Wednesday
Sardonic Catholic satirist Hilaire Belloc has the perfect response for our president’s latest tweet, not to mention for all those Christians hysterically complaining about “the war on Christmas.” First, Donald Trump:
It’s a disgrace what’s happening in this country. But other than that, I wish everybody a merry Christmas.
Here’s Belloc from his novel The Four Men: A Farrago:
“Noël ! Noël ! Noël ! Noël !
A Catholic tale have I to tell !
And a Christian song have I to sing
While all the bells in Arundel ring.
“I pray good beef and I pray good beer
This holy night of all the year,
But I pay detestable drink for them
That give no honor to Bethlehem.
“May all good fellows that here agree
Drink Audit Ale in heaven with me
And may all my enemies go to hell !
Noël ! Noël ! Noël ! Noël !
May all my enemies go to hell !
Noël ! Noël !”
In the interchange that follows, one character calls the lyric “rank blasphemy” and reminds the versifier that “at Christmas we should in particular forgive our enemies.” To which the author replies,
I do. This song is about those that do not forgive me.
Belloc reportedly borrowed from the poem for his Christmas card. The shorter version has more satiric punch:
May all my enemies go to hell.
Noël! Noël! Noël! Noël!
Ho, ho, ho.
Further thoughts: I see that some former Republican NeverTrumpers turned to literature to respond. Here’s former presidential candidate Evin McMullin:
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.
Former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, meanwhile, turned to A. A. Milne after Trump’s Christmas Eve tweet about being alone in the White House (thanks to reader Carl Rosin for the alert). Here’s Trump:
I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security
To which Frum tweeted:
King John was not a good man —
He had his little ways.
And sometimes no one spoke to him
For days and days and days.
King John is humanized, however, by his simple longing for an india-rubber ball:
But, oh! Father Christmas, if you love me at all,
Bring me a big, red, india-rubber ball!
Donald Trump, unfortunately, wants something that rhymes with wall. And that promotes further isolation.