I’VE JUST come from Cambridge, Massachusetts, that beehive of brilliance, where nerds don’t feel self-conscious: There’s always someone nerdier nearby. If you are the World’s Leading Authority on the mating habits of the jabberwock beetle of the Lesser Jujube Archipelago, you can take comfort in knowing that the pinch-faced drone next to you at Starbucks may be the WLA on 17th-century Huguenot hymnody or a niche of quantum physics that is understood by nobody but himself.
People in Cambridge learn to be wary of brilliance, having seen geniuses in the throes of deep thought step into potholes and disappear. Such as the brilliant economist Lawrence Summers, whose presidency brought Harvard to the verge of disaster. He was the man who, against the advice of his lessers, invested Harvard’s operating funds in the stock market and lost the bet.
In the cold light of day, this was dumber than dirt, like putting the kids’ lunch money on Valiant’s Fancy to win in the fifth. And now the genius is in the White House, two short flights of stairs above the Oval Office. This does not make Cambridgeans feel better about our nation’s economic future.
You can blame Ralph Waldo Emerson for the brazen foolishness of the elite. He preached here at the First Church of Cambridge, a Unitarian outfit (where I discovered that Silent Night has been cleverly rewritten to make it more about silence and night and not so much about God), and Emerson tossed off little bon mots that have been leading people astray ever since. “To be great is to be misunderstood,” for example.
This tiny gem of self-pity has given licence to a million arrogant and unlovable people to imagine that their unpopularity somehow was proof of their greatness. And all his hoo-ha about listening to the voice within and don’t follow the path, make your own path and leave a trail and so forth, encouraged people who might’ve been excellent janitors to become bold and innovative economists who run a wealthy university into the ditch.
Unitarians listen to the Inner Voice, and that’s their perfect right, but it is wrong, wrong, wrong to rewrite Silent Night. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough.
And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah”? No, we didn’t.
Christmas is a Christian holiday – if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don’t mess with the Messiah. Christmas does not need any improvements. It is a common ordinary experience that resists brilliant innovation. Just make some gingerbread persons and light three candles and sing softly in dim light about the poor man gathering winter fu-u-el and the radiant beams and the holly and the ivy, and you’ve got it. Too many people work too hard to make Christmas perfect. Perfection is a goal of brilliant people and it is unnecessary where Christmas is concerned.
The most wonderful Christmas of my life was 1997, a quiet day with no gifts or tree, waiting in a New York apartment for my daughter to be born. The second most wonderful was one in the Norwegian Arctic, where it rained every day and the sun came up about 11 and set at 1, not that you ever actually saw the sun, and the food was abominable, boiled cod and watery potatoes, and the people were cold and resentful, and there was no brilliance whatsoever. And I had the flu. Why was I there? Good question. But every year it gladdens my heart to know I will not be going to Norway for Christmas. A terrific investment. Mr Summers should be so smart. For one week of misery, I get an annual joyfulness dividend of at least 25 per cent. Merry Christmas, my dears. – (Tribune media services)