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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3270, 24 December 1881, Page 2

Eighteen hundred and eighty-two years have rolled by since the founder of the Christian religion was born in an obscure stable, and for at least eighteen hundred generations his wondrous nativity has been celebrated alike in palace and "cottage by praise and thanksgiving. And although we in Nov Zealand are far away from the lands where we first learut to rejoice at the approach of Christmas, we cherish, neath a blue summer sky, all the early associations that hallow this season of the year. Though frost and snow, the yule log, and the holly, seem so fitting to the time when a " Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year " is the hearty greeting of man to man, we must not forget that the colony is old enough to have children of its own who know not snow or frost. But though they have learnt to regard this season as oue made beauteous by flowers and foliage, they have also been taught that in the old country it is specially set apart for the exercise of charity. The piercing cold, the long nights, the pinching poverty to be found in the country we still fondly call " home," may have done much to create the feeling of benevolence that is ever put in practice there, it is still not forgotten that the chief lesson of Christianity is chanty. Though happily the scenes of wretchedness, the dwellings of misery, arenot to be ]

witnessed in this land, there is no lack of objects upon which charity can be bestowed, or of opportunities for those who will to show their benevolence. "On life's ocean diversely we sail," and many sink beneath the waves in the struggle for life. Let it be for us, then, here in New Zealand, to keep up the Christmas festivities in the good old style as regards the kindly feeling of which they form so large a part. We have not the snow; the yule log is not wanted, but man wants help from man, and let the young generation know that this is the special season to dispense assistance to those that need it. In bright and happy homes, made more gladsome by all that makes life a luxury, remember that there are dwellings from which the brightness has fled —perchance has never entered. Kindness and sympathy are rich gifts in the bands of those able to use them ; let them flow abundantly when we wish each other "A Merry Christmas and a Happt New Yeah."