A CHRISTMAS JOURNEY

Louis Lorenzo Redding

Louis Lorenzo Redding was born in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1901 and grew up in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1923, he received an undergraduate degree from Brown University and subsequently taught English at Morehouse College, in Atlanta. At the time he wrote “A Christmas Journey,” he was a student at Harvard University Law School. Among the first of his race to graduate from the law school, in 1929, Redding became the first African American admitted to the bar in Delaware. Beginning as an attorney in private practice, Redding later worked with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund and as a public defender in Wilmington.

In 1950, Redding, a pioneer in the fight for the desegregation of schools and housing, represented nine African American students at Delaware State College denied admission to the all-white University of Delaware. Pursing this case, he won two landmark decisions, Parker v. University of Delaware and Bulah/Belton v. Gebhart, which provided the legal basis for desegregation in Delaware. These decisions were forerunners of the famous Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka case, which led to the desegregation of the nation’s public schools, and they also served as catalysts for legislation ending segregation and discrimination in housing, voting, public transportation, and public facilities.

Redding’s life and work were motivated by the belief that the best way to achieve racial equality was through the passage of laws. In “A Christmas Journey,” he uses social realism to explore the meaning of Christmas for the dispossessed. Published in Opportunity in December 1925, the story reflects the pessimism and chaos that was so evident in the period following World War I. Redding employs the Christmas theme to bring attention to societal ills that he felt needed to be addressed.

Set in Boston, “A Christmas Journey” is the story of Jim and Elsie, whose lives have been led in the margins of mainstream society. Jim, a white man, is described as an incurable consumptive who knows that death is near. He believes that his condition resulted from being gassed while serving as a soldier in World War I. Elsie is a light-complexioned African American woman who is passing for white. These two characters are bonded by their love in a common-law marriage. Through the story of their lives and their personal reflections, Redding explores social issues such as interracial marriage, the social impact of tuberculosis, and society’s indifference to human suffering.

Redding forces the reader to reflect upon the real meaning of Christmas: loving, sharing, and caring for others. He suggests that, for many people, Christmas has become merely another holiday in which to engage in consumerism. Although Redding demonstrates the callousness and lack of concern that can seem to permeate the Christmas celebration in a large urban center, he overlooks several central themes that have fueled mankind’s existence for centuries and which force us to reflect on the meaning of Christmas and life. Christmas in the best of traditions represents a rebirth of life. It holds out the possibility for change. It stresses faith, hope, and love. Jim and Elsie, feeling disconnected from society, embrace the cynicism of the time and abandon their faith and hope. In the end, they are left with only their love for one another.

A Christmas Journey

For Love the master symphonist

Ignoring [vanity], creed and hue,

Mocks dicta that stifle and twist

To give consonant souls their due.

The raw sting of the cold, night air struck the consumptive’s [shrunken] chest. He gasped, coughed, gasped again, and with a slender hand, quivering from the exertion of his coughing, drew up the collar of his overcoat.

“This thing’s got me all right! That fool of an army doctor! A lot he knew about gas! And he told me that I’d wear it off in a few months! Wear it off! Well, it’ll soon be off now—but not in the way he said.”

Abstractedly he had taken his habitual route homeward. It led through the street market, which was thronged with Christmas-eve buyers, stocking up for the season that the morrow would usher in. The air was full of shrill babel and of the fresh smell of raw foodstuffs; the street was a jumble of motley wares. Nowhere else in great Boston could be found more eloquent proof of the cosmopolitanism of the city. Improvised signs in Yiddish, Italian, and Spanish, as well as in English, leered at the purchasers from all angles. Creeping, pipe-puffing Chinese with American overcoats over their loose native jackets bought greens from Italian merchants. Buxom Irish housewives bought red meat from German butchers. Greeks, Negroes, Poles—everybody, bought a great variety of things from that ubiquitous merchant, the Jew. Peanuts and cabbages, carrots and shoestrings, turkeys and bandannas, trousers and cheap jewelry, silk stockings and codfish—all were bargained for with equal gusto. Here, verily, was a paradise for the poor; but despite the low prices, no sale was complete without haggling.

The consumptive, as he weakly jostled his way through the alien melange, saw nothing that interested him. He was more than sated with the world. He loathed everything, even the scrawny, yellow fowl that a red-bearded Jew was swinging in the air and offering for sale in a rasping falsetto. Nor did he mask his contemptuous feelings under a hypocritical look of complacency; his wan countenance was frankly sardonic.

“Fools,” he muttered between coughs, “poor, ignorant fools, to whom life is a dollar, a loaf of hard bread, an imitation diamond, and a suit of shoddy, woolen underwear! Preparing to celebrate Christmas! Bah! What do they know about Christmas—or what do they care? It’s just another holiday for them!”

A heavy foreign sounding voice sang out:

“Dancin’ monkeys here, only a quarter. Git a dancin’ monkey.”

The words shattered the cynical musings of the consumptive and sent a train of incoherent and confused images swirling through his brain.

“Dancin’ monkeys——”

The sound came with haunting urgency and the man moved toward the spot from which it seemed to come. He beheld a short, unkempt, alien seeming peddler standing at the edge of the curb. On the ground beside him was a huge basket filled with bits of painted metal. In one hand the peddler held a string from the end of which dangled a monkey, crudely fashioned in tin, with a red coat and black trousers painted on his body in burlesque of the apparel of man. While the peddler lustily proclaimed his toy, he pulled the string and the monkey hopped and jumped, spun and danced. Occasionally a passer-by ventured from the main current of the crowd to look and pass on, but rarely to buy. There was no fascination for the consumptive in the terpsichorean efforts of the monkey, but he did find himself interested in the degree of imbecility that could cause anyone to invest money in such a glittering, senseless bauble. He looked at the bawling vendor with a feeling of contempt not unmixed with pity. “Why doesn’t he get a real job? Anything would be more profitable than this.”

But there was no answer in the loud cry of the peddler. . . . Again the emaciated man looked at the dangling monkey. He noted its gaudy, man-like costume; he watched its poor pantomime of human dancing; and he looked again at the man who held the string. The latter’s eyes were bright with a far-seeing luster.

“Ah!” thought the consumptive. “This peddler is a dreamer and a cynic. Perhaps he finds a peculiar significance in this profitless business of selling monkeys. He sees in his painted monkey the likeness of its higher analogue, man. To the peddler, perhaps, the monkey daubed with its thin coating of paint is man, smeared with the thin veneer of civilization. This mettlesome hopping and jumping, spinning and dancing of the monkey represents man, the puppet, fuming turbulently under the strings held by king and war-lord, exploiter and slave-driver. Just as here and there on the monkey a gleam of brightness reveals the metal, untouched by the paint; so too with man, whose soul-devouring passions and prejudices, whose avarice and blood-thirst reveal his baser self, untouched by the dissembling veneer of civilization.”

Suddenly the string snapped. The crazy gewgaw tottered defiantly a second, and then fell ungracefully to the snow-covered pavement.

“Aha! Aha! The monkey won’t dance! He’s broken his string! That’s what we’ve done—Elsie and I. We’ve broken the fettering strings of society and are resolved to dance no longer!”

The consumptive moved on. He had promised Elsie that he would return to her early. Near the end of the market block there were booths where cedar trees and holly were sold. The wholesome Christmas aroma came to him, and he stopped, searched through several pockets, and having collected all of his change, bought the largest holly wreath he saw. The purchase of the wreath was an unreasoned action; it simply completed a reflex caused by the stimulation of the man’s olfactory nerve centers by the cedars and holly.

Where the market ended, the street was narrow and dim-lit. Ugly, old brick houses, the cellars of which quartered a heterogeneous array of tradesmen’s mean shops, lined the street. In many of the windows above the shops were lighted candles. Some windows, uncurtained, revealed women and children decking Christmas trees. After a time the man with the wreath turned into a street yet darker and meaner and flanked with tall houses which made it seem more narrow than it was. Here there were no shops, nor were there windows from which candles shone. The consumptive crept over the crisp snow, and then he entered a house, passed through the black hallway, and groped his way up a flight of resounding, bare stairs. He paused at the first landing to recover his panting breath. He listened to his labored breathing as it rattled ominously in the frosty air; and there in the darkness, he smiled. Then, after climbing wearily the remaining three flights, he opened a door and entered a long room, which offered a sudden antithesis to anything the dismal appearance of the street would have presaged.

The room was well carpeted and was warmed by an open hearth. A reading lamp on a sturdy oaken table cast its glow over books and magazines lying there. In one corner, where the light but faintly reached, the blackness of a low piano blended with the shadows. The farther end of the room was screened off. The consumptive went behind the screens. There in an ancient, wooden bed beneath snowy covers a woman was sleeping lightly. The brilliancy of her abundant, black hair enhanced the white purity of its background. Her face, half-clouded by a capricious shadow, was composed and untroubled. Suddenly, as if informed by some strange telepathy of the watcher beside her bed, she awoke and gazed up into his haggard face.

“Jim,” she said, “did the druggist let you have it?”

“Yes, Elsie. It was easy. How do you feel?”

“Rested now, Jim. What’s that? Oh, holly! It’s only a few hours before Christmas, isn’t it? Do you know, Jim that I was born just thirty years ago tomorrow, on Christmas Day?”

“No, I didn’t know it, dear. We’ve never talked birthdays, but I could have guessed that you were born on Christmas or Easter or on some Holy Day.”

“Holy Day, Jim? No, Jim. There are no days holy in themselves; they’re all alike unless people hallow them in their hearts and consciences. But most people don’t hallow them inwardly. They use meaningless symbols like that holly wreath.”

He hung the wreath on a post at the foot of the bed, and then took from his pocket two packages and placed them on a small table beside the bed. The woman saw the packages and her somber eyes sparkled.

“What’s the larger package, Jim?”

“The bottle? Oh, that’s champagne from Champagne, or as we had to call it when on furloughs from Hell, ‘Du vin blanc.’” And he smiled weakly, and began feverishly to unbutton his overcoat.

But the eyes of woman are all-seeing; moreover, her intuition is mercurial and unerring.

“What’s the trouble, Jim?”

“Nothing, dear. What makes you ask?”

“You’re not as confident as when you went out. You seem excited.”

“It’s nothing. But, Elsie, I’ve been thinking about things, and about you. I’ve been wondering whether you have ever really cared that we weren’t legally married.”

“Oh, Jim! Why do you ask me that? No, I’ve never cared. I’ve never really thought about marriage. There were too many difficulties. Even if you had been well, our life would have been chiefly with ourselves. Marriage, too, would have been too sensational. The officials would have detected that I’m not white, and if they hadn’t I couldn’t lie about it. I would have told. And then, Jim, just imagine the newspaper stories and the editorials ranting of intermarriage and—”

“Don’t, Elsie, don’t! The fools who write newspapers don’t know that in reality any marriage is an intermarriage. There must be some interchange, some blending, whether it be of dissimilar blood or of other qualities. I love you because you have every spiritual quality that I don’t have, and because you are beautiful, because you are loyal, because your voice is gentle and soft, because your music charms me. You’ve been what any real mate is—a complement. As for the newspapers, had I been a well man, and had you wanted marriage, that would have come first, despite newspapers or anything else. As it was, I had no right to ask you to tie yourself to a weak and gloomy skeleton.”

He stopped. Elsie was gazing steadfastly at him, and he continued:

“But this illness has changed my ideas; indeed—who knows—it may have clarified them, for now I hate the world that would deny me honest happiness after making me a weakling. God! How I detest men’s pharisaic exactions and their smug conceits! I don’t see how I could bring myself now to stoop to even one of their conventions.

“And, Elsie, you’ve been my comforter. You’ve listened to my ravings and quieted them. You’ve saved me from genuine misery and folly. And all this you’ve done for a wreck—a mere broken clod.”

“Don’t brood, Jim. You must not.”

“I don’t mean to, Elsie; but I’ve been thinking that it isn’t fair to persuade you to do this—to go with me if you’re not altogether willing.”

“It’s all settled now, Jim. I’ve been thinking too while you were away, and I now know that I don’t want to do anything else—and I won’t do anything else.”

Reverently, Jim bent down and kissed her smooth forehead. Then, as if not completely assured, he said:

“If you’re not sure, Elsie, I can go alone.”

“Never mind, Jim: we’re going together. I won’t be separated from you. It’s not your fault things haven’t gone well. It’s just been Fate.”

Then, as if motivated by some slow passion welling up from the depths of his spirit, Jim again bent over the bed and kissed the woman, not quickly, or impulsively, but deliberately, first her forehead, then her cheeks and her lips.

He turned away and with head bowed walked beyond the screens. . . .

When he returned, he sat on the edge of the bed. The woman drew close and he enclosed her in his arm.

“Do you know, Jim, this has been a glorious experience—just two of us, living one for the other with nothing else to live for? I sometimes think that neither of us would have been happy if Fate had kept us apart. The sanction of the world for us, and for all like us, is only fair, but I doubt, Jim, if sanction could have made us any happier. . . . I wonder if the newspapers will get our story? Yes, I can see it now, headlines and all!”

“I don’t mind that, Elsie. The thing that I don’t like is that I don’t know what will be done with us, going in this way.”

“What’s found won’t be us, Jim, dear. But let’s not worry these few minutes. Let’s not even talk. Let’s just think and be happy.”

She nestled closer as if she thought that physical touch would foster that spiritual communion that she desired.

He was content. Whatever doubt he had as to the fairness of taking her with him was overcome by her earnest and tender devotion. She would have it no other way. She was his now and eternally. . . .

An hour passed, and bells, not sweet-toned from some rich temple, but harsh and mechanical began tolling the Christmas tide in.

“Are you ready, Jim?” she whispered.

“Yes, dear. Are you?”

“Yes,” she murmured.

He reached to the table beside the bed for the smaller package. As he shook its contents into a glass, he smiled at the grinning death’s-head the red label blazoned. There was a delightful tinkling sound as the champagne bottle in his weak and shaking hand kissed the rim of the glass into which the liquid gurgled.

He handed her the glass, and with his free arm drew her close to him.

She drank.

He took the glass, drank, and dropped it.

The bells rang on. . . .

They were drowsy now, but still conscious. Their embrace tightened.

The bells ceased.