Cleiorhetean Society Christmas - by Alan Borer

Until 1935, Otterbein College had two women’s “literary societies” and two for men.  Their purpose was to train students in the art of public speaking, debate, and critical thinking.  It may occur to readers that in the days before television, computers, and other technologies, the Societies also helped pass time and keep the genders separated. 

The newest of the four, the Cleiorhetean Literary Society, was founded in 1871.  As the “junior” society, Cleiorhatea was expected to take a serious interest in music.  Philalethea, the other women’s society, and Cleiorthetea, knew that a well-educated young woman could display musical talents.  Or as a Victorian might put it,

Please look at us, and you will see, What good young ladies ought to be.[i]

Here is a sample of Cleiorhetea’s interest in serious music.  On December 14, 1911, the Cleiorheteans offered a public program on Edward MacDowell (1860-1908).  MacDowell, a contemporary composer and teacher, had recently died at the untimely age of 47.  We cannot be sure who came up with the idea of a commemorative concert of music by and readings on MacDowell.  Today, if he is remembered at all, it is for the song, To a Wild Rose; much of MacDowell’s music was Romantic (with a capital R).  Cleiorhetea was firmly in that tradition, and a wish to idealize a fellow Romantic makes sense.

For a number of years in the 1910s, Cleiorhetea offered a Christmas program.  One year previous to the MacDowell concert, the ladies offered their “Christmas Session” on December 15, 1910.  Many of us who are musicians or music lovers know what to expect of Christmas concerts.  A mix of popular and classic Christmas songs, capped by or at least including Leroy Anderson’s Sleigh Ride (oddly, the song contains no reference to the holiday).  But Cleiorhetea’s “session” was almost fifty years before Sleigh Ride was composed.  When I looked to see what the literary society offered three rhetoricals about Christmas, but

There was not a single Christmas song to be heard!!

Cleiorhetean Society’s 1910 Christmas Program

Plenty of music, certainly.  Chopin’s familiar Grande Valse Brilliante was played, as was the popular Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes.  Less well known selections included Ethelbert Nevin’s Bedtime Song and F. A. Boieldien’s Der Calif von Bagdad Overture (a French operetta about Iraq in a German translation!).  Even the Cleiorhetean Glee Club’s rendition of Those Evening Bells turned out to be a secular song, with no mention of the Jolly Fat Man.[ii]

However, it is not the historian’s job to judge what things the past did wrong.  Other campus glee clubs performed yuletide songs.  Better to ponder a concrete example of how Christmas was celebrated in the before times.  English settlers of the Americas were part of the Puritan tradition.  Christmas was a school day in Boston until the 1870s.  Christmas was a holiday with German roots, not English.  And while anti-German sentiment overwhelmed German-speaking churches during World War I, the DNA of Christmas now lived in the nation as a whole.

Different people, different holiday traditions.  So I wish all readers a Merry Christmas; just pick the song, or no song, to your taste!

- Alan Borer

[i] W. S. Gilbert, Utopian, Ltd., Act I

[ii] Cleiorhatea, Christmas Session, December 5, 1910 [concert program].  Otterbein University Archives, Westerville, Ohio.