A CHRISTMAS TREE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 244, 2 December 1940, Page 6

A CHRISTMAS TREE

OLD TIMES IN ENGLAND. "A PRETTY GERMAN TOY." ; (By Charles Dickens) , ; ■ (Continued from Friday) But ha,rk! The waits are playing, and they break my qhilidish sleep! What images do I associate with the Christmas music as I see them forth on the tree? Known before all , the others, they gather round , my little bed. An. angel, speak- , ing to a group of shepherds in a field; some • travellers with eyes uplifted, following a star a baby in a manger, a child m a spacious} temple taKMng, with grave men; a solemn figure with > a mild and beautiful face, raising a dead girl by the hand; again. near a city gate, calilng back the son of a widow on his bier to life; a crowd of people looking through the opened roof of a chamber where he sits, and letting down a sick person on v a bed with ropes; the same, in a tempest, walking on the water to a ship; again on a seashore teaching a multitude; again with a child upon his knee, and other children around; again restoring sight to the blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, health to the sick, strength to the lame,, knowledge to the ignorant; again dying upon the. Cross, watched by armed, soldiers, a thick darkness coming cn, the earth beginning-to shake, and only one voice heard, "For give them, for they know not what they do." ■ * » « In every cheerful image and suggestion that the season brings, may the bright star that rested above the. poor roof be the star of all Christian, world. A moment's pause, O vanishing tree, of which the lower branches are dark to me as yet., and let me look onae more! I know It 4-« i va V\loT-*lr criQ/>Dc r\rs ■f Via?

branches, where eyes that I have loved have shone and smiled, from which they are departed. But far above I see the raiser of the dead girl, a,nd the widow's son, and God is good! If age be hiding for me in the unseen portion of thy downward growth. 0 may I with a grey head turn a child's heart to that figure yet, and a child's trustful ness and confidence! Now the tree is decorated with bright merriment, and song and dance and cheerfulness, and they are welcome. Innocent and welcome be they ever held, beneath the branches of the Christmas tree, which cast no gloomy shadow! But as it sinks into the ground 1 hear a whispe r going through the leaves, "This, in commemoi' ation of the law of love and kindness, mercy and oompassioo This in remembrance of me !" A JEST FOR BACHELORS In Europe at Christmas time mistletoe continues to dangle from doorways and chandeliers, as a trap i'or maids, and a festive opportunity for their suitors. In these modern times, of course, few maidens may be unaware of thei trap. Possibly they !may strive to fall victims. But they one and all, maintain an appearance of alarm and simplicity when caught "under the mistletoe." The Yuletide privilege of the mistletoe is said to be a survival of Druid practices, as is the name of Yule itself. The Celts, whose religion dominated even the non-Celtic cultures of north-western Europe in pre-Chris-tian times, held the mistletoe mysterious, and therefore somehow sacred. The "mystery" of the mistletoe, growing out of a tree, with apparently no roots, is simply that the plant is a half-parasite, sucking saw from its bigger host, and living at the latter's expense. Consideration of this fact suggests that there is in it, perhaps, a subtle iest for misogynic bachelors?