Flipping through the channels the other night during half time of some NFL contest, we came across “The Wizard of Oz” on TNT. It had been a while since we’d watched the movie version of L. Frank Baum’s tale – starring Judy Garland, Bert Lahr & company – following the Yellow Brick Road all the way to the Emerald City. So – what the heck? – we stayed until the end. And were glad we did. From “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore” to “There’s no place like home” – few movies are more iconically American.
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Imagine my surprise this morning when I came across this piece on biography.com about changes Judy Garland wrought to the holiday classic “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” You have to read it all to get the full gist, but compare the following original lyrics of Martin and Blaine…
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last / Next year we may all be living in the past / Have yourself a merry little Christmas / Pop that champagne cork / Next year we may all be living in New York… No good times like the olden days / Happy golden days of yore / Faithful friends who were dear to us / Will be near to us no more…”
…with the post-Garland “Meet Me in St. Louis” version we’ve come to know and love:
“Have yourself a merry little Christmas / Let your heart be light / From now on your troubles will be out of sight / Have yourself a merry little Christmas / Make the Yuletide gay / From now on your troubles will be miles away / Here we are as in olden days / Happy golden days of yore / Faithful friends who are dear to us / Gather near to us once more…”
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Amazing what a difference the stamping of one ruby slippered foot can make, eh?
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Today being Christmas Eve, all of this set me to thinking about differences between the four Gospels. Not only differences in birth accounts, but differences in overall tone, tenor, and stylistic choices. Which details are emphasized, and which are left out? Biblical scholars, bear with me here as I lay a little historical groundwork…
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Mark’s was the earliest of the four Gospels. It was written in a kind of street Greek that emphasized action without much in the way of stylistic flourishes. Its main transition word is often translated as “immediately!” and gives the sense of things happening all of a sudden, without warning. As for Christmas stories, in Mark’s version there isn’t one. Mark’s Jesus appears first at around age 30, at his baptism by John in the River Jordan. He then goes directly into his public ministry. Or “Immediately!” as Mark might say.
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Chronologically speaking, Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels were written next and they are very different from Mark’s version. Much more polished in their Greek and borrowing more from traditional biographical narratives of the time, these two writers clearly repeat some of Mark’s material about Jesus’ parables and so forth. But they also have another independent source that is referred to by those who study such things as “Q.” In Matthew and Luke we get Wise Men and the Star of the East. We get shepherds and the manger and the Bethlehem trek resulting from Caesar Augustus’ “enrollment” edict – thus explaining how an unwed couple from Galilee ended up so far from home in the City of David for the birth of their son. In the Hamilton musical version (Luke), we also get the Songs of Simeon, Mary and Zechariah – along with Angels We Have Heard on High. You know, all of the traditional trappings of creches and pageants we’ve handed down to our kids from time immemorial.
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Bringing up the rear, there’s John. “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.” For believers, there can be few more stirring words than this opening salvo from John’s Gospel. He takes the discussion about Jesus off the street (Mark), moves past the literary touches of the Q-inspired Matthew and Luke, and places us squarely in the realm of the cosmic and the eternal. John solves the age-old Trinitarian conundrum by saying “Jesus = God” – not from the time of his baptism forward (Mark), and not from the time of his birth forward (Matthew and Luke), but from the time of creation forward. In so doing, John changes the grounds of theological debate over Christology forever – for better or for worse.
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So, what’s Judy Garland got to do with it anyway? Well, I can’t help thinking that original Martin and Blaine version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” sounds an awful lot like Mark: Blunt, unpolished, and tramping on a few toes. Lacking the feel-good beginning (and end) that Hollywood stars like Garland demand. A first draft, subject to later revision, the better to cater to a public that prefers Meet Me in St. Louis and The Wizard of Oz as upbeat stories of redemption – complete with catchy show-tunes, rather than a grittier account – whether of rural Great Depression life in Tornado Alley, or of unwilling transplants from the Midwest to The Big Apple.
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Can you guess how the Gospel of Mark ends? Scholars pretty much agree that the snake-handling / poison-drinking / speaking-in-tongues section at the end was an appendage, a late addition. See post on this here, excerpt below.
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What is most striking to me as a scholar of the NT is that the passage in which Jesus’ words about handling snakes are contained was not originally part of the Gospel of Mark. Or of any other book of the NT. The oldest form of the Gospel of Mark that we can reconstruct ended with 16:8. Jesus has been dead and buried. On the third day some women go to the tomb. Jesus is not there. A young man who *is* there tells them that he has been raised and that they are to tell the disciples that Jesus will meet them in Galilee. Then – the climax of the scene, and arguably of the Gospel – the women “fled from the tomb and didn’t say anything to anyone, for they were afraid.” Period. That’s it. That’s where the Gospel ends.
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I suppose there are those who will discount this analysis based on some ad hominem attack on the author. Believe what you will. As for me, I know the difference between The Wizard of Oz and real life. Not to mention the public pressures exerted on lyricists and gospel-writers from the beginning, even until the present day.
Good work, DEW… THANKS! Merry Christmas to you, too. 🎄. Dede
Great read! Thanks buddy! I wanna wish you (and your’s) a Merry Christmas! (Alexa is playing Feliz Navidad is as I write this.)