Of Good King Wenceslas and Government Charity

Just past Easter and far enough away from Christmas I suppose that it is safe enough for me to write a few words in criticism of what I think is my least favorite Christmas carol.  I love Christmas carols and have many favorites.  There is one, however, that I particularly do not like:  “Good King Wenceslas.”  As I understand the case, the carol was written in Britain in the 1800s based upon legend and traditions dating from many centuries earlier.

Upon reflection I have to admit that I very much like the tune and often find myself whistling it, despite the fact that I very much dislike the words.  Actually, the words can be kind of fun, too, but I find their message repulsive.

Here are the words and message, or at least the first three stanzas, where most of the harm lies.  First stanza:

Good King Wenceslas looked out

On the feast of Stephen

When the snow lay round about

Deep and crisp and even.

Brightly shone the moon that night

Though the frost was cruel

When a poor man came in sight

Gathering winter fuel.

All very pretty.  A wealthy man of power enjoying a holiday associated with charity for the poor.  It is night time, with the moon shining on a smooth landscape of deep, white snow.  It is cruelly cold, but of course the king is surely nice and warm, enjoying the beautifully charming view.  The cherry on this lovely winter dessert is provided by the quaint and appropriate arrival of a poor man trudging through the snow. 

It is almost impossible to have a Christmas story nowadays without someone in poverty to bless the tale.  Poverty is so worshiped at Christmas time that it makes one wonder whether the poor in the stories are poor enough, as if to make one glad for the ready supply of poor people and even tremble at the thought of the supply ever becoming short.  No problem with that in Europe, especially old Europe.  And of course traditional Asian societies and all but few modern African ones rest upon having large and ready supplies of poor people, with the modern doctrines of communism and socialism superimposed upon them to institutionalize poverty and ensure that its alleviation can be an eternal goal ever to be invoked but never to be achieved.  One of the world’s criticisms of America is that our “poor” live so much better than even the well to do of much of the rest of the world, but the current American presidential team has been working mightily on addressing that criticism.

It is very important that you take note of what the poor man of poverty is doing on this bitter cold and crisp evening, the very night after Christmas.  He is gathering firewood, something that it would be more than unpleasant to be without in such a cruel frost.

With the second verse the plot deepens:

“Hither page and stand by me

If thou know’st it, telling

Yonder peasant, who is he?

Where and what his dwelling?”

“Sire, he lives a good league hence

Underneath the mountain

Right against the forest fence

By Saint Agnes’ fountain.”

This tells us much, far more I think than many who sing this song perceive.  In this oppressive cold darkness with only the cold moon for light the peasant had wandered a good three miles from his home in search of something to burn to keep himself warm, three miles (the English league is 5280 yards).  Moreover, it could be expected that the home three miles away was colder still, being in close proximity to "the mountain."  Perhaps these points are not missed by the casual caroler, but does the caroler also note that the peasant lives next to a forest?  As we look at the next stanza, keep in mind this question:  why would someone who lives next to a forest walk a good three miles in search of something to burn?

“Bring me bread and bring me wine,

Bring me pine logs hither.

Thou and will I see him dine

When we bear him thither.”

Page and monarch forth they went,

Forth they went together

Through the rude wind’s wild lament

And the bitter weather.

It is at this point in the song where it is intended that we who sing or hear the words are to begin to be warmed.  Touched by the predicament of the poor peasant, wandering a good three miles the day after Christmas to gather firewood just to stay warm on that bitterly frigid night (we are informed in this verse that the cold was made intense by a rude wind), the good king not only sees to the provision of firewood for the poor man but deigns to deliver the wood himself, along with bread and wine.  This is the core of the story of the song, confirmed in the remaining verses by the miracle of the page, nearly freezing to death on the king’s errand of mercy, finding warmth by stepping in the very snowy footsteps of his master.

Before I continue with my criticism, I will add that I entirely agree with the last lines of the carol, the moral of the story:

Therefore, Christian men, be sure

Wealth or rank possessing

Ye who now will bless the poor

Shall yourselves find blessing.

This is all very true, demonstrated repeatedly throughout history.  I would add that any person, of any rank or means, who gives of himself to bless the poor will find blessings in return, occasionally blessings on earth and always blessings where moth and rust do not corrupt.

And giving of oneself is the point.  Was Good King Wenceslas really giving of himself?  This was the king, giving of the royal resources.  I seriously doubt that the king baked the bread, or pressed the wine, or chopped the wood that he was providing.  They very likely came from some other poor peasants (in some degree even from this peasant himself) in the form of a tax by one name or another.  It is all very nice to be generous with other people’s sweat.  All very Old World, nice and feudal.  That was the way of things in those days. 

Moreover, and in answer to the question that I posed earlier, the poor peasant had trudged three miles, looking for something in the deep snow that he might be able to burn, when he lived right next to the forest, because the forests all belonged to the royalty.  It was a serious crime for any peasant—regardless of how close he lived—to “poach” either firewood or game out of that forest.

That is to say, that Good King Wenceslas, overcome by a moment of pity, was acting to relieve for a moment a misery that he himself participated in causing and inflicting.  Given the age, I am sure that the poor man was appropriately grateful as the king and his page watched the poor man eat in his hovel, and all were appropriately warmed in heart and mind as the king returned to his castle for the rest of the winter.  The perpetuation of the legend has assured that the king received a bountiful blessing of good public relations for his gesture.

This all may be well and good for the land of the nineteenth century British monarchy, but any American should be ashamed to sing this song, other than in mockery.  Our Founders fought a revolution and gave their best efforts, and some gave their lives, to throw off monarchy and end royal forests and feudal domains.  They recoiled at the practices of corrupt monarchies who tried to ward off grievances against royal prerogatives and taxes by tossing the occasional crumbs of “charity” to the masses.  They saw through the game of taxing the people so that the governors could provide a few well advertised benefits to the many while quietly heaping largesse on their cronies.

None of that would be tolerated today in America.  Or would it?  How about a nation hungry for energy while plentiful supplies of energy lie locked up under government-owned lands, and all that the government offers are windmills and algae farms?  How about trillion dollar “stimulus” appropriations bills that build a bridge or a road here and there, while administration cronies walk off with billions of dollars in grants and loans not expected to be paid back?  How about major taxes on job providers to pay for some more government handouts while driving the job providers to cut back or close up shop?  The charity of modern governments is no more virtuous than it was at the hands of the old benevolent despots.

At least in the land of We the People our leaders do not inherit their jobs and can be thrown out for misrule.  Yet, the trick worked in Europe for Good King Wenceslas.  Will America’s own Good King Wenceslas be celebrating another Feast of Stephen in the White House, or will he be packing on Boxing Day?

Of Easter and the Constitution

One morning in Tennessee, 150 years ago, many thousand U.S. soldiers were quietly enjoying breakfast on a beautiful spring Sabbath, thinking of little more than passing a quiet Palm Sunday and sometime soon thereafter continuing the destruction of the rebel army in nearby Corinth, Mississippi.  That was, until the rebels came calling and rudely interrupted breakfast.

By the end of the battle the next day the rebels were in full retreat, but over 13,000 Union soldiers were dead, wounded, or missing, and nearly 11,000 rebels had met the same fate.  Shiloh turned out to be a major victory for the United States Army, opening up nearly the whole western part of the rebel confederacy to invasion.  The impact of the victory was missed by much of the population of the loyal states, however, whose senses reeled from a bill of losses of husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers never seen before in the life of the Republic.  General U.S. Grant, whose coolness under pressure made the victory possible, was mercilessly criticized in the press.

The nation little understood that the casualties of Shiloh would be only the first of many tens of thousands more who would suffer from civil war in the land of Washington and Jefferson before 1862 would be over.  Then there would be 1863, 1864, and 1865 to follow, running the tally of destruction ever higher.  In 1865, near the end of the war, Abraham Lincoln summed up in his marvelous second inaugural address—for a term of office that would last the rest of his life, less than 6 weeks—“Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. . . . Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding.”

All Americans today benefit from that profound victory and the others that brought an end to the rebellion and that upheld the Constitution.  It was a strange and new thing for the world that the words on a piece of paper, written by men of an earlier generation, could create a system of government and affect so many lives.  It was the lives of those who fought to sustain the Constitution that gave it that life, men who insisted on living by those words and organizing a free society within the protections of its provisions.

The same is true today, as with each generation:  we are called upon to uphold that Constitution, those words on a piece of paper, and hand it on down, as strong as ever, to our children.  Those men who died at Shiloh cannot do our work for us today.  Neither can the men who fought and died in Europe and the South Pacific and on many other places of battle.  Just as important as those who died to preserve the Constitution are those who have lived to maintain the Constitution.  They, however, could do no more than pass that freedom under constitutional law to us.  We have it today.  What will we do with it?

As Ronald Reagan taught in his 1967 inaugural address as Governor of California,

Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction.

We must not let it become extinct.  It is under challenge from enemies without, who hate the freedom and worth of the individual enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, and it is endangered by those within the nation—some in very high places of power and responsibility— who see the Constitution as a barrier in the way of their plans to replace individual rights, value, initiative, and worth with the ages old system where the government and the governors run the lives of the people and decide who wins, who loses, who gets what, and how much.

Our forebears fought a revolution and crafted a new system in the New World to get away from that rule by the few.  The lesson we need to learn anew, is that it is the job of the many individuals who make up each generation to win that freedom again, because there will always be those eager to impose their will on others and use and direct and take the resources that they themselves did not earn, who will want to have their way with other people’s money and other people’s lives.

No one’s sacrifice is the same as anyone else’s.  Read no unfairness in that, because to sacrifice is to absorb unfairness.  But we cannot avoid the call to sacrifice.  Not even Christ, the greatest of all, could.

As we celebrate Easter we should remember the sacrifices of the Savior, by which He absorbed all unfairness.  Those sacrifices made Easter possible, by which all that is wrong is overcome and ultimate freedom bought for each person born into this world.  We are privileged by Christ to be given the chance to join in that effort to preserve and extend the blessings of freedom to our families, our friends, and to people we do not know and may never meet.

At Gethsemane, then Golgotha, and from the Garden Tomb, Christ has created the framework that makes freedom possible.  He inspired the founders who built a nation of freedom as the beacon to all mankind that it has been for over 200 years.  As our Easter worship, let us take up the last call given by Abraham Lincoln to the nation as the Constitution was reaffirmed in struggle, who recognized the great value of America for the world:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.