Christmas Tree Ornaments

When these lines go out into the world, a lost humanity will once again perform the greatest somersaults of its deceitfulness and the stirring game "Peace on Earth" will begin. Creatures who are still bawling the boozy and rowdy song "Die Wacht am Rhein", subjects who are still extorting the last penny from the poor, hyenaic bipeds who are able to scrape profit from cultural debris and corpses — they will all join in the stirring game again, cin greasy blinks in their puffy eyes, their sausage fingers folded over the most important part of their bodies, they will step up to the Christmas tree, and then it will roar provocatively and comfortably: Fro-oie-e, frooije dich, Christendom... They have decorated the fir tree pompously with glittering ornaments, harmless angels blow the good news, tinsel stars reflect peace in the atmospheric candlelight: but the tender fairy tale is shattered by the brutal being. Nowhere does the poverty of soul of this humanity come out so starkly as when the emotional make-up is particularly thick on the larvae. If this society did not have its incredibly hard-skinned conscience, it would do a decent deed out of remorse under the Christmas tree, where reality and appearance collide catastrophically: horrified by its incurable depravity, it would carefully commit suicide.

They can't do that. This society is not that moral. But it should at least be honestly immoral. It should use its festivals to glorify everyday life, to consciously justify its predatory existence, if only to avoid straining the conscience to no purpose, but not to lie about it for a few hours, to betray it! A society of this sincerity would perhaps keep Christmas itself, but would not be so crude as to ridicule it, but would reshape it gracefully.

For this society must feel better when it sees its true ideals in the light of the Christmas tree. A fir tree may stand there, but it must not mean peace. It must not symbolize peace, but hatred, greed, war. Red snow drips from the branches — the blood of those tormented by society; the walnuts are small, pale heads of begging proletarian children; wax figures, representing soldiers shot in the name of international law, dangle next to cute little guillotines; famous dummy safes are arranged next to delicate gilded prison windows. A laughing tangle of lances, swords, bayonets and cannons completes the splendor, which is crowned above all by a helmet spire.

And then nothing about Christianity! The croaking singer feels bad about these songs, and religion is degraded to seasonal fashion. Put a roller on the phonograph so that it screeches the "Merry Widow". You'll have a great time.....

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This is, unchanged, the "festive article" that I wrote nine years ago, on the "Holy Christmas" of the Society for the Exploitation and Slaughter of Man, and published in issue 52 of AKTION on December 25, 1912. The fact that the essay is still "as good as new" shows that November 9, 1918 has changed nothing. Only, for the sake of justice, it should be added: the peak of hypocrisy, the top, its last protection today is the clique of labor deceivers. (Comrade Felixmüller illustrated this very aptly in his cover picture for this issue).

"Peace on earth", — the drunken voice of Noske will sing the song and all the henchmen of the bourgeoisie; the Marburg students will bawl it out; the blood- "Vorwärts" will edit it in the leading article and in the arts section; Mr. Radbruch will perhaps have decreed that the "Froiie di.i.cch" be sung particularly insistently to the victims of Ebert's special justice.

A society whose existence was founded on hatred of one's neighbor and which now, before its ignominious death, is still assembling all its brutality against the approaching proletariat, is blathering about "love of neighbor". "Peace on earth!" Only the world domination of the exploited, the dictatorship of the proletariat, will bring peace to freedom!

F.P.