Jesuits & Chipmunks

Yep, Alvin, Simon, and Theodore

I just received a fundraising letter from Loyola on the Potomac, a Jesuit retreat house in Maryland on the banks of - you guessed it - the Potomac. It’s a wonderful retreat house on 265 acres. A few years ago I enjoyed a five-day silent retreat there, so I wasn’t surprised to receive the letter - what did surprise me was the picture (above) of the Chipmunks at the top of the letter, and the opening sentence:

“In 1958, that is 65 years ago, Alvin and the Chipmunks soared to the top of the chart with The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t be Late).”

That was followed with a notation that in 1958 the hottest selling children’s Christmas gift was the Pogo Stick and Hallmark’s film The Christmas Tree debuted.

All this was the lead up to telling potential donors that the retreat house opened in 1958, and was celebrating its 65th year.

Almost nothing the Jesuits do surprises me, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way; on balance, I have a healthy respect for the order, its history, its founder St. Ignatius of Loyola, ministries, etc., but the Chipmunks for fundraising?!?

So, I began to wonder about 1958, the year I turned six, and was it really so uneventful that animated singing rodents in turtlenecks were the best benchmark they could find?

I did some digging and it turns out 1958 actually was a bit boring - domestically and in the secular world - but not in the universal Church. On October 9, 1958, Pius XII died after a nearly twenty-year papacy, and Angelo Giuseppe Roncalli became Pope John XXIII, the driver of Vatican II, and a future Saint.

John XXIII, for my money, trumps Alvin, Simon, and Theodore, and would make for a much better benchmark - - and picture!