The First Christmas Marathon
by Satsvarupa Dasa Goswami
Excerpted from Srila Prabhupada-lilamrita, Vol. 2, pp. 265 67
"It was on December 22, 1972, that we accidentally discovered the Christmas marathon in Los Angeles. Of course, we noticed a great increase in the number of people going into the stores, and the stores were staying open sometimes until midnight. I was standing in front of a Burbank Zody's. We were having an intense competition with prizes in Los Angeles, and it was building up to a feverish pitch.
So after distributing madly all day long, I had collected about $350 and had distributed 650 magazines. It was about ten o'clock at night. I was convinced this was the new world's record in ISKCON and that nobody was possibly going to beat me this day. Even though the store was open until twelve, business had started slowing off; and I was thinking, "Maybe I should go back. Undoubtedly everyone is back already. No one has ever stayed out past eight o'clock. They'll all be waiting up for me. I shouldn't keep them waiting up." So in this way my mind was convincing me to go back.
By eleven o'clock the store was completely dead. I got in the car and started driving back. On the way back I passed another Zody's, called Hollywood Zody's, on Sunset and Western. I was torn whether to stop or not, because that store was crowded and was going to be open until midnight. But I decided, "No, I'll go back, because the other devotees will be waiting up to see how many books I distributed." So I just kept driving.
I finally arrived at the temple at about ten minutes to twelve, and I burst into the sankirtana room. But the only person there was the secretary, Madhukantha. I said, "Oh, no. Everyone went to bed?" He said, "No, nobody is back yet." I was the first one back! That was the discovery of the first Christmas marathon. It was completely unplanned. No one had ever instructed anyone to stay out that late. We just did it spontaneously.
Finally, at about one-thirty in the morning, all the devotees had returned, and we were all sitting around looking at the sankirtana map. We couldn't sleep; we were so excited to go out. We were thinking, "Where can we find plenty of conditioned souls to distribute books to?" Our noise and raucous laughter was like a drunken party, and it woke up Karandhara, who was sleeping in his office in the next room. He came stumbling in, wiping the sleep from his eyes, but when he saw us and saw what was going on, he burst out laughing and sent us all to bed, saying, "Get ready for tomorrow." So in this way we performed the three-day marathon-December 22, 23, and 24th.
No one had ever distributed as many books before in the history of our movement. A big day had been considered to be somewhere between twenty-five and forty books. But we were distributing between five thousand and six thousand pieces of literature a day for a three-day period. One temple had distributed almost eighteen thousand pieces of literature in just three days."
At this time Srila Prabhupada was in Bombay, where his attempt to secure the land in Juhu had become entangling. The landlord was now refusing to sell the property and was trying to evict the devotees, even though Srila Prabhupada had already installed Radha-Krsna Deities on the land. Although these matters were causing Srila Prabhupada anxiety, he continued his usual daily duties: taking his morning walk, lecturing in the evening from The Nectar of Devotion, corresponding with and receiving news from his centers around the world, even organizing a Bombay pandal festival for January.
When Srila Prabhupada received news of the book distribution in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the United States, he was very pleased and amazed. Although involved with many affairs from throughout the world, he put them aside and relished the overwhelming victory of book distribution in America. Immediately he called in his personal secretary and dictated the following letter.
My dear Ramesvar, I beg to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated December 27, 1972, and with great happiness I have read your figures of amount of books sold during three-day period, December 22-24, 1972. It is scarcely believable that more than 17,000 books could have been sold by one temple in three days! That indicates to me that people are at last becoming little serious about this Krishna Consciousness movement in your country. Otherwise, why they should buy our books? But they can see that our boys and girls, devotees, are so much sincere and serious to distribute the message of Krishna Consciousness, they are at once struck, by seeing them, and therefore they appreciate and purchase. This is unique in the world. So I am so much pleased upon all of the boys and girls in Los Angeles and all over the world who are understanding and appreciating this unique quality of our transcendental literature, and voluntarily they are going out to distribute despite all circumstances of difficulty. By this effort alone they are assured to go back to home, back to Godhead.
