Sir John Ramsea, in his “CHRISTMAS CAUTION,” observes, that, “the weather is unusually cold at this season, and therefore good fires, good eating, and good drinking, are unquestionably agreeable, and in some measure necessary. Fuel is laid in for external warmth, and generous liquors for internal. The ox is fattening for slaughter; the poultry are put up to feed; the mutton, the venison are already hung, and minced meats are in a state of preparation. All this is very right; all this very good. The blessing brought by the season to the Christian world, might well render it a time for perpetual rejoicing,—a time of universal happiness. But instead of loading our tables, and our stomachs, with unwholesome variety of the richest viands, let us be content with plain and nourishing food; and with a quantity proportioned to our digestive faculties; and let us consider, while we are cheerfully and comfortably regaling, by a good fire, allured by superfluities, to excess, whether we have not some poor, but worthy, neighbors, who are exposed, half-fed, and, perhaps, half naked too, to all inclemency of the weather, while their miserable little ones are shivering around a few embers, destitute even of the necessaries of life. By our retrenchments then let them be clothed, be comforted, and fed; and while their stomachs become the depositories of what would only tend to disorder our own, their grateful lips, too often very differently employed, will bless, at once, the season, and their benefactors. We shall inculcate in our offspring the virtues of Christian charity and benevolence, instead of the heathenish vices of intemperance and excess; and we shall thus secure to ourselves the health, as well as the approbation of our own bosoms, and be at once qualified and entitled to enjoy a ‘MERRY CHRISTMAS.’
American watchman and Delaware advertiser. [volume] (Wilmington, Del.), 23 Dec. 1823.
The American press during the 1790s played a role analogous to that of today’s electronic media, which, like today, was used as a vehicle to attack the principles and policies of the opposing political parties of the period. Since the dawn of a literate public actively engaged in government, politicians have both supported and cursed the effects of the press on the political process. The rapidly growing media of the late eighteenth century was seen as a necessary evil that could serve or destroy the evolution of the new federal government.
https://humblymybrain.substack.com/p/the-press-as-a-weapon-how-1790s-newspapers
The Old Testament’s first mention of polygamy appears not among the righteous, but in the violent lineage of Cain, through his descendant Lamech, who “took unto him two wives,” Adah and Zillah (Genesis 4:19). In the same brief passage, Lamech boasts to those wives of having slain two men—one “to my wounding,” and a young man “to my hurt”—while daring any avenger to face a vengeance “seventy and sevenfold” (Genesis 4:23-24). The canonical account leaves the circumstances of these killings ambiguous: accident, self-defense, or cold-blooded murder? Scripture alone offers no clarity. Yet when apocryphal witnesses are consulted, the portrait darkens dramatically, revealing Lamech not as a flawed but sympathetic figure, but as the Bible’s inaugural polygamist whose life bears only the rotten fruit of murder, secret oaths with Satan, and divine curse—fruit that exposes plural marriage’s origin as profoundly corrupt from its very root.
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