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U p F r o n t
By Karl Keating
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This Rock
Volume 4, Number 12
 December 1993 
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YES, the photograph on our cover is authentic.
Taken in 1926 at Bethel, the Brooklyn headquarters of the Jehovah's
Witnesses, it shows members of the Bethel staff on Christmas morning.
At the far end of the main table, seated with his back to the wreaths,
is "Judge" Joseph Rutherford, the second leader of the Watch
Tower. A few years after this photograph was taken he declared Christmas
to be a pagan accretion to real Christianity, and celebrations such
as this were proscribed, but here he and his chief aides appear to
be enjoying themselves.
Notice the gifts piled high on the tables and the decorations
hanging from the ceiling and pillars. Such signs of festivity were
eliminated under the reform Rutherford instituted to solidify his
authority in the organization. During his long tenure he finished
transforming Witnesses into walking examples of H. L. Mencken's definition
of a puritan: a man with a haunting fear that someone, somewhere,
is having a good time.
G. K. Chesterton closes his book Orthodoxy
with this line: "There was some one thing that was too great
for God to show us when he walked upon our earth, and I have sometimes
fancied that it was his mirth." However that may be, one thing
we know for sure--a mirthless religion is a false religion. Mirthlessness
arises from a misapprehension of human nature, of the Fall, and of
grace. Medieval sculptors fashioning laughing gargoyles high atop
cathedrals knew this well, but many moderns have forgotten it.
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