First, thanks to all my readers, we can take this look back over the previous year. You are a great group! See you in 2016!
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 11,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
President Coolidge lighting the community Christmas tree, 1924.
The Chief Historian for the White House Historical Association has completed a fine essay on the Coolidges and the White House during their stay, 1923-1929. As Mr. Bushong points out, “Throughout the Coolidge administration, Christmas celebrations were a mix of traditional family gatherings and the new community centered public ceremony” centered in the lighting of the community tree on the Ellipse. It was Coolidge who inaugurated that signature custom. Originally for the families and other residents of the District of Columbia, it has become a National Event.
Christmas Day was spent by the Coolidges giving of their time and service to those in need, from the preparation of food baskets at the Salvation Army to visiting the veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. Coolidge once said, “No person was ever honored by what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.” The Coolidges lived that ideal.
While the lighting of the community tree was then a local highlight, the real focus at the Coolidge White House during Christmas came with the singing of carols. Singing and the music of the Marine Band were central to Christmas night with the Coolidges. In 1924, a new carol, “Christmas Bells” was composed by Jason Noble Pierce, the pastor of the Congregational Church in D.C., and dedicated to Grace Coolidge. “Ring, ye, Christmas bells of peace. Ring for days when wars shall cease.” That same night, the 1880 choral piece, “The Angel’s Song at Bethlehem” (setting the account of Luke 2:8-14 to music) was sung and heard from the North Portico of the White House by the thousands gathered there. It was the facts of Christ’s coming, His work, and His living again that made peace and goodwill possible, the Coolidges knew, as the hymn goes,
“Glory to God in the highest!
“And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!
“Glory to God!”
Merry Christmas!
Singing Christmas carols from the North Portico at the White House, 1923.
President Coolidge dedicating the Rushmore Monument, August 10, 1927.
Published in the midst of the “Great Society” Era, McCoy’s interpretation of Calvin Coolidge strikes the reader as a calculated compromise with the times. McCoy cannot quite sympathize with Coolidge as Fuess did (eighteen years before) nor can he join White, Hoover, Schlesinger, and others in venomous indictment but he still has to find grounds for criticism. This is encountered from Cal’s handling of the Boston police strike to his failure to halt the speculation that led to the Stock Market Crash eight months after he left public life, at least according to McCoy. McCoy navigates a middle course overall, as our friend has noted, no less constrained by the temperament of his era than he attributes Coolidge to be in his own. While there is certainly less hostility in McCoy’s work than in the treatments of the preceding generation toward Cal, he still heaps unwarranted complaints against him for being reactionary in 1919 when the issues and attitudes were very much with then-Governor Coolidge, anything but out of touch. McCoy’s book, a product of its time, would finally receive due analysis in Thomas B. Silver’s excellent study, Coolidge and the Historians. Dr. Silver would not only expose the errors in the assumptions and preconceptions that had been thrown up against Cal for some forty years he would persuasively argue where McCoy and his forbears got it dead wrong when it came to #30.
Check out our friend’s review and please pick up a copy of Dr. Thomas Silver’s indispensable and timeless work, Coolidge and the Historians.
The Importance of the Obvious 