A Moveable Feast, A Press Release, and a Poem

A Moveable Feast is Hemingway’s autobiographical account of his early life in Paris. In the winters, he and Hadley and their baby, Bumby, would go to Schruns, Austria, to stay at an inn and ski and toboggan and enjoy the season. In those days, there was no ski lift, so he and Hadley would have to climb up the mountain every time.

“We were always hungry and every meal time was a great event. We drank light or dark beer and new wines and wines that were a year old sometimes. The white wines were the best. For other drinks there was kirsch made in the valley and Enzian Schnapps distilled from mountain gentian. Sometimes for dinner there would be jugged hare with a rich red wine sauce, and sometimes venison with chestnut sauce. We would drink red wine with these even though it was more expensive than white wine, and the very best cost twenty cents a liter. Ordinary red wine was much cheaper and we packed it up in kegs to the Madlener-Haus.

We had a store of books that Sylvia Beach had let us take for the winter and we could bowl with the people of the town in the alley that gave onto the summer garden of the hotel. Once or twice a week there was a poker game in the dining room of the hotel with all the windows shuttered and the door locked. Gambling was forbidden in Austria then and I played with Herr Nels, the hotel keeper, Herr Lent of the Alpine ski school, a banker of the town, the public prosecutor and the captain of the Gendarmerie. It was a stiff game and they were all good poker players except that Herr Lent played too wildly because the ski school was not making any money. The captain of the Gendarmerie would raise his finger to his ear wen he would hear the pair of gendarmes stop outside the door when they made their rounds, and we would be silent until they had gone on.

In the cold of the morning as soon as it was light the maid would come into the room and shut the windows and make a fire in the big porcelain stove. The room was warm, there was breakfast of fresh bread or toast with delicious fruit preserves and big bowls of coffee, fresh eggs and good ham if you wanted it. There was a dog named Schnauz that slept on the foot of the bed who loved to go on ski trips and to ride on my back or over my shoulder when I ran down hill. He was Mr. Bumby’s friend too and would go for walks with him and his nurse beside the small sleigh.

…

I remember the snow on the road to the village squeaking at night when we walked home in the cold with our ski and ski poles on our shoulders, watching the lights and then finally seeing the buildings, and how everyone on the road said, “Grüss Gott.” There were always country men in the Weinstube with nailed boots and mountain clothes and the air was smoky and the wooden floors were scarred by the nails. Many of the young men have served in the Austrian Alpine regiments and one named Hans, who worked in the sawmill, was a famous hunter and we were good friends because we had been in the same part of the mountains in Italy. We drank together and we all sang mountain songs.

I remember the trails up through the orchards and the fields of the hillside farms above the village and the warm farm houses with their great stoves and the huge wood piles in the snow. The women worked in the kitchens carding and spinning wool into grey and black yarn. The spinning wheels worked by a foot treadle and the yarn was not dyed. The black yarn was from the wool of black sheep. The wool was natural and the fat had not been removed, and the caps and sweaters and long scarves that Hadley knitted from it never became wet in the snow.”

In December 1941, Winston Churchill came to America to see Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Pearl Harbor had forced the United States into the war and Churchill wanted time with its leader. On December 24, 1941, Churchill gave the following Christmas address:

Fellow workers, in the course of freedom, I have the honour to add a pendant to the necklace of that Christmas goodwill and kindliness which my illustrious friend the President has encircled the homes and families of the United States by his message of Christmas eve which he just delivered.

I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, and yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home.  Whether it be by the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, whichever it may be, or all of them together, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States.  I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

Fellow workers, fellow soldiers in the cause, this is a strange Christmas Eve.  Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle. Armed with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other.  Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the lands or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field.  Ill would it be for us if that were so. Here in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes. Here amid all these tumults, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart.

Therefore we may cast aside, for this night at least, the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm.  Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace. Let the children have their night of fun and laughter.  Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable year that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.

May you all have a very happy Holiday Season and here’s to a bright New Year.

In the recent Netflix series, The Black Doves, two characters meet in a church at Christmastime to have a secretive conversation. One says to the other, “say what you will about the Christians, but they know how to write a song.” The song in the background, sung by a choir, is Christina Rosetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter.”

In the bleak midwinter
Frosty wind made moan
Earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone
Snow had fallen
Snow on snow, snow on snow
In the bleak midwinter, long, long ago

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him
Nor earth sustain
Heaven and earth shall flee away
When He comes to reign
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ

Enough for Him whom cherubim
Worship night and day
A breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay
Enough for Him whom angels fall down before
The ox and ass and camel
Which adore

Angels and archangels may have gathered there
Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air
But only His mother in her maiden bliss
Worshiped the Beloved
With a kiss

What can I give Him
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would give a lamb
If I were a wise man, I would do my part
Yet what I can, I give Him
Give my heart