Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24,1901. THE FESTIVAL.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 24 December 1901, Page 2

Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24,1901. THE FESTIVAL.

A Meeey Christmas and Happy New Year are words expressing a sentiment familiar to that great division of the human family ranging under the banner of Christianity. That sentiment has, by reason of association and age, become deeply grafted in the human mind. As year succeeds year and the festival comes round again, we are met with the familiar phrase,

which we would fain believe is not altogether a mere lip expression. There are periods in the life of the most hardened when the heart softenetb, and the better side of humanity is seen. Christmas brings us surroundings that tend in this direction, when we feel less bitter towards our enemies, and more kindly to our friends. In the active, hard struggle of life it is well that we have such moments of relaxation, of better thought, and kindlier feeling towards

mankind, when, perhaps, for a time at all events, we lose sight of the selfish struggle for wealth, power, and personal advancement. And if we get clear for a day of the selfishness of , humanity, we are all the better—even though the old craving comes back as keenly on the morrow. We believe the generality of people endeavor at this particular period to rise above themselves, and seek a loftier plane of thought, and the very effort to rise possesses merit and has au ennobling tendency. We feel inclined to be at peace with all mankind, apd we readily re-echo the grand sentiment of “ Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men.” "But in uttering the sentence we halt; for at the present moment we have no

peace within our borders; war and desolation are rampant in more than one division of our Empire; and even now we are engaged in despatching New Zealanders to aid in that war; to aid, let us hope,'in bringing it to a 'speedy tern. Ination. With a fervent—but, we fear, vain —hope that strife may cease, that mankind may rise to a loftier idea, wo content ourselves in old, familiar, but never hackneyed phraseology in wishing our readers “'A Merry Christmas'and Happy New Year.”