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Cultural Musings on Chatham-Kent
And how many people are you planning to kill for Christmas?
Tuesday, December 3, 2002
Images of the twin towers of the World Trade Center horribly crumbling upon itself and thousands of people continue to haunt our darkest midnight dreams. An ordinary automobile's backfire while one is filling the car with gas at a service center can involuntarily force one to duck with fear and panic as you furtively scan the neighbourhod for a sniper. A devastating war that could possibly kill tens of thousands of people looms and lurks as Christmas draws near.Reason would seemingly dictate that very few people would knowingly go and purchase "a toy" for a child during this most "joyous and religious" time of year, that has as its "mission" the senseless, graphic, bloody killing of thousands of nameless representations of human beings and the annihilation of numerous structures. Unfortunately that is not the case.
However, can these toys or games, that will be purchased in frightening numbers this Christmas season, be considered, in any manner, a child's plaything in the traditional, historical sense of that word?
Toys, from a historical point of view, were part fantasy, part pleasure, part escapism, part imitation and were usually traditional symbols of innocence. They were meant to be the companions for idle times and the inspiration for developing minds. Toys were created to be an early means of self expression and creativity. They were meant to delightfully fill a transitory void between childhood and maturity, between the dream world and the real world.
Is it any wonder then that adults, in any generation, remain enchanted with "good toys" throughout their lives and can play as enthusiastically with a traditional toy when they are ninety as they did when they were nine?
Toys need not be beautifully created, wonderfully fashioned nor terribly complex. In fact, we probably have all witnessed, sometimes to our utter frustration, children ignoring a finely crafted, colourful, ingenious toy and playing, for hours, with the simple, unadorned cardboard box in which it was packaged!
The reality of the situation is that the simpler the toy, the freer the range that is given to a child's imagination. However, this is not a predicament only experienced by children in our modern world. It was as true in the early 1800s as it is today.
In 1812, Maria Edgeworth in her book, entitled Practical Education, observed that "any normal boy" would rather play with a "substantial cart in which he could carry weeds earth and stone up and down a hill, to the finest frail coach and six horses that ever came out of a toy shop."
One of the most remarkable aspects of the evolution of toys is their remarkable universality. Time after time in history, the same basic design has emerged almost simultaneously from cultures that were thousands of miles apart, shared very little in common and had absolutely no contact.
In other instances, a toy design would disappear from a culture for hundreds of years and then, just as mysteriously and suddenly, reappear in a civilization world apart, for no traceable reason.
Perfect examples of these "universal toys" are the yo-yo and the rattle. Yo-yos were known to have existed in the Far East and the Philippines in the very earliest times of man's existence. It then made its way to France in the 1790s, disappeared for over a hundred years and then inexplicably re-appeared in the 1920s in England and North America.
The rattle is another very ancient toy that, although popular in almost every culture from the early Egyptians to the Inuit, almost always was created in the same basic manner, pattern and structure. In fact, there is very little difference between the earliest known rattle and those being sold in any toy store this Christmas season.
There are literally hundreds of traditional toys, or "folk toys" that have captured the imagination of children throughout the ages, and what better time is there, than Christmas time, to reflect on these imaginative creations.
Next week, we will look specifically at a number of these "folk toys" from "whirligigs" to "whimmydiddles" and not one of them will need batteries, electricity nor a hard drive. Nor..... are any of these toys designed to gleefully wreak terror and death in a sensless and graphic blood bath!
Jim and Lisa Gilbert are local, national and international award winning educators and historians.
