The Battle for Christmas by Bill Washabaugh

 

It’s Christmas week here in Milwaukee. The streets are lighted, the houses are decorated, and all is ready for a collective effervescence of peace and good will. It’s a time when family members come together to bask in their reciprocal generosity. What a wonderful life...or is it?

 The traditions of Christmas here in the northern cities of the United States have a long and wondrous history, but maybe not so wonderful.* And it is worth reflecting on this history, lest we allow ourselves to be simply swept along by the tide of the season, the, uh, yule tide.

 Between 1500 and 1800 in Europe and America, Christmas meant one thing and one thing only, getting drunk. The baby Jesus may have been back there somewhere, but way back. What was front and center was a good long tug at the bottle. The liquor helped dull the pain of the season.

 The pain? Around 1800, the collective pain was obvious. The rivers froze which meant that the mills stopped working, which meant that the laborers were laid off, which meant that their families went hungry. In their poverty, most workers had little else to look forward to but booze.

 The liquor loosened folks up and, as a result, they acted out more freely in public. They developed a tradition of going door-to-door, begging—no, demanding—gifts from wealthy citizens. Such behavior echoed the long-established table-turning that had prevailed during the carnivalesque Christmas celebrations of the late Middle Ages. That is, the poor became demanding and the rich became acquiescent for just this short season of the year. The powerless became momentarily powerful. 

 But, such behavior was getting out of hand by 1820. It was about then that Clement Clarke Moore wrote “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (‘Twas the Night Before Christmas), a poem that he and his cronies hoped would both entertain New Yorkers and dial down the turmoil of the season.

 Central to his story is St. Nick, Santa Claus, a cross-over figure if ever there were won. Nick wore the ermine-tipped red-velvet of a bishop, signs of his elite status. But he was dirty and he smoked a short-stem stump of a pipe, signs of his low-class affiliation. With this combination of high and low characteristics, he passed as neither drunken carouser nor haughty mill-owner, but as an in-betweener. He was the perfect figure around which to organize a Christmas cease-fire.

 This in-betweener was altogether acceptable as a magical elf who could silently infiltrate a house, where he could give gifts instead of demanding them. He was neither patron nor pauper, but a bit of both. And being a bit-of-both, he managed to appease the poor, while simultaneously calming the fears of the well-to-do.

 Besides creating and positioning this new Christmas hero, Moore engineered a second feature for the Christmas holidays, an ingenious shift of focus away from the warring social classes outside households and toward the children within households.

 In the past, children had been treated as simply dependents, not much more distinguished than household servants. But now, by making them central to the holiday, Moore reconstructed the carnivalesque power-reversals of yore, defusing class conflicts, and infusing family life with a central importance it never had. Rather than having the poor on the street demanding gifts from the wealthy, he featured children in the household receiving gifts and feeling like kings. 

 The empowerment of children that he fostered seemed to suit bourgeois sensibilities ever so much more comfortably than did the erstwhile momentary empowerment of the lower classes. And, voila, the ferocity of the streets was kept at bay. Thereafter, Ma in her kerchief and I in my cap could relax, get fat, and watch the world go by.

 So, here we are in Milwaukee, dizzied by the lights and sounds of Christmas. We are eager to buy gifts for the kids, and we are suffused with a sense of our own generosity towards mankind. But, after looking into the history, we can't help but wonder...

 *Stephen Nissenbaum, The Battle For Christmas, 1996.

The Working Catholic: Lockout by Bill Droel

 

Kellogg has used the lockout tactic before. In October 2013 the cereal company locked out its 220 Memphis employees. Issues included mandatory overtime and benefits. The situation remained until August 2014 when a federal judge ruled that in this case the tactic was illegal. The judge ordered that employees be brought back on the job with no penalty.

Now Kellogg has locked out 1,400 employees at four plants. The main issue is a two-tier pay scale—newcomers get less; as old timers retire the total wage and benefit expense decreases.

Employers who use the lockout tactic claim that it gives them leverage in negotiations. To stay on the legal side during a lockout employers must publically say that the door to negotiations is always open. A lockout is becoming a popular maneuver.

In 2011 the NFL locked out its players for 18 weeks. The NBA had a five month lockout the same year. In 2012 the New York City Opera locked out its performers. The Minnesota Orchestra did the same the following year. Also in 2013 Crystal Sugar in Minnesota locked out 1,300 employees. In 2015 Allegheny Technologies, a steel firm, locked out 2,200. And in 2018 National Grid, a Massachusetts gas company, had a lockout of 1,200.

To all of us in the Hot Stove League the most pressing labor-management disagreement these days involves the lockout of baseball players.

The lockout tactic is foolish without the threat of permanent replacement workers. On its own a lockout doesn’t make sense because a company would go out of business if it didn’t allow workers to come to the jobsite. Sometimes the threat of replacements is implied. In the current Kellogg dispute ownership makes the threat explicit.

Catholic doctrine has something to say about both lockouts and permanent replacements. First, however, here’s what our doctrine does not say. Catholicism gives general, abstract guidance on what constitutes a just wage and acceptable benefits. Catholicism does not though endorse the specifics of any employer’s contract proposal in any given situation. Catholicism does not endorse the specifics of a union’s counter-proposal. (This applies, by the way, even if the employer is a bishop and the employees are gravediggers or janitors or teachers.)

Catholicism says that negotiation (which depending on circumstances can be smooth or hardball) is crucial. Totalitarianism (total corporate, total state or total both) is not conducive to a healthy society and holy people. There must be some form of negotiation, some form of democracy. Collective negotiation is the countervailing force that holds off totalitarian impulses. Catholicism strongly asserts that employees have a natural right and duty to meaningfully participate in the design and the benefits of work in some measure.  

A lockout and its threats break faith with an acceptable negotiation process. Cardinal John O’Connor (1920-2000) of New York testified in 1990 to our U.S. Senate Committee on Labor. He introduced himself as speaking as a citizen and an employer. He also said that as a bishop he is a mandated moral teacher. The context was a dispute at the Daily News in New York City. Ownership threatened permanent replacements.

“It is useless to speak glowingly” about rights if either “management or labor bargains in bad faith,” O’Connor said. “In the case of management [it is] a charade of collective bargaining and a mockery [for management] with foreknowledge… to permanently replace workers who strike.”  In 1999 O’Connor repeated Catholic principle, writing to nurses: “I remain strongly committed to a policy of no permanent replacements.”

O’Connor’s use of the phrase moral foreknowledge is important. A company that threatens the use of so-called permanent replacements knows the tactic is not an end in itself. Whatever the outcome of the lockout/permanent replacement gambit might be, its real purpose is to end possible negotiations and soon enough to bust the union.

To conclude on a positive note it is worth keeping in mind that the vast majority of contract negotiations are completed without any job action whatsoever. Yes, some posturing occurs; some swearing perhaps. But day-in-and-out negotiations are not newsworthy because nothing dramatic occurs outside the bargaining room and apart from the employee’s vote.

Droel edits a print newsletter on faith and work, INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629)

The Working Catholic: Advent, Part Two, by Bill Droel: Who invented Christmas?

 

Our Blessed Lady is a fair answer. In about 3 B.C. she gave birth to Jesus, who became known as The Christ. St. Joseph, while not Jesus' natural father, is another good answer because he is the main character in St. Matthew's rendition of the Bethlehem story.St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226) is another good answer because he is popularly credited with devising the Christmas Pageant.
             But who created Christmas as we know it with all the gifts and indoor tree and special food and charitable donations and a day off from work? Although it is impossible to claim that Christmas is historically new, it is only in the last 160 years or so, and particularly since World War II, that Christmas (other than during Covid-19) is turkey, candy, hams, greeting cards, shopping sprees, family reunions, office parties, seasonal songs and shows for children. For most of Christian history Easter was the big feast; Christmas not so much.

             By 1843 Charles Dickens (1812-1869) had written five well-received novels and then three duds. He was, at age 31, in debt with family obligations. Walking the streets of Manchester that fall he thought about Christmas and children. Returning to his London home he wrote A Christmas Carol in a fury. His publisher didn’t like it, so Dickens paid for the printing himself—adding to his debt. The story (followed by four more Christmas-themed novellas) took off and is now available in many editions and through many adaptations. For example, Acta (www.actapublications.com) sells a $14.95 edition tied in a red ribbon and with an introduction by theologian Jack Shea. My favorite adaptation is the 1992 Muppet Christmas Carol.

             It was Dickens who revived and updated a celebration connected to the nativity of Christ. He promoted forgotten customs and introduced some new ones that now define the holiday. In particular he lifted up practices consistent with Christ’s message: compassion, regard for family life, charity, humane working conditions and decency.

             Dickens was a contemporary of Karl Marx (1818-1883). Both explored the contradictions within industrial capitalism: How is it that prosperity results in widespread poverty? Marx and Dickens saw child labor, overcrowded housing, illness, unemployment and meanness in all the cities they visited. The remedy for Marx included violence, which he thought was inevitable. Dickens’ remedy is not as obvious as Marx’s. Dickens’ stories are about character. They are about the tension between on one hand bad people and corrupt and on the other hand people with good character and noble institutions. The stories hinge on the possibility of redemption.

           The complexity of the good guys is Dickens’ genius. They are usually not romanticized. Poverty itself does not make a person sympathetic or noble. A poor person can drink or carouse too much, can cheat at times and make bad decisions. But poverty is not a sin, as unfortunately it is considered, even today, by those today who distinguish between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor.

            Dickens likewise does not romanticize those who help the poor. Donating alms, used clothing and the like at this time of year is not a special favor. It is not, please be reminded, particularly meritorious. Charity is simply rendered because a recipient is entitled to proper assistance and the donor is quite capable of helping out.

           This holy season is designed to reinforce behavior that should occur all year long: People should look out for people; families should treasure one another; institutions that lose their purpose and degrade human dignity can be reformed; joy and celebration are essential to the human prospect every day of the year.

Droel edits INITIATIVES (PO Box 291102, Chicago, IL 60629), a free printed newsletter on faith and work.