ROBERT LYND ON CHRISTMAS

Evening Star, Issue 20053, 19 December 1928, Page 13

ROBERT LYND ON CHRISTMAS

STARRY ASSOCIATIONS It is tho only day of the year on which almost everybody wakes up with a feeling that it js the chief business of the human race to bo happy. On ordinary days men have scarcely breakfasted when >they, find themselves in tho grip of a fate that whirls them in trains and ’buses towards duties as burdensome as the task of a slave.

Even when they take a holiday they think of .health as .well as of happiness, and they fly from homo as though there, at 1 least, neither health nor happiness could be found. On Christmas Day no one but a valetudinarian cares twopence about health, and no one but a misanthropist dreads of flying from home in the hope of finding greater happiness somewhere else. It is made clear to us as in a sudden revelation that if we cannot be happy at homo wb can be happy nowhere, and that, if we cannot find our happiness in the happiness of others wo shall never find it. Even the .selfish persuade themselves for a few hours that giving things and receiving things are equal pleasures. There is a kind of genera), post of gifts, and every man can make himself reasonably happy by playing the part of Santa Claus. ... ‘ ‘ Tho Mistletoe Bough ’ is not an air ; that we should care to hear in .May or June, and certainly we should protest to the police if men came continually during the, summer and played it under our windows after we had gone to bed. It has associations with Christmas, however, and wo listen to it not as music, but as the overture to a scene in which wonderful things happen, and an ox and an ass kneel in the presence of a Child in a manger. The world, at the sound, becomes legendary, and, we ourselves figure in a legend. , And it is the same with every oldestablished Christmas custom. They are all part of the pageantry of Christmas. and wo could not part with one of them without feeling that Christmas was no longer the festival that it used to-be. Wo deck the pictures and the walls with holly, not because it is the most beautiful decoration, but because it is tho traditional decoration of the most beautiful of seasons. We hang mistletoe in the hall, not because we believe, like the Druids, that it is a magical plant, but because it used to bo hung in tho hall when we were children. Wo fill our children’s stockings at midnight, and our children pretend to believe that they were filled by Father Christmas long after, they have found us .out, because it is an essential incident, in the drama of the season.

Wo are all conservatives at Christmas, intolerant of change and innovation. We cling to many things that were new-fashioned to our fairly recent ancestors, because they are old-fash-ioned to us. It is said that Christmas cards were plot invented till tho reign of Queen Victoria, but anything that is as old as our great-grandfathers is for most of ns, for all practical purposes, as old the twelve apostles. The Christmas tree, again, is said to have been first introduced into England by a German lady in 1829, but it is by this time an ancient institution with its gleaming gifts and its "dangerous lights. Even the plum pudding is not the plum porridge of two or three centuries ago, which contained beef and veal as

well as prunes, raisins, sherry, and spices, and tho turkey’s place on the tabic was taken in earlier days by the swan or tho peacock. Tho very Christmas carol was not known before .the time of St. Francis, and Christmas Day itself does not seem to have been celebrated for some centuries after the birth of Christ. To-day, however, all these things have a long train of starry associations for us," and a man who did not eat turkey on Christinas Day would feel that he had not dined. Some people even demand snow as one of the oldfashioned decorations of the perfect Christmas, but it is not as yet, unfortunately, within human power to produce snow out of a blue sky. There is one innovation that I should like to see introduced into the Christmas celebrations. It is that the postman and the parcel post should call at every door. The postman is Father Christmas walking by daylight, and no child standing in the window should look for him in vain. What more melancholy experience can there be than to seo the postman go past on Christmas morning without so much as u'glance at tho door? There should be a conspiracy of millionaires to prevent such things and to provide cards and toys and hooks for neglected houses. My own heart still beats fast at the sound of tho Christmas postman’s knock, and, though I do not know what I am expecting, I suppose I have a wild faith that miracles may still happen. How much more expectant is the child, not yet inured to disappointment? To look forward to the coining of the Christmas post is a sign of belief in the essential goodness of tho human race. Innocence has for the time being returned to earth again, and, though it is mid-winter, wo live imaginatively in a world that is brighter and more prodigal than summer. It is no wonder that good Christian men and good Christian children overeat in celebration of such a season, that wise men light the flames around the Christmas pudding crowned with a sprig of holly, and that boys and girls in-paper crowns blow toy trumpets and whistles round the table.—Robert Lynd, in ‘ Hutchinson’s Magazine.’