Post 290 - December 26, 2020

Day 290…

Today, in British countries at least, is Boxing Day. What this actually refers to is actually not at all clear.

In the days when it was common for households to employ servants, the day after Christmas was typically when employers would allow their servants the day off to go back to their families.

Christmas Day, itself, being a busy day of meals and other festivities, the servants would have had to work overtime to make it happen. The next day, employers would give the servants a box with leftover food and maybe gifts and a holiday bonus to take with them back to their homes.

It also refers to the custom of giving people that have worked in some regard throughout the year doing something that affects the giver in some way a tip or ‘Christmas box’. This would apply to people like those who collect garbage or deliver the mail or some service like that who wouldn’t necessarily be paid directly by the person giving the tip. Samuel Pepys refers to this practice in his diary in 1663.

Then again, it could also refer to the practice of churches opening their alms boxes on the day after Christmas and distributing the contents to the poor. The Feast of Saint Stephen, observed by some Christian sects, falls on the day after Christmas and, typically, gifts for the poor would be collected then in the alms boxes and given out that day.

These days in the United Kingdom and throughout the Commonwealth, Boxing Day is a major shopping day, comparable to our Black Friday after Thanksgiving.

It is the day when retailers can expect their greatest revenues. This year, with the UK in a strict general lockdown and all non-essential businesses closed because of the new strain of the virus, that is not going to happen.

A whole slew of French and other European truck drivers went into the holiday trapped and not being able to drive through the Chunnel back into France. Troops were sent in to organize them. Thousands of trucks, or lorries, had logjammed. The troops sent the overflow into a local airport and were parking them on the runways. It was referred to as Operation Stack.

Testing protocols for the drivers were put in place, but there weren’t any tests available. As of Christmas eve, France relented and began to allow their drivers to return. As of today, most of the mess has been sorted out.

There are now reports of the new strain of the virus having been identified in several European counties.

We never left the apartment yesterday on Christmas. We connected up with family and some friends over the course of the day. By no means were we able to do that with everyone, but we made a good stab at it. By the time we went to bed, we felt that we’d been talking all day.

Zooming, unless it is really controlled as to who is speaking at any one time can devolve into a wall of noise very easily. My elderly aunt who is in Assisted living in Virginia is hard of hearing, even with her hearing aids, so our conversation with her was basically yelled at top volume.

At the end of the day, when everything was done, the dishes put away and the wrapping paper folded in the recycling bag, we settled in on the couch and watched Holiday Inn. In the last few days, we have worked our way through most of our favorite Christmas movies - The Bishop’s Wife, White Christmas, Elf - and all the usual TV holiday specials.

Holiday Inn has always been one of my favorites.

Except, of course, for the sequence on Lincoln’s Birthday when Bing Crosby and Marjorie Reynolds perform in blackface.

I don’t remember seeing that sequence when I first started watching it on TV as a kid. I am fairly certain that it was just cut out. I’d be interested to see how they cut it so that the story made sense. I can’t remember. Bing loves Marjorie and is scared that Fred Astaire, who is coming to see their show, is going to fall in love with her too, so he “hides” her by putting her into blackface.

When VHS and then DVDs became available, the movie in its uncut form was suddenly available. The scene was uncomfortable and certainly offensive on every level, but also sort of fascinating.

Many movies that I have seen over and over again have sequences that I either don’t like or find somewhat boring, so when re-watching them, I just let my mind wander or actually get up and go to the bathroom or get a glass of water during them. The Lincoln’s Birthday number was one of them.

Last night, I watched it.

What’s truly astounding about the whole sequence is just how unremarkable it all is.

It’s not just Bing and Marjorie who are in blackface, the whole band is as well. The people playing coat check people and waiters are also all in blackface. Nobody notices. Everyone behaves so normally around it, that I had never really noticed all of the other characters who were made up, too.

People enter the inn chatting with each other, hand their coats over to the attendants in blackface, and never even so much as glance at them. Clearly in 1942, there was nothing unexpected about it.

Marjorie’s outfit is particularly grotesque. Her blond hair is done up in exaggerated braids. Even then in 1942, I think that she was supposed to get a laugh for her appearance. Bing, however, is done up as an elderly black man with white mutton chops and a top hat. I may be wrong, but aside from the fact that it is Bing Crosby and he has bootblack on his face, I don’t know that it was done for a laugh.

The song that they sing is a song about freedom and a tribute to Abraham Lincoln. It is sung sincerely. So sincerely, that Mamie, the black maid played by Louise Beavers, sings a section of it back in the kitchen to her two kids as if she’s teaching them a lesson.

It seems clear that the filmmakers thought that they were sincerely creating a moving number. Beyond the initial reveal of Bing and Marjorie, nothing was done for laughs.

There’s a film montage dedicated to the men fighting in World War II which, at the time the movie was released, was well underway. There is not a single person of color in any of the footage.

What must have been going through Louise Beavers’ mind as she worked on this film?  Like Hattie McDaniel, I am sure that she thought being paid to play a maid was a step up from actually being one.

Watching the movie last night, all I could think about was how she had to sit there during the filming watching a whole lot of white people dressed up as gross parodies of the very people who were really fighting for freedom, sing about freedom.

That’s how racism endures. People don’t notice it.

I have no doubt that there are still people in the United States today who would hold a party like the one in that scene in Holiday Inn. They would get their friends and family to put-on black face and pretend to be servants and give everyone a good laugh. The difference between that and what I saw last night is that a party like that in 2020 would be an active statement in support of white supremacy.

The sequence in Holiday Inn was not in support of white supremacy, it just WAS white supremacy. Clearly, everybody making the film, and in the scene, just accepted that that is the way things were.

That it might be offensive doesn’t seem to have occurred to anyone at all in 1942. Marjorie Reynolds objects to the blackface makeup because she wants to look pretty, not because she finds it offensive. In 2020, blackface is used to actively BE offensive.

Most of us, thankfully, look at that part of Holiday Inn with horror. It is so obviously wrong that we wonder how it could ever have happened. That level of racism has not changed, however, it’s just gotten more subtle.

It is such a part of everyday life that we don’t notice it any more than the performers in the film being led to their tables by other white performers covered in bootblack do. How many white people watching and enjoying Holiday Inn wonder how black people would feel watching it?

Louise Beavers was, initially, not interested in acting. "In all the pictures I had seen… they never used colored people for anything except savages," she once said.

In the movie, Imitation of Life, which was the first time that she really broke through, she played Claudette Colbert’s maid. Her story, however, is an actual subplot of the film. It was the first time that a black woman’s struggles were given any weight in a major Hollywood film.

As she became more successful, she began speaking out against the portrayal and treatment of African Americans. When she was criticized for playing subservient roles she said, “I am only playing the parts. I don’t live them.”

I don’t think that we can just cut out that scene from Holiday Inn and pretend that it didn’t happen. What happens in that scene is underneath every other scene in the film.

It’s underneath every scene in every other film made during that era.

It’s underneath everything that happened in this country.

Cutting the scene out whitewashes the film. How is white washing any less offensive than blackface?

I gave myself another haircut on Christmas Eve.

This morning, I just saw a commercial for something called the Titanium Trim comb. It is a thing that you can use to trim your own hair. “If you can comb it, you can cut it!” The hot shirtless guys cutting their own hair with it, talk about the fact that these days it isn’t so easy to go out and get your hair cut.

It’s a new COVID-19 inspired product. This virus has truly become an integral part of our daily lives.

Yesterday was a Christmas that we will never forget. I hope that, despite the challenges, it was a good day for everybody. Sure there were some adjustments, but at the end of the day, I think it ended up quite well.

So much has changed in our lives over this past year. If we are lucky, there’s a lot that we’ve learned recently that we won’t forget. There are stories embedded in everything and every aspect of life around us.

Having this time to discover some of them is a wonderful gift.

Here’s to being able to really hear those stories.