Tea at Trianon: Christmas in America

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Sunday, December 29, 2024

Christmas in America

From CC Pecknold at Postliberal Order:

Christmas preparations somehow sent me down the rabbit hole of reviewing six decades worth of American magazines covers at Christmastime. It started as a random image search, getting me in the spirit, but then it got interesting. I started to see a pattern, and was reminded of something important about America that we’re trained to forget.

America was once a magazine culture.

Harper’s Magazine was one of the oldest and best-selling since its founding during the Civil War. The cover for Christmas 1898 is one of the oldest color covers. It’s an apocalyptic vision of the Star of Bethlehem — a light which illumines the way to the unveiling of Christmas, the Light of Christ. (Read more.)