Two of the finest pieces ever written for and about Christmas were penned by former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster and essayist E.B. White.
When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus, the whole known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome. There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar.
Thus begins one of the finest pieces of holiday editorial writing ever put to paper, In Hoc Anno Domini. The man who crafted these words, Vermont Royster, served as editor of the Wall Street Journal for many years and wrote one of the finer journalism memoirs, My Own, My Country's Time. The editorial is well known to regular Journal readers. It has appeared annually at Christmas time since Royster wrote it in 1949. And it continues to speak to the yearning human need for freedom. It is, in style, vintage Royster – understated, conservative and enlightened. It ends thus:
And so Paul, the apostle of the Son of Man, spoke to his brethren, the Galatians, the words he would have us remember afterward in each of the years of his Lord:Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.
Royster retired to UNC-Chapel Hill in the 1970s, and even there he was barely known to journalism students who studied the craft or practiced it at the Daily Tar Heel, the student newspaper. This is particularly embarrassing to me, as a former DTH editor, for I had studied the paper's history, of which Royster, a UNC alumni, was a part. Somehow, Royster never made it onto my radar screen as a person worth cultivating or celebrating. Or perhaps he intimidated those of us who knew about him, but did not digest his importance in the world of journalism. We knew all about other UNC types — Thomas Wolfe, Charles Kuralt, Tom Wicker, Jeff McNally (the cartoonist) — but Royster, arguably the most influential of all, remained a ghostly presence at the journalism school, or so it seemed. He was a quiet man who labored in his office writing his memoirs and tutoring graduate students. I don't know that he was ever invited to a DTH gathering during my years there, though other journalists and professors were dutifully celebrated. Royster as a young man could be brash, but his role as a shaping force at one of America's great newspapers remains a well-kept secret. One UNC faculty member recalled recently that, for a man who walked and talked with presidents routinely, Royster was remarkably down to earth. E.B. White, best known for his children's books, was another accomplished essayist. Though better known than Royster, he lacked the flamboyance of other New York writers. White retired on a regular basis to his Maine farm, where he learned the lessons of nature, and wrote some of the finest rural essays ever crafted. Indeed, when the Guardian held a contest a few years ago asking for essays that nominated candidates for finest essayist, I submitted E.B. White. I knew Orwell would be well represented, and others as well, but White wrote with a distinctly American voice and handled the language as beautifully as any writer during his time. He deserved to be remembered. My essay didn't win, but it got a nice mention when the awards were announced. One of White's most memorable essays — "The Distant Music of the Hounds" — is also Christmas focused. I quote from the Guardian essay I submitted:
This short essay remains one of the great explorations of human spirituality in the modern age. How does one stand against the great commercial tides that overwhelm us year round, but most disturbingly during the Christmas season? We are at once attracted and then appalled by the incessant assaults on our ears and ultimately our inner peace. White notes that, while riding an escalator, he heard a lady singing, "I'm gonna wash this store right outa of my hair…"
With a gentle pen, White guides us through the trials and tribulations of modernity, and, in a few pages, helps us see with fresh eyes what others have taken books to say: our modern world, for all its wonder, is not disconnected from the permanent things that transcend space, culture and time. Henry Adams in the "Dynamo and the Virgin" raises the question in an American context, and White answers it in a nuclear age: "This week many will be reminded that no explosion of atoms generates so hopeful a light as the reflection of a star, seen appreciatively in a pasture pond. It is there we perceive Christmas — and the sheep quiet, and the world waiting." Such voices are always at risk of going unheard in our age of instant communications — televisions blaring, music pounding, and political talking heads screaming their self righteous blather. But if there is ever a time to appreciate the importance of writing and speaking in a quiet, civilized tone, it is surely the season of silent night, holy night. It is difficult to improve on the original Gospel stories, but these two pieces of writing deserve special attention each December. They are among the finest commentaries ever written for and about Christmas.
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