The Akaroa Mail. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1882.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VII, Issue 673, 27 December 1882, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 27, 1882.

A MERRY CHRISTMAS.

The eighteen hundred and eighty-third anniversary of the great Christian Festival is in course of celebration, and our minds are naturally bent on topics suitabb to the season It has been the custom in all Christian countries to make the time . ne of feasting and merriment, and we, in this new land, have not deteriorated in this res ect.

For up, in this southern land, wheie Christmas is the season of ripening fruit, of the full beauty of flowers, of the lull glory of the sun, the old Christmas legends have a quaint goblin-like unreality, from the fact that they were nearly always associated with frost and snow', with the blazing yule log, and the hot plum pudding, with the distribution or coals and blankets, and the tapping of the robin on the window pane, as a hint that crumbs would be welcome. All is changed here: the sun beats down on the full summer glory of a prolific vegetation, cool salads and effervescing drinks are more to be desired than hot roast beef and indigestible plu n pudding, and thank goodness there is no necessity for the distribution of fuel or the giving away of food or clothing ; for those touching words— " the poor ye have always with you," have a very limited applicability in this home of our adoption, and may be interpreted to mean the sorrowing ones, rather than those without sufficient food. Our antipodean robin too, with his snowy breast and suit of sombre mourning, is in his glossiest sables ; and his beautiful song, telling of a pleasant mate and successfully reared brood, is heard echoing in the early morning from the summit of some fragrant manuka, giving the lie direct to those foolish detractors of our native birds, who deny them the gift of melody.

Our friends at Home who draw Christmas cards and write Christmas books " especially for the Colonies," never seem to quite realise this fact. It is true that they sometimes represent us as partaking of tea and damper by moonlight under huge trees, but thej also show us as dancing furiously under a blazing sun. In fact, their minds are steeped with the idea that Christmas is a time of natural activity, and they throw a restless movement into all their delineations which is not correct. The future Colonial artists will picture us at Christmas as Leech and his successors have pictured the seaside visitors in the dog days—inclined to be languid rather than boisterous, anxious for the cool sea breeze and the pleasant shade.

It would indeed bo an endless task to contrast all the differences of Christmastide in New Zealand and in the land of our progenitors, but in one thing we may make them alike—We may make it a time for the forgiveness of injuries, for reconciliation with estranged friends, for kind thoughts and high resolve-. May it be a merry Christmas to us all, deir friends ; a time of peace and joy and rest; a time like that spoken of by Him of Who.se birth the feast is a commemoration, and Whose words interpreted into dulcet cadences by the magic hands of the Laureate speak of these happy times— '• For ever and for ever in that dear land of rest,

Where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest."