HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

It's Christmas Day.

On this day in 1666, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary:
25. Christmas day. Lay pretty long in bed. And then rise, leaving my wife desirous to sleep, having sat up till 4 this morning seeing her maids make mince-pies. I go to church, where our parson Mills made a good sermon. Then home, and dine well on some good ribs of beef roasted and mince pies; only my wife, brother, and Barker, and plenty of good wine of my own; and my heart full of true joy and thanks to God Almighty for the goodness of my condition at this day.


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And Christmas Day is the setting for John Cheever's short story "Christmas Is a Sad Season For the Poor." Charlie is a man who works as an elevator operator in an elegant Park Avenue apartment building in New York City. He has to work on Christmas Day, and everyone who rides the elevator wishes him a merry Christmas, and he responds by saying, "It isn't much of a holiday for me. Christmas is a sad season when you're poor. I live alone in a furnished room. I don't have any family." His rich clients respond to his story with sympathy, and he ends up with an absurd array of food and gifts. He feels guilty for having so much all of a sudden, so he tries to give some of his expensive new gifts to the landlady, who he knows is also poor. But she has also been showered with presents and is preparing to give away some of her gifts to an even poorer family — and there is a whole chain of people passing on gifts to those they think are poorer than themselves, in order to make themselves feel better. Cheever writes that they are driven by "first love, then charity, and then a sense of power."