Why Is Christmas Celebrated on December 25? (mostly)

 

 

 

 The above question may have occurred to many of us at one time or another so the Editorial Board of the Gnus Almanac, decided to do a  bit of research.  The Bible offers a few clues.  

Celebrations of Jesus’ Nativity are not mentioned in the Gospel of Mark or the Epistles of Paul, or Acts.   The date is not given nor is the time of year. The biblical reference to shepherds tending their flocks at night when they hear the news of Jesus’ birth (Luke 2:8) might suggest the spring lambing season while in the cold month of December, on the other hand, sheep might well have been corralled.  Still, most scholars remind us that we are extracting a precise but incidental detail from a narrative whose focus is theological rather than calendrical. 

There is not much extra-biblicaly (our term) either.   Evidence from the first and second century is, surprise, fairly sparse. There is no mention of birth celebrations in the writings of early Christian writers such as Irenaeus (c. 130–200) or Tertullian (c. 160–225). Origen of Alexandria (c. 165–264) went so far as to mock Roman celebrations of birth anniversaries, dismissing them as “pagan” practices which is a strong indication that Jesus’ birth was not marked with similar festivities at that place and time. As far as we can tell, Christmas was not feted at all at this point although there are rumors of Black Friday sales events, Amazon Prime Days, and the annual trampling of Walmart employees.

Jesus’ ministry, miracles, Passion and Resurrection were what interested first- and early-second-century A.D. Christian writers.  But over time, Jesus’ origins would become of increasing interest. This shift can be seen in the New Testament.  The earliest writings—Paul (Epistles)c. 48-64 AD and Mark c. 70 AD make no mention of Jesus' birth.  However, the Gospels of Matthew – c. 66–70 AD, and Luke  c.85–90 AD, provide well-known but quite different accounts of the event—although neither specifies a date. In the second century further details of Jesus’ birth and childhood were related in apocryphal writings such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas c. 180 AD, and the Proto-Gospel of James c. 145 AD. These texts provide everything from the names of Jesus’ grandparents to the details of his education……..but not the date of his birth. 

Finally, in about 200 A.D., a Christian teacher in Egypt made a reference to the date Jesus was born. According to Clement of Alexandria, several different days had been proposed by various Christian groups. Surprising as it may seem, Clement doesn’t mention December 25 at all.  Clement wrote “There are those who have determined not only the year of our Lord’s birth, but also the day; and they say that it took place in the 28th year of (the emperor), Augustus.  (Augustus became Emperor in 27 B.C so that would put the year of Jesus’ birth at 1-3), and in the 25th day of (the Egyptian month) Pachon (May 20 in our Gregorian calendar]) … Another school of thought says He was born on the 24th or 25th of Pharmuthi (April 20 or 21). Glad we could clear that up for you. “Why a child of four could understand this.  Someone fetch a child of four”………..Groucho Marx. 

Obviously, there was great uncertainty, but also a considerable amount of interest, in dating Jesus’ birth during the late second century. Within a hundred years, however, we find references to two dates that were widely recognized—and now also celebrated—as Jesus’ birthday: December 25 in the Western Roman Empire and January 6 in the East (especially in Egypt and Asia Minor). The modern Armenian church continues to celebrate Christmas on January 6. For most Christians, however, December 25 would prevail, while January 6 eventually came to be known as the Feast of the Epiphany, commemorating the arrival of the magi in Bethlehem.  The period between became the holiday season later known as the 12 days of Christmas, which is all the more reason for 12 drummers drumming, not to mention a partridge in a pear tree.  

The earliest mention of December 25 as Jesus’ birthday comes from a mid-fourth-century Roman almanac that lists the death dates of various Christian bishops and martyrs. The first date listed, December 25, is marked: natus Christus in Betleem Judeae: “Christ was born in Bethlehem of Judea.” In about 400 A.D, St. Augustine mentioned a local dissident Christian group, the Donatists, who apparently kept Christmas festivals on December 25.  So, almost 300 years after Jesus was born, we finally find people observing his birth in mid-winter. But how had they settled on the dates December 25 and January 6? There are two theories.  The first is extremely popular, while the other is less often heard outside scholarly circles, though far more ancient.  

The most common theory about the origins of the Christmas date(s) is that it was borrowed from pagan celebrations.   The Romans had their mid-winter Saturnalia festival in late December; barbarian peoples of northern and western Europe kept holidays at similar times. To top it off, in 274 B.C the Roman emperor Aurelian established a feast of the birth of Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), on December 25. Christmas, the argument goes, is really a spin-off from these pagan solar festivals. According to this theory, early Christians deliberately chose these dates to encourage the spread of Christmas and Christianity throughout the Roman world. If Christmas looked like a pagan holiday, more pagans would be open to both the holiday and the God whose birth it celebrated. But………………this theory of Christmas’s origins has its problems. Christian authors of the time do note a connection between the solstice and Jesus’ birth.  St. Ambrose (c. 339–397), for example, described Christ as the True Sun, who outshone the fallen gods of the old order. Early Christian writers never hinted at any recent calendrical engineering, and they clearly didn’t think the date was chosen by the church. Rather they saw the coincidence as a providential sign, as natural proof that God had selected Jesus over the false pagan gods. So where did the “let’s connect to pagan feasts” idea come from?   In the 12th century, a marginal note on a manuscript of the writings of the Syriac biblical commentator Dionysius bar-Salibi stated that in ancient times the Christmas holiday was actually shifted from January 6 to December 25 so that it fell on the same date as the pagan Sol Invictus holiday.  In the 18th and 19th centuries, Bible scholars inspired by the new study of comparative religions latched on to this idea.  They claimed that because the early Christians didn’t know when Jesus was born, they simply assimilated the pagan solstice festival for their own purposes, claiming it as the time of the Messiah’s birth and celebrating it accordingly. Et voila! So we have a supposition built on a marginal note in an obscure book equals popular theory. More recent studies have shown that many of the holiday’s modern trappings do reflect pagan customs, but they were incorporated much later as Christianity expanded into northern and western Europe. The Christmas tree, for example, has been linked with late medieval druidic practices. This has only encouraged modern thinkers to assume that the date, too, must be pagan. 

The other theory accounting for December 25, dates Jesus’ birth from the date of his death during Passover.  This idea was first suggested by French scholar Louis Duchesne in the early 20th century and later fully developed by American Thomas Talley.  But they were certainly not the first to note a connection between the traditional date of Jesus’ death and his birth. Jesus’ conception carried with it the promise of salvation through his death. It may be no coincidence, then, that the early church celebrated Jesus’ conception and death on the same calendar day: March 25, exactly nine months before December 25.  Around 200 A.D. Tertullian of Carthage reported the calculation that the 14th of Nisan (the day of the crucifixion according to the Gospel of John) in the year Jesus died was equivalent to March 25 in the Roman (solar) calendar. Again,  March 25 is, of course, nine months before December 25; it was later recognized as the Feast of the Annunciation—the commemoration of Jesus’ conception. Thus, Jesus was believed to have been conceived and crucified on the same day of the year.  Exactly nine months later, Jesus was born, on December 25. This idea appeared in an anonymous Christian treatise titled On Solstices and Equinoxes, which came from fourth-century North Africa. The treatise stated: “Therefore our Lord was conceived on the eighth of the kalends of April in the month of March (March 25), which is the day of the passion of the Lord and of his conception. For on that day he was conceived on the same he suffered.” 

Based on this theory, the treatise dates Jesus’ birth to the winter solstice. Augustine, who was from North Africa, was familiar with this association. In On the Trinity (c. 399–419) he wrote: “For he (Jesus) is believed to have been conceived on the 25th of March, upon which day also he suffered; so the womb of the Virgin, in which he was conceived, where no one of mortals was begotten, corresponds to the new grave in which he was buried, wherein was never man laid, neither before him nor since. But he was born, according to tradition, upon December the 25th.”   

And there you have it. 

Ultimately, December 25 was chosen, perhaps as early as A.D. 273. By 336 A.D., the Roman church calendar definitively records a nativity celebration by Western Christians on this date.  Eastern churches maintained the January 6 commemoration together with Epiphany until sometime in the fifth or sixth centuries when the 25th day of December became the widely accepted holiday. Only the Armenian church held to the original celebration of Christ's birth with Epiphany on January 6. 

A third theory is that December 25 was chosen so that 20th and 21st century advertisements and commercials could feature snow. 

The actual term Christmas appeared in Old English as early as 1038 A.D. as Cristes Maesse, and later as Cristes-messe in 1131 A.D. It means "the Mass of Christ." This name was established by the Christian church to disconnect the holiday and its customs from pagan rites probably because of St. Augustine’s statement, "We hold this day holy, not like the pagans because of the birth of the sun, but because of Him who made it." 

A few centuries ago Christmas was not the peaceful, yet hectic, busy and occasionally stressful  family holiday we know today. Back then, Christmas' proximity to Saturnalia resulted in it its absorbing some of the Roman festival's excesses such as a carnival-like period of feasting, reveling, gambling, gift-giving and upended social positions. Enslaved people could don their masters' clothes and refuse orders and children had command over adults. Christmas in the Middle Ages featured feasting, drinking, riotous behavior and caroling for money. There would be a reaction. Religious Puritans disapproved of such excess in the name of Christ and considered the holiday blasphemous. Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, went so far as to cancel Christmas when he seized control of the country in 1645. Decorations were forbidden and soldiers patrolled the street in search of celebrants cooking meat. Those happy go lucky Puritans in the American colonies took a similarly sour view of Christmas as Yuletide (note: Yule comes from the Norse December season), festivities were outlawed in Boston from 1659 through 1681. It took a hundred years or so for things to calm down during the late 18th century and continuing throughout the 19th century. Christmas began to take on the family associations it has today. In the U.S, Washington Irving (he of Legend of Sleepy Hollow fame), wrote popular stories about Christmas that appropriated old traditions, presenting them as the customs for the common people. Queen Victoria's German husband, Prince Albert, brought a Christmas tree to Windsor Castle in 1846. An engraving of the couple with their children in front of the tree popularized the custom throughout England and the United States.

Christmas has also become a secular celebration of family — one that many non-practicing Christians and people of other religions are comfortable accepting as their own. This secular nature of Christmas was officially acknowledged in 1870 when the United States Congress made it a federal holiday. 

Merry Christmas.  It’s a great day and a great celebration.

 

Sources - Biblical Archaeological Society, Christianity, About.com – Mary Fairchild, ChristianHistory.net -Elesha Coffman,  

How Christmas Works - Sarah Dowdey

 

The Community Yard Sale............“Officially, I’ve Bought More Than I Sold”

 

“One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”

 

This year we failed Yard Sale 101. Of course, we fail Yard Sale 101 every year.  Our profit of $31 covered the price of two drinks as we dined out that night. The $31 in terms of per hour pay for the time we spent preparing for the yard sale and sale itself, came out just about $7 per hour divided in two for the two of us, so $3.50 per hour (before deductions for health insurance and pension and IRA) which is just above the minimum wage of 1990.  However, we enjoyed chatting with our friends and neighbors. 

 

While the exact origin of the idiom is unknown, “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure” started emerging in English during the 17th century. At the time, the proverb went as “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”. Along came Hector Urquhart with his introduction to his 1860's Popular Tales of the West Highlands: “one man's rubbish may be another's treasure.” Urquhart’s follow up work, a sequel, Not So Popular Tales of the West Highlands: ended up selling for a farthing at an 1861 rummage sale. Garage/Yard sales originated as ‘rommages,’ which was a discount sale of unclaimed cargo at shipyards in the early 1800’s. “Rommage” was a nautical term relating to how cargo was packed into the hold of a ship.  The first “rummage” sales were held at the docks and cargo that was unclaimed or damaged was sold at a discounted rate. Our word rummage literally means to search unsystematically through a mass of things. The etymological origins are from middle Dutch and old French. When the ship came into port, the sailors took all the cargo that was left over or damaged and held a sale on the pier. Voila! 

 

“I went to a yard sale. I've always wanted to have a yard.

Turns out they were actually selling three feet . . . used to belong to some rabbit. “ ……Unknown.

The 20th century changed the nature of yard sales. Instead of leaving rummage sales to churches and charities, people started selling their own belongings to make some extra money. This was the beginning of what we know as the American yard sale. This type of event became important in times of economic crisis, like that of the Great Depression.

The need and appeal of yard sales took a nosedive after World War II. Since the country was no longer in survival mode, the economy thrived, and people could buy newer, bigger and better stuff.  Americans didn’t want secondhand items - no, no, no.  They wanted big houses, cars, and televisions. The problem, of course, came when they ran out of room for showy things. Now they needed to make space for the new and improved showy things. This is an important stage in the history of yard sales since this is when the term “garage sale” also came into being. Why? Because those yard sales that were once a necessity for survival, now evolved into a way to clear out your attic space or your garage.

 

During the 50’s and 60’s, these sales grew to be family and neighborhood events. Garage and yard terms are used interchangeably, although technically, are different based on their location.  A garage sale is within a garage, under a carport, or in a building separate from the home. Or, you could be selling a garage. A yard sale is held in an open space and may have tents or canopies set with tables of items beneath. While not available at our Community Yard Sale, we’ll be noting some of the rather bizarre items available at other sales - such as those prosthetic legs, barely used, and they could be yours for $20.

 

Our Lake in the Clouds Community Yard Sale is held at the picnic grounds by the lake.  There are about 15 standard size picnic tables with benches, in addition to a pavilion. It’s about 50 yards from the entrance so you can’t miss it.  The prime motivation for our participation in the sale was my desire to get rid of our electric leaf blower, our electric weed wacker and a 28” Travel Pro suitcase (I had purchased a new one in anticipation of the sale). Margaret, on the other hand, came up with an assortment of useful, practical and attractive decorative items. While neighbors had as much as three carloads of items, our meager offering, which took up ½ of the trunk of our car, took up an entire table if we left 8 -10 inches of space between each item. The community sale advertising posters were posted in town and on Facebook and was advertised as 9-3.  We arrived at 8:45 thinking we’d probably be among the first sellers.  Wrong!  Only one table was still available, and the sale was in full swing. “Occupied” tables featured the usual potpourri of items but there were several specialty tables, one was exclusively 1,000-piece jig saw puzzles, another featured small, framed prints (no dogs playing poker), another was only clothing.  They even had a hanging clothes rack.  We learned that some people had arrived at 7:30 to set up! We also learned that if you have a yard sale or a garage sale buyers will show up early to get the good stuff before everyone else arrives, which they did today. Those early arrivers and leavers will never know that the missed out on an electric leaf blower for $10. Our leaf blower became quite itinerant.

 

In 2002, C. Daniel Rhodes of Alabama, established Garage Sale Day as the 2^nd Saturday in August after watching his neighbors hold garage sales every weekend. Clearly his neighbors had lots of things to sell.  No one knows who put C. Daniel in charge as there is there is no presidential proclamation or congressional resolution declaring this a true national day.  There is even a World’s Longest Yard Sale. The 127 Yard Sale is an annual event that takes place the first Thursday-Sunday in August each year. The route spans 6 states; Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama and is 690 miles long. And yes, it is on rt. 127…..until you get to Georgia.  It is the same road, but it has a lot of different numbers and left and right turns.  It  can get confusing and a wrong turn may take you to Saskatchewan for the snow sale. You may even find a painting of a cat Mona Lisa, or a chair made entirely of tennis balls ($200) as you shop. Each year, Americans host an estimated 6.5 to 9 million yard/garage sales.

 

We’re fairly certain that those early “rommages” probably did not include our offerings of  the fabulous electric leaf blower, the electric weed wacker, a 50ft extension cord to be sold with either of the previous two items since they won’t work without one of any length, a “ high speed” portable charger for “phones, laptops and iPads”, a pair of walkie talkies, (after all, one walkie talkie would only be good for people who hear voices in their heads),  two patterned Safavieh rugs , one 3x4 and one 4x6, two 5 inch glass Mikasa candle sticks, a 4x6 inch leather box containing 2 decks of playing cards and a note pad, a translucent glass cutting board with rose design, the 28” Travel Pro suitcase, 3 decorative brass egg holders and a small decorative brass vase from India, a beautiful yellow china tea kettle with rose patterns,  2 weed wacker spools of weed wacking thread still in original packaging to go with or separately, our electric weed wacker,  a 15 yr. old electronic solitaire game Margaret never opened, two  18” handmade wood shelves with towel holder,  No CDs!. 2 veggie grill baskets for grill, one in original packaging, the other slightly used just once, another china tea kettle with pastel colored sailboat in sunset decoration and 3 hand painted tiles from Portugal. I later learned that every yard sale everywhere has tea kettles, cups, mugs and drinking glasses. It seems to be a basic rule.  And……..well that was it.  It was a pretty sad compared to the lavish setups at other tables. 

 

So, after taking about 5 minutes to bring our fabulous sale items from car to table, we waved to all our friends at tables around us and sat and waited for the rush of buyers.  And we waited.  And we waited.  And we waited. I noticed that some folks were into selling mode hawking their items.  We waited.  Buyers sailed past us like the sailboat on the teapot. Margaret got up to walk around and chat.  I manned the fort. She returned briefly to remove the empty box for the leaf blower that I had placed on the table next to the tea kettle. She looked inside before putting it under the table, reached in and pulled out something while exclaiming, “look, it came with a leaf”.  The day before, I had informed our landscaper that I would be selling the leaf blower.  He said, “no one uses those plug-in electric ones anymore”.  Hah! What does he know. His words would resonate during the day, however. One guy came by and said he couldn’t decide between the leaf blower and the bike that our friends, Jerry and Marie, were selling. Both were $10.  He took the bike. I moved the leaf blower to the end of the bench.

 

Our friend Sharon came by.  She explained that she, her daughter, and the two grandchildren were there because those 10- and 12-year-olds wanted to participate and sell their stuff. The 10-year-old girl sold more than we did but she also spent most her time buying things. Margaret even bought two items from her.  Anyway, Sharon came by to chat and mid-sentence, as I was describing the wonders of the leaf blower, she looked up and said ‘ooh, look, a pink and white striped folding beach chair with a canopy’. She never finished her sentence and was gone leaving me holding the leaf blower. The chair had some strange mystical power and pulled her over to Jerry and Marie’s multi-table sale. Jerry went into sales mode, demonstrating how to open and close the folding chair.  Eagerly, Sharon bought the chair for $5. I moved the leaf blower and weed wacker to a better location on the table.

I now believe our fabulous items were overpriced.  We never go to yard sales so…….How does one set prices? – for some we checked what we paid. Evidently, experienced yard sale sellers know how to do this.  I note that at some other yard sale somewhere, people had purchased pictures of giant birds with laser beam eyes for $50 or a painting on velvet of a clown comprised of vegetables, or an ‘N Sync’ candle or a taxidermy of the rear end of a squirrel mounted on a wood plaque. Yet, I couldn’t sell the weed wacker. 

 

I went into a short-lived sales pitch mode.  I rebranded the leaf blower as a “portable air mover”, good for heating legs (it was 52 degrees), clearing out nasal passages, keeping food warm at barbeques, handy for repelling insects, powering a becalmed sailboat (if you have a really long chord and I just happened to have one available for $2), or removing ear wax.  Location is important in sales, so I kept locating it in different areas to attract attention. The weed wacker got moved too. Margaret would then return and silently put it /them on the picnic table bench rather than the table surface and leave to continue socializing. I put the leaf blower on top of the leaf blower box that had a picture of the leaf blower on it. I felt it was a subtle sales message.

 

Our first sale was the rugs which went from $10 each to two for $15.  This after we unrolled them for inspection and assured the lady that no, we did not have pets. The 50ft. extension cord went for $2 so I was left with the now cordless weed wacker and the leaf blower.  Then things got quiet again.  With our scanty offerings people glanced rather than browsed. Some of my friends stopped by during a lull in our sales. I note that we were there for 4 hours, and 3 hrs. and 45 minutes of the sale were lulls. I went into sales pitch mode again.  “Want a suitcase to carry the items or clothing you’ve bought?”  “If anything sticks out of the suitcase, I have this weed wacker for you”. No one bought.  One guy said “where are your CD’s? I liked the ones you had last time”.  I didn’t bring any because at one “Do’s and Don’ts” at a yard sale item I saw that you should not sell CD’s. Unfortunately, when I looked at the article again, it was don’t BUY CDs (they may be flawed) so that cost me a few dollars. 

 

As I mentioned, it was 52° in mid-August, so while advising anyone near us that “Next year we should have this during the summer”, I again mentioned that the leaf blower was available for warming oneself although I didn’t mention that I no longer had the extension cord. Someone purchased the decorative glass cutting board.  Things were looking up. Encouraged, I went into another sales pitch when someone came within the proximity of the table. Margaret, who was nearby, overheard me and gently reminded me “no, you don’t reduce the price until they make you an offer.”

By now, many people at our Community Yard Sale were buying things from each other. Surprisingly, we had a walkie talkie sale. The guy cross-examined us (Margaret was back, thank goodness), about bands and such and we kept saying we had no idea about bands that was why we were selling it.  We didn’t mention it was 17 years old. After a seemingly endless series of questions, he offered $3 (we were asking $5).  I said, “for 8 I’ll throw in the portable charger (we were asking $10)”.  He took both. Our 2 long stemmed red wine glasses decorated with grapes and vines and the saying “Life is too short to drink bad wine” went for free to the girlfriend of the son of the lady at the next table (he is in the military). 

 

Here, I should note that pre-sale research indicated there are many items that shoppers should not purchase at a yard sale.  I refer to them as Cootie Collectors: helmets, child car seats, wet suits and swimsuits, mattresses, computers and tablets, shoes, sheets and bedding, baby bottles, untested electronics, makeup, stuffed animals, paint, and other household chemicals.  Also, avoid hypodermic needles, used toothbrushes, half used rolls of toilet paper, used underwear, opened bottles of medicine, children, aging grandparents, used flip-flops, used plungers, unwanted spouses, upholstered furniture, dentures, and a 1970 bottle of Wishbone salad dressing. 

I would advise you that if you want to buy an urn, always check the inside and ascertain that there have been no deaths (pets included) in the family before making your purchase.

I moved the leaf blower to the other end of the bench. 

 

A few hours into the sale, two professionals - one an antiques buyer, the other his bearer -showed up. You could tell he was a pro because he didn’t glance at most items as he moved quickly from table to table (we didn’t even rate a glance).  However, he had the eye and knew what he was looking for. He couldn’t have been at our sale for more than 15 minutes as he marched around, but he bought quite a few items.  None from us.  He was a fast walker.  He would buy something, pay, and then have his bearer take it back to his truck. He purchased items from the lady at the next table. “It’s a bubble mirror” he said to his bearer. Learning that her husband is an antique collector, he gave her his card for his shop. I told her to wait a few days and go to the store and see was he was selling her stuff for. Who knows how many yard sales (and there were quite a few within a 5-mile radius) he visited that day.  I asked Jerry if I could move the leaf blower to his display.

 

Meanwhile, our sales had come to a grinding halt. It was still cold.  Our table was in the shade and so I moved our chairs to various spots following the sun due to the arctic conditions. This meant that eventually, I was too far away from the table to launch into a “Dramatic Price Reduction” sales proposal.  By 1:00 things had slowed down all over, and people were excitedly exclaiming, “look! three cars just came into the lot!”  The leaf blower, weed wacker, and suitcase were still present albeit in their 6^th or 7^th locations of the day (I lost track).  Meanwhile sold at some time at some other sale somewhere in America was a glow-in-the-dark black velvet picture of Jesus and Elvis shaking hands.  Still another had a painting of Jesus playing soccer with a group of children.  Yet no one would buy my leaf blower, weed wacker or suitcase.  Go figure.   I probably should have kept the suitcase open.  Sitting closed and upright, people probably thought it was for transporting our sale items. 10 bucks for a clean 28” Travel Pro was a good deal I thought, although evidently no one else did. Probably part of the cootie list, although we had thoroughly washed and cleaned it. Sharon came by again exclaiming “I can’t believe it.  I bought more than I sold!”. I offered her the suitcase to take things home.  She declined.  By now Jerry and Marie were up to $134 although they ended up giving away an exercise bench for free.  The leaf blower was back on our bench. 

 

Post-sale research indicated some strategies for the next sale.  Have a “free” pile. Jerry and Marie had a “free stuff” display. It attracts people to your table(s).  Suggested items include, coat hangers and aluminum pans, wine corks, and other random things that people would not usually pay for, but that you need to get out of your house. People will come and look at the “freebies” and those items usually disappear as the yard sale progresses. It keeps them at your table for the sale items. Also, merchandising is important.  Make the sale look good, with nice displays and easy access to everything.  So, the weed wacker and leaf blower on the bench in front of the table display was probably not such a good idea. 

 

By 2:00, many items were free and possibly, after we left, and for all we know, people may have been paying potential buyers to take away their unsold goods. When we departed around 1:00, all of our unsold items save the leaf blower and weed wacker fit into the suitcase.  They would go to the Salvation Army. Then, miraculously, a guy came to the table and, picking up the leaf blower said,  “how much do you want for it?”.  I said “$5”.  Sold! Alas, he didn’t want the leaf blower box even though I told him it came with free leaves.

 

We’re Sorry, Your Package Has Been Delayed.

 

 

Package delivery is very careful nowadays. When they get a package marked "Fragile," they throw it underhand……Milton Berle

 

Last week we received the dreaded e-mail from Amazon, “We’re Sorry, Your Package Has Been Delayed”. That’s when the fun tracking the now nomadic item being delivered by the USPS begins.  We check the timeline on the Amazon Orders menu.  It begins with our order.  Yes, they got it.  Then there is an animated little blue line that shows progress.  The little blue line moves left to right from order placed to order shipped. Then the blue line stops moving between shipped and “out for delivery”. If the ghost of Benjamin Franklin, founder of the Post Office smiles on you, the little blue line will move to “out for delivery”.   Oh, no.  You’re not out of the woods (and neither is your package) yet. Out for delivery time changes to “your package will arrive by 8 p.m.”   Then, either your package will arrive or, you get the dreaded empty mailbox syndrome and the “We’re sorry, your package has been delayed”. Following the empty mailbox option, you once again track package and what a tangled web that can be.  Yes, it was shipped.  But to where?  The email * from Amazon got us thinking about the occasionally circuitous route some of our Amazon packages “delivered” by US Mail, as well as mail and package deliveries services in general, and how we got to this point in time. We’ll keep you updated on the odyssey of a particular package as we go on. 

 

According to D.J. MacLennan writing on the website, Mental Floss, in 2015, a French woman in her 80s received a letter intended for her great grandfather. The punctuality-deficient correspondence arrived at the home of one Thérèse Pailla a mere 138 years after the sender originally mailed it in 1877. It was sent from Sains-du-Nord to Trélon, a whopping six miles away. The letter was in regard to an order of yarn from Mrs. Pailla’s great grandfather’s spinning mill.  

 

“The luxuries of one generation, become the necessities of the next. “Charles F. Jenkins, The Farm Journal, 1911. 

The word mail is Middle English circa 1100 (in the sense ‘traveling bag’): from Old French male ‘wallet’, and of West Germanic origin notes the Oxford English Dictionary. Originally, mail was carried in a relay system on horseback by riders who were “posted” at set intervals along the roads which are, surprise! called, “post roads”.  This “post” is not, in this context a pole stuck in the ground. It comes from the Latin ponere, meaning “to place,” and referred to the placing or “posting” of the riders along the route as we shall see. 

 

The very first traces of mail can be found in Ancient Egypt around 2400 B.C. This postal service was exclusive to the pharaohs who used couriers to send out directives throughout the empire’s territory.  “Ramses II wants a beef, goat, mutton, perch, catfish, mullet, pigeon, duck, heron, crane Happy Meal to go.” requires a servant or, the order to “attack the Nubians on Tuesday” is disseminated.  The earliest surviving piece of mail is Egyptian, dating back to 255 BC and recovered from the Oxyrhynchus papyri cache. Our research cannot  find the content of that oldest piece of mail but it may have had something to do with Publisher’s Clearinghouse.  Then, circa 550-330 BC, the Persians, probably beginning under the leadership of Cyrus the Great, would deliver through a system of couriers (known as pirradaziš in Old Persian) on horseback. They used the Royal Road, from Susa, the ancient capital of Persia, across Anatolia to Sardis and Smyrna on the Aegean Sea, a distance of more than 1,500 miles.  Thus, a message asking for sardines from Sardis could be sent from Susa to Sardis in between seven and nine days. Like Ancient Egypt, mail in the Persian Empire was only for the king and influential leaders such as Croesus.  This system inspired the famous quote by Greek historian, Herodotus, who wrote in 500 BC: "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." It is now the unofficial US Postal Service motto. The Persian system was a network that was known as Chapar Khaneh or courier houses. A rider would ride quickly from one courier house to the next and swap horses when he arrived so he could continue to the next one just as fast. Sounds like………………….flash forward 2,500 years to the famous Pony Express which we will examine in due course. However, we still have a ways to go before “delivering” that description.  Mail also traveled throughthe Maurya Empire in India around 322 BC which had a similar system of couriers. They rode in specialized chariots which would deliver messages such as “we’re going to war with the Seleucids and your taxes are going up”.  Then came the Romans.  Their system was known as the Cursus Publicus, or the public way. Emperor Augustus modified the system so a single courier could deliver the message from start to finish. This was developed so that the recipient of the message, aka the emperor, could ask the messenger further questions, (does the boiled gladiator come with fries?” or “Agrippa, yes, you should take the navy and attack Marc Antony and Cleopatra at Actium”), which wasn’t possible if the message was constantly handed off.  

All these systems were for the elite. The average person would have neither the ability to read, nor write. They didn’t have the expensive tools needed to write, nor did they have anyone to write to, as everyone they knew probably lived in their village. The sending of mail by the common people would have to wait for a millennium. Amazon Post Office Delivery Update – 9:38 (our) Package arrived Carrier Facility Scranton Pa.

 

The first step towards a modern postal system took place in 1653 in France. Jean-Jacques Renouard de Villayer created a private system in Paris. He generated elements of modern postal delivery that may sound familiar.  De Villayer set up boxes around Paris where letters could be left and delivered. Any letter would be conveyed if you used one of his pre-paid envelopes or attached a receipt to the letter showing that delivery had been paid. He guaranteed same-day delivery within the city of Paris. Unfortunately, this groundbreaking and innovative service quickly went out of business as people began putting mice inside his mailboxes, and the public became hesitant to use them.  We wonder why. The physical act of sending a letter was still very difficult.  Thank Englishman Sir Rowland Hill for some major changes. In January 1837 Hill published his riveting and scintillating pamphlet Post Office Reform: Its Importance and Practicability. He changed the procedure so that the sender would pay for postage, not the recipient. Then, he removed all distance delivery charges throughout the entire United Kingdom. There would be one price regardless of where it was sent. Third, he got rid of charging for the number of pieces of paper being sent and instead charged by weight. The new cost of sending a letter anywhere in the UK was 1 penny for ½ ounce or 142 grams.  However, it could take weeks or months for a letter to arrive, and you might never know if you actually ever made it……just like today. Unfortunately, there were massive loopholes in the system. Members of parliament had the ability to send mail free of charge. If you happened to know a member, they could mail it for you for free. There were 658 seats in parliament, yet in the 1830s, members of Parliament managed to send 7 million pieces of mail annually. That is over 10,000 letters per member per year. Hill also created a small adhesive piece of paper that could be placed on the envelope to prove payment had been made, the first postage stamp. That first stamp was known as the Penny Black, and it was an image of Queen Victoria in profile.  There were over 68,000,000 Penny Black stamps that were printed, and they aren’t that hard to find today. You can even find originals on eBay.   Monty Python’s John Cleese notes that “The Postal service created a series of commemorative stamps commemorating lawyers, but they had to withdraw them within a couple of weeks because people couldn't figure out which side of the stamp to spit on.

Package Delivery Update -10:39 (our) Package left Carrier Facility Scranton. 11:48 Package arrived Carrier Facility Montpellier, Vt. 

 

In 1874, the Treaty of Bern was signed, which established the Universal Postal Union. Prior to the UPU, every country had to establish bilateral treaties with every other country for the delivery of international mail.  Meanwhile in America, the first Post Office had been established in a tavern in Boston in 1639. On November 6, 1639, the Massachusetts General Court named Fairbanks’ Tavern as a post office for letters coming into or going out of the colony to overseas posts. Yes, our postal service originated in a bar. The United States Post Office (USPO) was ordered by the Second Continental Congress on July 26, 1775. Benjamin Franklin oversaw its creation as head of the department for a short while. In 1789, George Washington appointed Samuel Osgood of Andover, Mass. as first American Postmaster General. which used to be a cabinet post.  Do people even know what a Postmaster General is?  Do people even know we have a Postmaster General?  Osgood held the job for two years. At the time, there were 75 official post offices and more than 2,000 miles of post roads. The Post Office Department hired post riders who would take terrible roads that were even worse than moonscape of our Pa. 447  hundreds of miles through treacherous conditions, just like the current I 95, from Washington D.C to Petersburg, VA, (a journey fraught with peril), to deliver the mail to the various post offices. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the recently ratified United States Constitution empowered Congress to establish Post Offices and Roads under the supervision of the executive branch.  Initially there were those 75 post offices, but 40 years later there were more than 8,000. The first official Congressionally recognized Post Office Department opened in the United States in 1792.  The central hub was Philadelphia.  In the early 19^th century, post offices were called post houses. By 1863, mail had been divided into three classes:

• letters, called First-Class Mail;

• newspapers and other periodicals, called second-class mail; and

• all other mailable matter, called third-class mail.  

52,624,000,000 pieces of first class mail were delivered by the USPS in 2020 and…..they get 98% of it right. “Abstract anger is great for rhetorical carrying on. You can go on endlessly about the post office, but it doesn't mean you're mad at your mailman.”……P. J. O'Rourke

Package Delivery Update – 6:45 a.m. (our) Package left Carrier Facility Montpellier, Vt. 11:48 Package arrived Carrier Facility Texarkana, Tx. & Ak.

 

Of course, the mail should be delivered to something and before the 1850s, mailboxes were non-existent. They became necessary after the invention and widespread use of postage stamps, which allowed people more freedom in sending letters. With stamps, it was no longer necessary to purchase postage from the local post office. Mailboxes became a necessity in 1863, when citizens began enjoying Free City Delivery. Note that Rural Free Delivery is RFD. Letter carriers hand-delivered people’s mail directly to their doorstep without any charge. Although the residential mailbox was already useful, it wasn’t until 1923 when it became mandatory in the U.S for each household to have a mailbox or at least a letter slot. This ensured that people received their letters and letter carriers performed their jobs. To ensure some form of uniformity when it came to the common mailbox, the U.S. Postal Service required that mailboxes for homes were big enough to make room for letter envelopes and magazines and be sturdy enough to withstand the weather and regular wear and tear. Alas, they did not anticipate the advent of snowplow operators with the goal of obliterating as many mailboxes as possible after a storm. Also, the mailbox should also have a signaling device like that little “flag” at the side to alert someone that there is a letter inside the box (hopefully not a mouse -see Paris 1653) for the recipient or that a package had arrived. The most common type of mailbox used for residences is the tunnel style. It was designed in 1915 by Roy J. Joroleman. an employee of the Post Office.

 

If it was good enough for the Persians, it was good enough for us and so we ride off to examine America’s legendary Pony (pony sounded faster than horse) Express. The service reduced the time for messages between the America’s east and west coasts to about ten days and inspired hundreds of books, movies and television westerns, as riders on horses would gallop between stations at a rapid pace, probably fleeing for their lives from robbers, hostile Indians**, rampaging buffalo herds, rabid prairie dogs, mountain lions, male elk in rutting mode, rain, snow, and the exigencies of a diet consisting solely of baked beans. The Pony Express delivered the inaugural address of Abraham Lincoln to San Francisco in 1861 in 7 days, 17 hours.  The most famous of the Express riders was Buffalo Bill Cody who claimed in his autobiography that he was 15 when he became a rider. Alas, the Pony Express and Buffalo Bill lived a lot longer on film and literature than in actuality thanks to the completion of the transcontinental telegraph line in October 1861.  Since the Pony Express was no longer express, it disappeared before you could say, Edsel, Evian Water Bra, New Coke and Google Glasses.  The Pony Express commenced operations on April 3, 1960, and it went out of business on October 26,1861 having lost $200,000 ……but only one mailbag. 

 

I wrote you a love letter, and I sent it snail mail. Love is forever, and that’s about how long it’ll take to get to you.” 

― Jarod Kintz

Speeding delivery of mail has always been a priority so some bright mind thought of air mail and the first air mail transportation can be traced back to 1870, when letters were carried out of a then besieged Paris – it was the Franco-Prussian War - by balloons, sent into the air and left to the unpredictable caprice of the wind. The first flight was made on September 23, 1870, and carried 500 pounds of mail. Needless to say, things did not go well as the balloons could not be controlled and were just as liable as not to land in enemy (Prussian) territory as in the proper destination.  Some of them were carried by the winds many miles from Paris and some of them were never heard of after leaving Paris, sort of like our missing Amazon package.  The first air mail service in the United States was conducted at an aviation meeting at Nassau Boulevard on Long Island, N. Y., during the week of September 23 to 30, 1911. Earle L. Ovington, with his Queen monoplane, was selected as the air mail carrier and covered a set route between the temporary post office established at Nassau Boulevard and the post office at Mineola, both on Long Island, a distance of 2.5 miles, dropping the pouches for the postmaster to pick up. The Post Office Department began scheduled airmail service between New York and Washington, D.C., on May 15, 1918, during WW I. The USPS history reminds us that pilots flew in open cockpits in all kinds of weather. There was no radar or flying aid and so they used landmarks on the ground to guide themselves.  If it was foggy and they couldn’t see, oy vey! “Say, what’s that mountain goat doing up here in a fog bank?”……..Gary Larson cartoon………..A helpful 1918 article titled Practical Hints on Flying advised pilots “never forget that the engine may stop, and at all times keep this in mind.”. 

 Package Delivery Update – 1:23 p.m. (our) Package left Carrier Facility Texarkana, Tx. & Ak.  9:58 p.m. Package arrived Carrier Facility West Omaha, Neb. 

 

Why are shipping jokes so funny?  It’s all in the delivery.

Of course, the Postal Service is not alone in the package delivery world, there were 456,508 Couriers & Local Delivery Services businesses in the US alone as of 2023, but it was among the first.  We have Parcel Post which began service on January 1, 1913. And begin it did. At the stroke of midnight Postmaster Edward M. Morgan in New York City and Postmaster General Frank H. Hitchcock dropped packages addressed to each other into the mail, racing to be the first to use the service. The first package to be delivered was 11 pounds of apples sent to New Jersey governor (and President-Elect) Woodrow Wilson. The Woodrow Wilson Club of Princeton deposited the apples at a local post office at precisely 12:01 a.m. By prearrangement, the carrier assigned to normally deliver the governor’s mail, Postmaster, David Gransom, received the parcel “before the cancelling ink was dry” and delivered the apples to the waiting Wilson at 12:04 a.m. Wilson met Gransom at the door, signed for the package, and presented the carrier with the pencil he used.  Some tip, Gransom whined.  Wilson then whined, “these are Macintosh, I wanted Granny Smiths”. The public was so excited by this delivery development that they tried to send humans via Parcel Post. This practice of using the mail to deliver humans from one place to another commenced later in 1913. Shortly after Parcel Post went into effect, an Ohio couple used the service to mail their infant son from their house to his grandmother’s house a mile down the road. The practice was banned in 1920.

 Package Delivery Update – 11:57 p.m. (our) Package left Carrier Facility West Omaha, Neb.  9:58 a.m. Package arrived Carrier Facility Stroudsburg, Pa.

 

“On any given day, according to UPS, 2 percent of the world’s GDP can be found in delivery trucks or package cars”…. Thomas Friedman ……….. United Parcel Service (UPS) originated in 1907, when the American Messenger Company was started in Seattle by 19-year-old James E. Casey and another teenager, Claude Ryan. Using a borrowed $100 as their initial capital, they set up the business in a cellar beneath Ryan’s uncle’s tavern. Yes, a bar again, see first colonial post office 1639 above. Their first employees ran errands and made deliveries on foot or by bicycle. They opened another office opened in 1912 and off they went. The following year the company merged with a competitor and acquired its first delivery truck, a converted Model T Ford. Any color the customer wants, as long as it's black…………. Henry Ford……….At this time, Casey and Ryan decided to concentrate on delivery of packages from stores and so they changed the company name to Merchants Parcel Delivery. In 1916 employee Charles Soderstrom had the idea to paint the company’s vehicles dark brown, a color that tends to camouflage grime. In 1925 the entire company became known as United Parcel Service (UPS), and by the end of the decade UPS was operating all over the West Coast. In 1930 the United Parcel Service moved its headquarters to New York City. 

Package Delivery Update – 5:16 a.m  (our) Package left Carrier Facility Carrier Facility Stroudsburg, Pa.10:48 p.m. Package arrived Carrier Facility Charlotte Amalie, U.S Virgin Islands 

 

Fed Ex earned a place in our hearts during the winter of the lockdown for Covid. We ordered some wine online. Delivery was by Federal Express. “Your package was delivered!” read the happy text.  Since signatures were not required during those dark days, we looked outside our front door.  No case of wine.  We looked outside our back door.  No case of wine. We called Fed Ex.  “It was delivered”, we were told. “No, it wasn’t”, they were told. For the sake of brevity, I have left out the excruciating process of transferred calls, the busy signals and phone calls simply cut off until I got someone named Ralph who just happened to pick up a ringing phone as he walked by an empty desk at their Scranton, PA. facility. In the meantime, we called the wine outlet and explained our difficulty. “Oh, Fed Ex again!”, we were told. Apparently Fed Ex and wandering packages seemed to go hand in hand for them.  Graciously, they offered to send a replacement case of wine.  Fed Ex still had not located our previous case, but they were aware of our problem thanks to Ralph although alas, we would be subject to their tender mercies of delivery once again for our additional order. Miraculously, the replacement case of wine was delivered. We called out to the driver as he was walking away and (masked, with gloves on), gave him a tip.  Five minutes later, the driver knocked on our door.  Our missing case of wine had been delivered to the empty home of neighbors who do not come up to our development during the winter.  He “just happened to look” there.  We now had two cases of wine, one room temperature and one chilled - that was the week that outside temperatures were averaging 10° which is not good for red wine but hey, any old “port” in a storm.  Helped with dealing with Covid madness though. 

On April 17, 1973, Federal Express, founded by Richard Smith, began operations in Memphis, Tennessee, with 389 employees. That same day, 14 aircraft delivered 186 packages to 25 U.S. cities. Why Memphis?  it’s centrally located in the U.S. Its airport is rarely closed because of bad weather. The airport was willing to make improvements for the operation and additional hangar space was readily available and besides, there are at least 21 songs about Memphis including Chuck Berry’s Memphis Tennessee and Marc Cohn’s Walking in Memphis.  

Flash forward to the present and Fed Ex struck again. We received a happy text from Walmart. Our two cases of Perrier were delivered! I checked outside the door. Nope!  Driveway? No. Neighbors? No. Time to call Walmart since they sent the text.   Just then, at that exact moment -and the timing couldn’t have been more exquisite, our home Wi-Fi went out. No signal. No nothing. Gone was Wi-Fi and along with it our desktop computer, cable TV and our land line phones.  I couldn’t make a phone call with the cell phone either.  We live in a sketchy cell phone reception area and at this moment that was sketchy too.  Somewhere, someone had our Perrier. Finally, I stood in the middle of our street (ironically across from our mailbox) that past experience indicated that on a sunny day with no wind, I could get one bar on the phone and make a call.  Why? Like how cows always face north or south while eating? Why do you press harder on a remote-control when you know the battery is dead?  Why are there 5 syllables in the word "monosyllabic”, or sexual reproduction, another of life’s mysteries. I called Walmart. Miraculously I got through right away.  This was good news since I had to hold the phone against the back of my head in order to get that one bar. The loud conversation, recall I was holding the phone to the back of my head, went thusly. “What is your order number?”  Me – “I don’t have it; our Wi-Fi has gone out and the order number is on your email”.  “What is your tracking number?” “Don’t have it, no Wi-Fi.”. He tried his best to assist us.  “We need your email address. Is your email address – Johncaf25@aol? “Me, “no”.  After he read off several more incorrect e-mails, I gave him the correct e-mail address. “Is your mailing address **** Lakeview Terrace?” said he. “No, there is no such address in our town.” said I.   I give correct mailing address.  Sounds of fingers clicking on keyboard (see our essay Have You Noticed?) “Give me a few moments to review this,” said he.  A few moments pass.  A few more moments pass.  Still more moments pass. The phone is hurting my head, my shoulder is sore and I’m getting cramps in my fingers but I’m afraid to move it lest I lose the call. Assistance returns. “The Fed ex driver scanned in the wrong address and delivered it to the wrong address they will attempt to retrieve your order.” I stifle a laugh but he can’t see me smiling and thinking ‘yea, this is going to go well when they knock on someone’s door and ask for the Perrier back’.  “If the order is not retrieved in 24-48 hours, he continued, (this is a Saturday, they’re going to retrieve the order on a Sunday?), you will get a full refund.” I thank him and disconnect the call and think, “and then I’m supposed to order another delivery from Fed ex?” Miraculously, our missing Perrier completed its arduous journey and arrived, intact, three days later and our thirst was quenched. All was right with the world. However, we all know that there is one thing that is certain about mail delivery and it is uncertainty. 

Please Mister Postman look and see Oh yeah

Is there a letter in your bag for me?………The Marvelettes.

  Package Delivery Update – 2:03 a.m. (our) Package left Carrier Facility Charlotte Amalie, U.S Virgin Islands 8:09 a.m. Package arrived Carrier Facility Stroudsburg, Pa.  8:15 a.m. package -Out for Delivery. It was delivered. We eagerly opened the package. The item was the wrong size.  It had to be returned. 

 

* In case you were wondering, in 1971, Ray Tomlinson, a computer engineer working for Bolt Beranek and Newman in Cambridge, Massachusetts, developed a system for sending messages between computers he called email. He used the @ symbol to identify addresses. Tomlinson says he can't remember the first message he sent, or the exact date he sent it.

 

** The word Indian came to be used because Christopher Columbus repeatedly expressed the mistaken belief that he had reached the shores of South Asia. Convinced he was correct, Columbus fostered the use of the term Indios --originally, person from the Indus valley in India - to refer to the peoples of the New World. We also note that Columbus was a blonde.

 

Sources:

 

https://everything-everywhere.com/the-history-of-postal-delivery/

 

https://www.hived.space/blog/a-brief-history-of-postal-services#:~:text=The%20very%20first%20traces%20of,system%20of%20couriers%20on%20horseback.

 

https://postalmuseum.si.edu/research-articles/100-years-of-parcels-packages-and-packets-oh-my/the-first-packages

 

https://postalmuseum.si.edu

 

https://www.britannica.com/topic/United-Parcel-Service

 

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101048919383&seq=7

 

Introduction to the Gnus Almanac - All 12 Volumes

 The  Gnus is almanacish. It’s not quite an almanac but close to it as we’re not annual and an almanac is usually an annual.  It’s more historical and perpetual but not quite encyclopedic. Its an Almanacencyclopedia. Ok, that works.  The Gnus is a compendium of items of Science (quite a bit of science), History, Mathematics as well as Items of Interest in the Arts with our comments and elucidation, both factual and fictual that have occurred over the last 2000 years or so.   Fictual is our word derived from fiction……… Fictual – if you believe that in our description of the discoveries and travels of Ponce de Leon he was also  looking for a beach front condo with a pool, that’s Fictual and we can’t help you. We note and describe the items and events for each day of the year.  The Editorial Board of the Gnus strives for accuracy in dates, quotations and facts and presumes that an educated reader can differentiate between factual and fictual. 

A reminder that a gnu is a wildebeest. A wildebeest is a member of the antelope family.  It has a large, box-like head with curving horns. The front end of the body is thick and sturdy while the hindquarters are slender with spindly legs. Sort of like nature forgot to complete the job.  Hopefully avid researchers will not see Gnus Almanac and think it an expository work on antelopes.  

 A bit of history as the The Gnus began as a one-page science education news letter then called Science Gnus, of monthly science events.  Years ago many grade K-6 teachers taught (and still do) science reluctantly, poorly, or not at all.  Seems they are intimidated by science.  The enormous power of a teacher to inspire and encourage can also kill interest in a subject (or in school) in a student. The Science Gnus was an attempt in Community School District 10, in The Bronx, for a newsletter to reach out to the teachers of the district on a monthly basis.  I was the Science Coordinator at the time. It would contain ideas for teaching, for strategies, and for science information to encourage the teaching of science.  Believe it or not, basic science knowledge was, shall we say, lacking for many pedagogues.  This was probably due their own educations being science poor.  Like the ancient Greek philosopher joke punch line, “it was turtles all the way down”. (actual joke – A  traveler encountering an  philosopher asks him to describe the nature of the world: “It is a great ball resting on the flat back of the world turtle.” “Ah yes, but what does the world turtle stand on?” “On the back of a still larger turtle.” “Yes, but what does he stand on?” “A very perceptive question. But it’s no use, sir; it’s turtles all the way down.”…….attributed to Joseph Bragg or Bertrand Russell).  I also decided to include a witticism or amusing fact at the end.  Theoretically this would encourage them to read the single page newsletter all the way to the bottom. It never occurred to me that they might just skip to the bottom. What to call it?  I ran a few ideas past colleagues.  Science Gnus resonated and here we are 35 or more years later and the Gnus has grown as we moved from district to district and into retirement. We comfort ourselves that the Renaissance Humanist, Erasmus, began his Adagia (annotated collection of Greek and Latin adages) in 1508 but continued to add to it for decades eventually totally more than 3,000 items  

 I started thinking of it as a book a while back but as we kept adding items it was turning into a rather lengthy tome.  Fortunately, or unfortunately, as I was bemoaning this problem. one day to the late Dr. Lawrence Lowery of the Univerisity of California Berkeley, a brilliant scientist, a wonderfully gifted science educator and author, and a friend with a wonderful sense of humor.  He suggested I make it 12 books, one for each month.  Great idea.  That was over 15 years ago and like the little creature that popped out of John Hurt’s stomach in Alien, the Gnus grows and multiplies. Somewhere along the line, we added history, mathematics, engineering, and the arts. In Pedagoguese it’s now called STEAM – Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics. 

 Like the content, the methodogy behind the Gnus has evolved.  Basically, we have gone day by day through the year beginning with January 1.  Insert January 1 in a search engine and one gets quite a few websites that list events that occurred on that day.  But we usually start with holiday sites for our holidays of the month. The holidayscalendar.com is a comprehensive listing and gives us the holidays from important to bizarre celebrated each day.  Then it’s on to general items.  Accuracy is paramount.  That leads us to  a note about Wikipedia.  We use if for our general items and that’s it. It is fairly, repeat, fairly reliable. It is not a source for item descriptions. We eventually found On This Day to be a more comprehensive source although it also, must be double checked.  Aware of the infamous inaccuracies of the Internet, we double check almost every date. Sometimes we triple check and we still have discrepancies of a day or so.  We’ll note that.  The change to the Gregorian Calendar over the centuries meant different sometimes confusing dates.  For example, Isaac Newton was born on December 25, 1642, using the older style Julian calendar. The birthday has since shifted to January 4, 1643, on the new Gregorian calendar.  All of our dates are Gregorian Calendar.  We select items of interest or importance or funkiness.  Wikipedia is also a good birthdays of notables site.  Also investigated for each day are Any Day in History,  Encyclopedia Britannica, (very accurate),  The People’s History, Today in Science History (essential), ClassicBands.com, ThisDayinMusic and Songfacts– for our Rock and Roll(and there are a lot of them), items, cinefania.com/efemerides – it’s in Spanish but great for obscure movies and indispensable for our daily Western movie insertion.  We use This Day in Oscar History for movies in general, and Playbill Vault for Broadway.  These principle sources get us started and provide the outline for the day. 

Then we go year by year for a particular day.  First comes the day of the week that an event occurred.  If there is any doubt, as can happen with centuries old information, we will, again, check multiple sources.  A simple Google search, “What day of the week was March 2, 1947?” provides the day. It was a Sunday.  

The quotes……that’s the part that extended and expanded this series, always introduce the item and we research them after we have developed the item.  We begin our internet search for elucidation which can take us from newspaper files to diaries, to obituaries, to blogs (with sources), to speeches, to almanacs to movies. See our Soursages (Bibliography). The Editorial Board finds IMDb to be essential for movie information.  There are several sites for song lyrics.  As for quotes?  Depends on how we wish to fit the quote to the item.  A song? poem?, quote by author? joke? eyewitness?  Shakespeare is always dependable but then so is Steven Wright and we try not overuse a source of quotes for a particular day. Finding the right quote can take quite a bit of time .  It has to connect in some way to the historical item. We think of much of the research as an Open Sesame world where you have to ask exactly the right question to find the information you seek. Otherwise one gets all sorts of blather. 

 As we know the internet and bookshelves are replete with daily “what happened today” type listings, many just copied and pasted.   So, through the years we thought to differentiate ourselves and make the Gnus more informative and descriptive. As we write, we may (often) add our fictual insertions.  

 When questions arise in the mind of the Editorial Board of the Gnus and as we find answers the items get longer and longer and more detailed……… we call it “item riffing”.  For example, in an item on the outlaw Jesse James we note all the actors who have played Jesse James.  For the The Treaty of Paris in a certain year, we list all the Treaties of Paris. There are quite a few actors who have portrayed Jesse James and quite a few Treaties of Paris.  You’ll find lots of riffs.  We like them.    

 A typical item evolution/development would look like this: 

 Item – March 29,  We find “1638 The first permanent European settlement was established in Delaware.”  Sounds interesting so in it goes So, we look up the date and Delaware.  First thing is it wasn’t Delaware.  It was New Sweden.  Then we discovered that it was purchased by Peter Minuit.  Aha!  The same Peter Minuit that purchased Manhattan?  When did he purchase Manhattan? We research Peter Minuit.  Then we need a quote.  We decide on a real estate related quote.  The final item in the book looks like this “ 1638 – Monday, Buy land, they’re not making it anymore.……….Mark Twain…….The first permanent European settlement in Delaware was established.  Of course, back then it was named New Sweden and it encompassed parts of present-day Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Peter Minuit was the buyer. Remember him for purchasing Manhattan for $24?  Well in 1637, a group of Swedish, Dutch, and German stockholders created the New Sweden Company to trade fur and tobacco in the New World. Later that year, Minuit , a Walloon from Belgium, sailed the company’s first ship to North America. In March 1638, they reached the Minquas Kill, the present-day Christina River near today’s Wilmington. Minuit met with the Lenape tribe and negotiated to buy land on the west riverbank of the Delaware River,,  south of today’s Wilmington up to the Schuylkill River which is south of present-day Philadelphia.  He had also purchased Manhattan from the Lenape in 1626. Clearly, he and the Lenape liked doing business together. Later in 1638, on a trading expedition to the Caribbean, Minuet was lost at sea during a hurricane.  There you have it.  Rinse and repeat a few thousand times.  

  Of course, as we engaged each day we came up with more ideas for the items and that meant more research and more editing and so here we are with 12 books.  We eventually got to the point where we thought “that’s it” we’re done. It’s an almanacish compendium, and after we publish, we won’t update. ……well maybe.

 As noted, we’ve tried to be as accurate as possible (aside from our Fictual inclusions). Sometimes it can take quite a while to ascertain the correct date, the correct item, or even if it occurred. We describe it as the Xeroxian World of the Internet.  It can be like the Zombies from innumerable apocalyptic movies, multiplying and devouring the truth as folks cut and paste inaccurate information. There can be pages and pages of the same opening line.  In fact, we’ve been at this so long that Xerox as a synonym for copying may have fallen out of the lexicon.  Well we have the Xerox item  right here for October 22 – 1938– Saturday Xerox is a copying device that can make rapid reproduction of human error possible ……Unknown……….The first xerographic copy was produced.  Later that day the first line formed at the machine.  Still later that day…….  the machine broke down.  Still later that day the repair technician explained that the warranty had expired.  Really though, Chester Carlson, invented the xerographic process and launched what would become a multi-billion dollar industry. But for several years after patenting his process, Carlson could find no company interested in xerography. It was the invention that nobody wanted.  Finally, in 1944, Battelle Memorial Institute, a nonprofit research organization, signed a royalty agreement with Carlson and began to develop the process. Three years later, he made an agreement with a small photo paper company called Haloid (later to be known as Xerox), giving Haloid the right to develop a xerographic machine and voila! You can have twenty five copies of the report that no one will read for your meeting.  Xeroxing may fade away but paper jams will always be with us. So there.

 We found that “official sites” are usually the most accurate but to quote Wilson Mizner: When you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism; if you steal from many, it’s research. The Gnus is research. It’s easy to get side tracked in research when there’s lots of thought-provoking stuff that happened through the years and one can spend a lot of time just exploring a subject that becomes fascinating, such as why did they make a movie called Billy the Kid Meets Dracula? Eventually, we get back to writing. 

We’re no longer calling these books Science Gnus.  There are two main reasons: 

1. People will see the word Science and go no further. Sad but true and we’ll lose dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? (millions?) of readers.  
2. It’s not just Science anymore but it is Gnus. That rhymes with news although through the years we’ve heard it pronounced “ga news”, “gee news” “gon us” and “geen us” among others.  So here we are with The Gnus Almanac. It’s almanacish and as we said it’s not annual like an almanac but perpetual.  Almanac is pretty close to what it is since it’s not quite encyclopedic either. Almanacencyclopedia, yeah, that works. 

 Please note that there are references in this Introduction to “I”, “We”, and the “Editorial Board of the Gnus”. All are John Cafarella as is the person referred to as Professor Sy Yentz throughout the books.  

You'll find all 12  books at  https://gnusalmanac.com/

 * Prolegomenon is a preliminary discussion inserted at the beginning of a book or treatise

Shuffled off this Mortal Coil

 

A few years ago, archaeologists unearthed the remains of England’s King Richard III, under a parking lot in Leicester. He was known to history infamously as Shakespeare’s evil hunchback king, usurper of the English throne and suspected murderer of his nephews, ages 12 (Edward V)  and 9 (Richard) in the Tower of London.  I was surprised to note that Richard was only 32 years old when killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. It got us thinking about the ages of famous people when they went kaput as well as who else went kaput at the same age.  You may be surprised. For example, at opposite ends of the humanitarian scale, age 56 are: Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler. 

 

As we work our way up from 15 year-old Anne Frank and 17 year-old singer (La Bamba) Richie Valens through comedians Bob Hope and George Burns, 100, what is occasionally surprising is some folks you thought were old - were not.  Some people you thought were young - were not.  Generally, we look at age though the lens of our own stage of life and then age becomes relative, a matter of perspective, since if you’re 25 then 55 (Julius Caesar) - is old but if you’re 65 then 55 (Bill Haley of Bill Haley and His Comets) -  is young. 

 

You’ll note that through suicides, accidents, murders, and disease quite a few familiar names weren’t really old at all when they checked out. Many were surprisingly young. The Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc was 19 when she was flambeed at the stake.  Stuart Sutcliffe, original bassist for the Beatles; outlaw, Billy the Kid; singers Buddy Holly, and Aaliyah were all 21, Holly died  in the same plane crash as Valens and the Big Bopper, age 25. Twenty-five seemed old to me when I was age 12.  24 saw Actor James Dean, runner Steve Prefontane, and rapper Notorious B.I.G  shuffle off.  Presidential assassin, John Wilkes Booth was 26 as was singer Otis Redding.  In music there is the “27 club” of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones, Kurt Kobain, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse, Grateful Deader, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and Blues originator Robert Johnson. Hank Williams was 29. Gone at 31 were Roman Emperor Commodus, John Dillinger, Rudolf Valentino, Cesare Borgia, and painter Georges Seurat.   32?  Singers Karen Carpenter, Cass Elliot, actor, Bruce Lee and Who drummer Keith Moon. Comedian John Belushi was 33, as was singer Sam Cooke. Andy Kaufman, guitarist, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – all gone at 34.  Diana Spencer (Princess Di) and Marilyn Monroe were 36, as was Bob Marley. 37 saw the demise of Scottish poet, Robert Burns; artist Vincent van Gogh;, teacher/astronaut, Christa McAuliffe; decapitated French Queen, Marie Antoinette; George Armstrong Custer and his nemesis, Crazy Horse. (Note: Sitting Bull was 59). It was the final chapter at 38 for writer, Charlotte Bronte; baseball player, Roberto Clemente; composer, George Gershwin, and Presidential offspring, John F. Kennedy, Jr.    Bet you didn’t know that Ernesto "Che" Guevara, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata were 39, as was Marie Antoinette’s husband,  King Louis XVI of France.  Also at 39 were, mathematician Blaise Pascal, Egyptian Queen Cleopatra and Confederate General, Stonewall Jackson. 

How about writers Jack London and Edgar Allen Poe, along with Beatle, John Lennon at 40?  Leaving the building at 42 were Elvis Presley, comedienne, Gilda Radner, and African King, Shaka Zulu. Writer F. Scott Fitzgerald, artist Jackson Pollock, singer Marvin Gaye and jazz/blues immortal, Billie Holiday departed at 44.  At 45 – Vlad the Impaler, aka, Dracula, but then he may be undead.   What did writer George Orwell, President John F. Kennedy, existentialist writer Albert Camus, writer and wit, Oscar Wilde, and wrestler Andre the Giant have in common?  All passed away at age 46.  JFK’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald was 24.  One year older at 47 were Attila the Hun and Judy Garland….writer Jack Kerouac too.  No more rubbing people out for gangster Al Capone, who died at 48. 

50?  It was stage left for swashbuckling actor Errol Flynn, actor Steve McQueen and Rod Serling of Twilight Zone fame, also Davy Crockett bit the dust at the Alamo at 50. Napoleon was “only”51 as was French playwright, Moliere, French writer Marcel Proust and Beach Boy, Carl Wilson.  William Shakespeare was reformatted at 52.  So were actress/Princess Grace Kelly and singer Roy Orbison. 53 saw an eclectic group bidding adieu; President James K. Polk, Grateful Deader, Jerry Garcia, “I think, therefore I am” philosopher Rene Descartes, singer John Denver, poet Emily Dickenson, Muppet founder Jim Henson, and baseball’s Babe Ruth and Jackie Robinson. Osama bin Laden went in search of heavenly virgins when he was 54.   The voyage ended for Christopher Columbus and Will Rogers along with Julius Caesar, singer Bill Haley, and poet Emily Dickinson, who perished at 55. With the afore mentioned Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler at 56, was serial bridegroom, King Henry VIII,  (his wives? – Catherine of Aragaon,41, Anne Boleyn -36, Jane Seymour- 26, Anne of Cleves -42, Catherine Howard -22, and Catherine Parr – 36) also  singers Rick James and Warren Zevon. 

Permanently out of print at 57 were actor Humphrey Bogart, dancer, Gregory Hines, and People Get Ready….Curtis Mayfield.  Going off line at 58 were artist, Andy Warhol, Irish author, James Joyce, and Beatle, George Harrison. Writer Virginia Woolf and actor, Clark Gable fell off the perch at 59. 

 No more orders from General George Patton when he was 60, nor politics and exploration from Theodore Roosevelt, also 60.  Cashing in their chips at 61 were writer, Ernest Hemingway and poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  St. Paul was probably 62 as was the philosopher, Aristotle.  Stamped, Return to Sender when 63 were  Ulysses S. Grant and his archrival, Robert E. Lee, in addition to  Franklin Delano Roosevelt, actress, Audrey Hepburn, Mickey Mantle, artist, Rembrandt van Rijn, and basketball star, Wilt Chamberlain.  “When I’m 64”? singer, Wilson Pickett, political philosopher, Karl Marx and President Lyndon B. Johnson. Room temperature at 65 were Genghis Khan, comedian, Richard Pryor, Alice in Wonderland’s author Lewis Carroll, Walt Disney,  and composer Johann Sebastian Bach, who is currently decomposing. It was the last race for Olympian, Jesse Owens, comedian, W. C. Fields, and Nobel Prize winner, Marie Curie, who checked out at 66.  Gone at 67 were George Washington (seemed older than 67, n’est pas?),  actress, Ingrid Bergman, and Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci. It was game over for singer/dancer Josephine Baker, poet Ogden Nash and author/illustrator, Shel Silverstein at 68.

Desi Arnaz, writer, Aldous Huxley, and physicist, Richard Feynman perished at 69. 

Leaving for more than a three hour tour were Gilligan (Bob Denver), Buffalo Bill Cody and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus went at 70.  Socrates was 71ish. Hello Pilgrim, goodbye to John Wayne,  and prolific author,  Isaac Asimov -72. At 73 providing last name first name continuity were Ray Charles and Charles Darwin. Laying down their burden at 74 were, Fred "Mister" Rogers, humorist, Mark Twain and existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and rarely will you see Jean Paul Sartre and Fred Rogers in the same sentence. Philosopher Plato was 75ish and composer/orchestra leader, Duke Ellington took the “A Train” at 75.  Albert Einstein checked out at 76 and fellow physicist Neils Bohr was 77 along with Lucille Ball, astronomer Galileo Galilei, and cartoonist, Charles M. Schulz. It was game over at 78 for Andrew Jackson, writer, Simone de Beauvoir, entertainer, Dean Martin, Coretta Scott-King, and Mahatma Gandhi. What did entertainer, Johnny Carson and philosopher (Critique of Pure Reason) Immanuel Kant have in common?  Did you say gone at 79?  

Stella!!!!!actor, Marlon Brando was 80.  Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien, Richard Nixon and actress, Betty Davis, became bereft of life at 81. Succumbing at 82 were, comedian, Rodney Dangerfield, astronaut, Neil Armstrong, writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,  and  Frank Sinatra. 83 and it was finis for Thomas Jefferson, writer, Samuel Beckett (who gave up waiting for Godot) , Sigmund Freud, writer, Voltaire, western lawman, Wyatt Earp and astronomer, William Herschel tended towards a state of chemical equilibrium. It was lights out for Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II), Isaac Newton, artist, Henri Matisse and rider, Paul Revere at 84. Freudian disciple, Carl Jung left the couch at 85.  86 was the end of the line for comedian, Groucho Marx and eugenicist/birth control advocate, Margaret Sanger.  Futurist, Buckminster Fuller, inventor, Rube Goldberg, and writer, Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel had negative patient care outcome at 87.  The curtain came down for comedians Charlie Chaplin and Mae West, and philosopher, George Santayana (“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”). The great sculptor and artist Michelangelo was 90, as were, John Adams, Winston Churchill and Florence Nightingale. Time to wash the dishes and put away the pots and pans for chef, Julia Child, artist, Pablo Picasso, and philosopher, Thomas Hobbes at 91. The bus stopped for Rosa Parks when she was 92.  The Gipper, Ronald Reagan, rode off into the sunset at 93, as did Harriet Tubman on the underground railroad.  Actresses (and the lists get shorter now) Katharine Hepburn and Fay Wray (King Kong had here in the palm of his hand) were 96. Gertrude Ederle, (first to swim the English Channel, astronomer, Caroline Herschel, and philosopher/mathematician Bertrand Russell

used their one-way tickets when they were 97. Ninety-eight year old artist Georgia O'Keeffe painted her last flower. Achieving the century mark were George Burns and Bob Hope.  But wait! There’s more. 101 were composer Irving Berlin and artist Grandma Moses. If you remember the Ed Sullivan Show,(and THERE’S an age thing)  Senior Wences (‘s’alright? S’alright….shut de door”) was ventriloquizing until 103.  So there you have it.  A selective list to keep age in perspective and win the occasional dinner debate.  Remember, as Satchel Paige or Jack Benny or…… but actually said by an anonymous government researcher in 1968,  famously said, “Age is a question of mind over matter.  If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter”. 

Our title and opening quote…..”shuffled off this mortal coil” is from the “To be or not to be” soliloquy in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

……….Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;

To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,…. Hamlet, Act 3 Scene 1, Hamlet,

The word coil is an antiquated word, commonly used centuries before Shakespeare, and spelt ‘coyle.’ It was a noun and referred to a mess – a mixture of messy things like noise, confusion, uncertainty, bustle, sort of like using mass transit. We don’t use the word coil like that anymore but most of Shakespeare’s audience would have understood it in that way. And so, in keeping with our essay theme, how old was Hamlet when he went kaput?  Hamlet was 30 just like the Roman emperor Nero, poet Sylvia Plath, Emily Bronte, singers, Jim Croce, Patsy Cline and Andy Gibb, Wyatt’s brother Morgan Earp, John Harvard, and King James V of Scotland.