The Scotoborough Boys topic would take some time. I'd hate to serve something up off the cuff. Contrary to what some might say I don't have all the answers.
There are some people around who recall fiesty Sam Liebowitz who tried the case. They could be contacted. Perhaps the perspective I could lend is that of the lawyer trying an unpopular cause.
The topic deserves further researches which I promise to undertake shortly.
I do have available the comment on Holiday depression:
jfc
THE SOLESTICE NEW YEARS AND CHRISTMAS
Gaudium in Fullosiam, Gaudium Omnibus Quorem Studium Fullosae Deditur.
Recently at the request of Dr James W. Rowe, Lord and Mentor (mentor_rpps@theglobe.com) of the Society, the Rockaway Park Philosophical Society commented on holiday depression: That the solstice, with its early sunsets, might be a source of depression may have been known to the ancients. To the ancients, depression didn't stop the party.
Today we celebrate a hectic time between Christmas and the New Year, holidays which have assumed Christian and secular importance.
Yet the change from autumn to winter was marked by partying even in pagan times, perhaps as a cure to the problem of seasonal depression. Thus holiday depression may have preceded the birth of Christ for whom Christians say they party.
In Republican Rome the beginning of January was the upside-down party to the twoheaded God Janus the guardian of the threshhold who looked out and inward. The master and his family would fete the servants. For one magic moment the mighty Romans humbled themselves before their slaves and all Rome was run by its underlings.
Yet, the ancients were smart enough not to let such a depressing time also mark the New Year. It's bad enough to be depressed by the early sunset. Pagans were too practical to conduct personal re-appraisal and reproach at a bleak and barren time. Pagans celebrated the New Year in the spring, the rebirth of life. Thus we have the cluster of spring holidays that cluster from St. Pat's day through Easter which remind us that they are pagan holidays glaring at us in Christian or Secular form. Did the Christians move the New Year's whoop-te-doo to desolute January, as many writers assume, just to engage in their pointless self mortification?
Probably not correct. Until the reformation in England, Lady's Day in March marked the New Year. That is the presumed onset of gestation of the Christ child, a variant of the visitation ?
In the reformation Mary lost out with the Protestants as much as her worship increased in Catholic countries like Poland, Hungary and Ireland on the border between the Reformation and the Catholic resurgence. As Mary lost her important position in Protestant Christianity, the New Year was shifted by King Henry VIII from budding March to bleak January and Mary was dismissed from the pantheon.
If New Years arrived at January first by accident, how did Christmas join it in the moribund weeks of late sunrises and early sunsets.
The solstice was celebrated by the ancients, particularly among the Celts who believed that it marked the battle between the God of Light and the Goddess of Darkness, with the latter winning. The barbarous Saxon assumed various Celtic holidays in different forms: the burning of the young girl in Scandinavia and Germany, the big beer blast in England are relies of the Celtic festival. And of course in pagan times it was a festival of light: bonfires, worship of the evergreen tree, etc., to represent the coming of light: longer days ahead.
Many of the code words of Christianity bent the existing phraseology "coming of light", battle between "light and darkness," and even "light of the world" to a Christian purpose. How did that happen?
No one knows where Christ was born or even exactly when: Christians say in a manger and therefore a stable; Muslims who know the Koran say that means under a palm tree at an oasis. Considering the climate, the latter might be more likely, although within the last five years it snowed in Jerusalem. Arabs and Israelis put aside their Uzi's and Thompson's to go out and throw snowballs at each other (note: neither side seems to like the M16. How unfortunate!). Whether under a palm or in the stable, was December the month?
Some scholars say that Christians took up Christmas the year Emperor Diocletian, the most efficient of their Roman persecutors, required all religions to worship at the solstice. From that occasion onward, Christians subsumed the phraseology common among pagans and twisted it to their own use, much as the pagans throughout the Christian era molded Christian catch phrases and figurines into a pagan meaning. That the Christmas tradition began with a clever Christian mockery of pagans did not escape the attention of the Purtinanic strain of Reformers who would have abolished Christmas altogether.
19th century commercialism resuscitated the feast. Even in New England, the Puritan homeland, Christmas gained a foothold. Where the pilgrims punished those who would have celebrated Christmas, gaudy lights have reappeared. Yes, Virginia, There is Christmas in Massachusetts.
Why then the depression? The pagans light a bonfire and said that's what lights are supposed to cure. Many we could simplify life by resuming simpler ways.
THOMAS DEAN Dean of RPPS reply to deanofrpps@AOL.COM ======================== READ IF ALL MEN WERE ANGELS http://www.thebookden.com/allmen.html