_A Chapter from The Outline of Posterity_
After the passage of the Ninety-eighth Amendment making it a
misdemeanor to “_manufacture, sell, own, possess, purchase, nurse,
dandle or otherwise caress or display that effigy of the infant form
commonly known as a Doll_” ... the abolition of that feathered symbol
of vicarious maternity, the Stork, followed as a matter of course.
The passage of the Anti-Stork Bill or, to be more accurate, the
Ninety-ninth Amendment, thanks to the tenacity and tact of President
John Quincy Epstein, was the most expeditious piece of legislation put
through by the hundred and fifth Congress.
It must not be forgotten, however, that the introduction of lectures on
obstetrics into the curriculum of the kindergartens had done much to
educate the child vote and that at the time the fate of the Stork was
hanging in the balance, that once esteemed Bird of Prurient Evasion was
already becoming unpopular and well on its way to join the Dodo.
And now the department of government devoted to the cause of Infant
Uplift, having abolished the Mock-Offspring and settled the fate of the
Bird of Nativity, cast about for some new Field of Endeavor.
And what more fitting than that they should light upon that hoary old
impostor masquerading under the several aliases Santa Claus, Saint
Nicholas, Kris Kringle, and Father Christmas?
At once the Propaganda was started.
Press agents were engaged, lecture tours arranged, magazines subsidized.
No matter what it might cost, this “Vulture gnawing at the Palladium of
Infant Emancipation” must be destroyed!!
Santa Claus, once, in the memory of living men and women, adored
by children and winked at by their parents, was now branded as an
impostor, a mountebank, a public nuisance, and a perverter of infant
intelligence.
Santa Claus was an outlaw from the Commonwealth of Reason.
It was “thumbs down” for Santa!
It may be well to explain right here (since none of the events
chronicled in this History has yet happened) that the movement for the
Emancipation and Self-Determination of Infants, which has now taken
such great strides, had its initiation in the presidential term of
Miles Standish Sovietski when Congress extended the franchise to every
child over five years of age who had made any serious contribution to
literature or higher mathematics.
It was in the same year that President Sovietski signed the
Sixty-fourth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, prohibiting
the publication of fairy tales, and Congress suspended the
Limitation-of-Search Act in order that private libraries and nurseries
might be raided without warning and all copies of the forbidden works
summarily seized and destroyed.
Simultaneously with the federal enactment, the states of Washington,
Illinois, Nevada, and Oregon, ever in the advance of any great
intellectual movement, passed laws prohibiting “_the personification
or representation, public or private, in theatre, music hall, club
house, lodge, church fair, schoolhouse, or private residence, of any
supernatural fairy, or otherwise mythical person or persons or fraction
thereof_”.
The passing of a Constitutional Amendment was now an almost everyday
occurrence. Indeed, since the ratification of the Forty-fourth
Amendment prohibiting the use of sarsaparilla as a beverage (coffee
and tea had been legislated out of existence five years earlier)
the enactment of a new Amendment excited little or no comment. Even
the Seventy-ninth Amendment forbidding “_the use of caviar, club
sandwiches, and buttonhole bouquets, except for medicinal purposes_”,
received only casual notice in the Metropolitan Dailies.
The twentieth century was rapidly nearing its close and the political
apathy that for fifty years had been gradually benumbing the Public
morale now threatened to paralyze completely what little still remained
of courage and initiative.
Even the latest work of Bernard Shaw, “A Bird’s-Eye View of the
Infinite”, published (with a five volume preface) on Mr. Shaw’s
hundred and fortieth birthday, aroused so little resentment that his
projected visit to the United States had to be abandoned, in spite of
the fact that “Bean and Soup o’Bean”, written only a week earlier,
was acknowledged to have contributed largely to the triumph of the
Seventy-ninth Amendment, making Vegetarianism compulsory in the United
States.
The Hundredth Amendment passed quickly through the earlier stages of
routine and perfunctory debate without any appreciable sign of anything
approaching popular protest.
Here and there a guarded expression such as “Poor old Santa! I’m sorry
he’s got to go!” was voiced, in the privacy of a club, by some elderly
gentleman. Nothing more.
Somewhere, behind Somebody, was a Power that directed and
guided,--perhaps threatened. Nobody knew who or what or where it was
or in what manner it worked, but work it did and to such purpose that,
after a scant week of cut and dried speech-making that deceived no one,
the Amendment was submitted unanimously by both houses of Congress and
the foregone conclusion of ratification was all that remained to make
the abolition of Santa Claus an accomplished fact.
Then, inevitably as fish follows soup, followed the ratification.
The Hundredth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States,
prohibiting Santa Claus, slipped through the ratification process like
an oil prospectus in a mail chute. There was only one hitch, Rhode
Island, but since Rhode Island had refused to ratify a single one of
the last Seventy-nine Amendments, her action was accepted as part of
the program and a proof of unanimity.
So Santa Claus was abolished?
Not so fast please!--Who’s writing this History anyway?
’Twas the night before Christmas
And in the White House
Not a creature was stirring
Not even a *****
For the benefit of the clever reader who may have guessed the word
left out in the last line of the above quatrain, I will explain that
the asterisks are used in obedience to a clause of the Ninety-first
Amendment prohibiting, both in speech and print, the use of the word
***** which, as the political emblem of the Free People’s Party
(now happily defunct), came into such contempt that it was made a
misdemeanor “_to print, publish, own, sell, purchase, or consult any
book, pamphlet, catalogue, circular, or dictionary containing the word_
*****”. It has been estimated that over eighty million dollars’ worth
of Century and Standard dictionaries were destroyed in the first year
of this Amendment’s operation. The loss in Nursery Rhymes, children’s
books, and Natural Histories is beyond computation.
But to return to the White House.
President John Quincy Epstein had retired to his study on the second
floor shortly before midnight, taking with him the engrossed copy
of the Hundredth Amendment which now only required his Spencerian
signature to expunge the name of Santa Claus forever from the American
speech and language as utterly and irrevocably as the forbidden word
*****.
The hours passed in a perfectly orderly manner, like school children
at a fire drill--_one, two, three, four_--without pushing or
jostling--_five, six, seven, eight_--(don’t you think history is much
more interesting in the form of a simple “Outline” like this than
spun out in the common manner?)--_nine, ten--!_ At eleven o’clock the
door of the President’s study was burst open by the order of the Vice
President, Rebecca Crabtree, now, by a sudden and mysterious stroke of
Fate, herself become the President of the United States.
For John Quincy Epstein was dead.
How or just when he died will never be known. Always a cold, forbidding
(not to say prohibiting) man, his body when found was still cold--if
anything colder; his watch which should have marked the exact moment
of his demise, was ticking merrily, so the exact moment will forever
remain unrecorded.
But Santa Claus still lives and will live forever!
On the massive gold-inlaid-with-ivory desk (a Christmas gift from the
United Department Stores of America), lay a paper, inscribed, and
signed in the President’s handwriting, and sealed with his official
seal.
It was the presidential veto of the Hundredth Amendment; and by virtue
of a clause in Amendment Thirty-three “_no Constitutional Amendment
vetoed by the President shall ever be resubmitted to the country nor
any fraction thereof_--”
Santa Claus will live forever! Hurray for Santa Claus!
_Benjamin Brawley_
The Negro question in America has become a peculiarly delicate one. I
have never met Benjamin Brawley; but he is one of the most respected
members of his race in America. He is said to be a preacher of ability
and an earnest and able student of letters. He was born in Columbia,
South Carolina, and was educated at Morehouse College, the University
of Chicago and Harvard. He is now pastor of a Baptist church in
Brockton, Massachusetts. His books vary from discussions of the Negro
to works on the drama. I asked him as one of the intellectual leaders
among the Negroes to express frankly his opinions of the Negro problem
in American writing. This he did, and I have published here, as in
+The Bookman+, this strong statement without editorial excision. As
representing a viewpoint, I believe it to be exceedingly enlightening.