Christmas Greenery

Most of New England (and some of the deep South) enjoyed a White Christmas last December, the first in several years. For some of us it also seemed a bit like a Green Christmas, too.

First of all, on Christmas Day on the McNeil-Lehrer News Hour there was a Roger Mudd essay about the commercialization of Christmas in which the newsman used Dr. Seuss's Grinch for his text—and he went on to quote several lines from Robert Frost. Elsewhere on that same program there was a panel discussion focusing on the changing nature of religion worldwide. The group included Professor Arthur Hertzberg of the College's Religion Department debating with the Rev. Jerry Falwell and several other clerics.

Then there was the annual holiday poem in The New Yorker, in which Roger Angell celebrated a couple of alumni: C. Everett Koop and the aforementioned Dr. Seuss.

During the holidays The Wall Street Journal turned the fiftieth anniversary of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer into front-page news. And, of course, let us not forget Postmaster General Tony Frank, whose carriers, for the most part, triumphed over snow and dark of night during their appointed rounds as Santa surrogates. (If your package arrived late, well, don't be a Grinch.)