the Christmas shopping season and was a big seller at $4 apiece.“Don Levine and his team took it from a good concept to a great concept,” said Alan Hassenfeld, Hasbro’s former CEO whose father, Merrill, oversaw G.I. Joe’s development when he ran the company. Levine died in 2014.

The plan called for a different figure for each branch of the military: Soldier, Sailor, Marine, and Pilot. Sales the first three years were enormous, and Hasbro aggressively rolled out new products that evolved the line, like the Five Star Jeep, Mercury Space Capsule, Deep Sea Diver, footlocker, Green Beret, and Soldiers of the World. Buoyed by their success, Hasbro even tried a few new products, like the G.I. Nurse which failed badly.G.I. Joe retained his military theme from 1964 until 1968.

The original collection,not including any reference to the Village People or YMCA.

Many other companies developed their own version of G.I. Joe as well. My brother Steve recalls playing with Major Matt Mason, a astronaut brought out as competition by Mattel in the 1960s.

But the end of the decade, sales were faltering, as they were for all military-themed toys.G.I. Joe retired from military service and became an Adventurer with a beard. He now adventured in outer space, the far-flung African deserts and jungles, and the unexplored undersea world. No one bought it and the brand continued to falter until production ceased in 1976.

Joe is Reborn But Loses Himself

 

I really wanted that Darth Vader case for some reason.

Action figures changed dramatically in the late 1970s with their shrinking in size. Toy manufacture Kenner won the rights to produce toys for a new film called Star Wars. They decided on creating a 3-3/4" toy line, which became insanely popular. It made the newer, smaller size the industry standard. Instead of a single character with outfits that changed for different applications, toy lines included teams of characters with special functions.In response, GI Joe was re-launched in 1982 as a smaller 3 3/4" action figure. The line was also re imagined as an elite military unit dedicated to defending freedom against the evil Cobra organization. So GI Joe was no longer one dude killing commies, but a whole unit of awesome unleashed on terrorist. Cool.

Here's more on the history of GI Joe, if you like that sort of thing.

Not So Silent Night: The History of Christmas Carols

Carol book from 1950s, Snow Golem eats kids later.

Christmas carols can mean the tender tones of choirs of angels singing, or the local punk band screaming Rudolph the Red Nose Cowboy. It's really your choice. I prefer the more traditional ones, despite my lack of personal interest in a supreme being. But I am interested in all things historical, including why we warble carols at this time of year.

I love etymology as much as I love history. The Oxford Dictionary states that carol or carole is a medieval word of French and Anglo-Norman origin. It was believed to mean a dance song or a circle dance accompanied by singing. They were first just hymns sung in a christian church. When the Catholic church first started using hymns in the 300s, the songs were pretty boring. The introduction of rhyme, along with the cultivation of pagan lore created the first carol sometime in the 1100s: “Veni, redemptor gentium," or “Savior of the Nations, Come,” attributed to Milanese Bishop St. Ambrose. But they were sung in Latin, and not the local languages, which was about as exciting as drinking fat free eggnog.

The awesome patron saint of Animals and decent music, St. Francis of Assisi, recognized the unpopularity of Christmas hymns, and set out to change it by transforming the holiday through theatrics, music, and for the first time, carols sung in audiences’ native languages. The abandonment of Latin in the thirteenth century was popularized in nativity scenes and productions across Europe. And there was much rejoicing.

Christmas carols in English first appear in a 1426 book by a chaplain named John Awdlay, who lists twenty five "caroles of Cristemas", probably sung by groups of wassailers. Wassailing comes from the Old English term "waes hale, meaning "be well". It was a Saxon custom that, at the start of each year, the lord of the manor would shout 'waes hael'. The assembled crowd would reply 'drink and be healthy'.

Carol singers in the mid 1800s still looking for some Christmas beer, I mean cheer.

The tradition was carried on by people going from door to door, bearing good wishes and a wassail bowl of hot, spiced ale. In return people in the houses gave them drink, money and Christmas special foods like mince pies, and they believed they would receive good luck for the year to come. Carols then are really booze songs.
 
When Oliver Cromwell and the Puritans came to power in England in 1647, the celebration of Christmas and singing carols was stopped. However, the carols survived as people still sang them in secret. Carols remained mainly unsung until Victorian times, when two men called William Sandys and Davis Gilbert collected lots of old Christmas music from villages in England. People revitalized the practice so much that popular books like Dickens' A Christmas Carol with the carolers being scared off by old Scrooge.

Bring on the tunes, the cheer, and the malnourishment of 1860s Christmas. At least they had a tree.

How about the origins of my favorite carols sung today, Silent Night? In 1818 the carol "Stille Nacht! Heilige Nacht" was performed in the village church in Oberndorf, Austria at Midnight Mass. It was written by the assistant pastor, Father Joseph Mohr, and the choir director, Franz Xaver Gruber, to be accompanied on the guitar, an usual decision. On each of the six verses, the choir repeated the last two lines in four-part harmony. It was meant to be a nice song for the local folks to sing, but it's popularity grew as folk singers started performing it elsewhere. Too bad no one believed them that they wrote it until proof int eh form of an original surfaced in 1994. Good thing they had day jobs.