{"id":5199,"date":"2013-12-24T15:12:57","date_gmt":"2013-12-24T22:12:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=5199"},"modified":"2013-12-30T15:18:56","modified_gmt":"2013-12-30T22:18:56","slug":"becoming-that-second-kind-of-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2013\/12\/24\/becoming-that-second-kind-of-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming That Second Kind of Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"

from Letters Of Note<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

America is like that second kind of Christmas<\/h1>\n
\"\"In November of 1959, as a shocked American public were hit with the news that a number of their favourite quiz shows had in fact been\u00a0rigged for some time<\/a>, author\u00a0John Steinbeck<\/a>\u00a0wrote the following letter to his friend, politician\u00a0Adlai Stevenson<\/a>, and spoke of his concern at such a morally bankrupt turn of events occurring in his increasingly gluttonous country.<\/p>\n

(Source:\u00a0America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction<\/a>; Image: John Steinbeck,\u00a0via<\/a>.<\/i>)<\/p>\n

New York
\n1959
\nGuy Fawkes Day<\/p>\n

Dear Adlai,<\/p>\n

Back from Camelot, and, reading the papers, not at all sure it was wise. Two first impressions. First, a creeping, all pervading nerve-gas of immorality which starts in the nursery and does not stop before it reaches the highest offices both corporate and governmental. Two, a nervous restlessness, a hunger, a thirst, a yearning for something unknown\u2014perhaps morality. Then there’s the violence, cruelty and hypocrisy symptomatic of a people which has too much, and last, the surly ill-temper which only shows up in human when they are frightened.<\/p>\n

Adlai, do you remember two kinds of Christmases? There is one kind in a house where there is little and a present represents not only love but sacrifice. The one single package is opened with a kind of slow wonder, almost reverence. Once I gave my youngest boy, who loves all living things, a dwarf, peach-faced parrot for Christmas. He removed the paper and then retreated a little shyly and looked at the little bird for a long time. And finally he said in a whisper, “Now who would have ever thought that I would have a peach-faced parrot?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[ click to continue reading at Letters Of Note<\/a> ]\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from Letters Of Note America is like that second kind of Christmas In November of 1959, as a shocked American public were hit with the news that a number of their favourite quiz shows had in fact been\u00a0rigged for some time, author\u00a0John Steinbeck\u00a0wrote the following letter to his friend, politician\u00a0Adlai Stevenson, and spoke of his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literary-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}