CHRISTMAS AND SUMMER NUMBER

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 72, 17 December 1937, Page 17 (Supplement)

CHRISTMAS AND SUMMER NUMBER

1x7 heke shall i Gor aii YY through the year we ask ourselves the question. Where shall we go for our next holiday? It becomes a thing to dream about in the winter, when, rain-splashed and angry with the cold, v we tuck our minds into the thought as though into a comfortable little muff . From our winter fastness we think longingly of bright summer days and their splendid idleness. We plan to lie on lazy sandhills, letting the sand and time run through our fingers, hearing only those fascinating beach noises .... the splash of waves which roll the shells together, the thin scream of seagull, the shout of fresh young voices in the air, the excited bark of a distant dog . , . . while sleepily we watch the wind bow down the grass. Our ambition on these summer days? Merely to burn a delicate biseuit colour. Our desire? That the days will be weighted with languor that might make them pass more slowly. Or perhaps our dream is for the country, where, along clay-dust roads, we will ride, dismounting to explore a piece of bush where tuis sing, or refresh ourselves at a streamlet that bubbles over smooth, round stones. Perhaps not the country though ; for experience has taught, and tradition has it, that you always "lend a hand" in the country, and this is to be your holiday and there won't be another until next Christmas. So to an inland town (as a compromise) * where there will be lots of tennis, a cabaret and a movie — with all day and all night to enjoy them in. But whether it be to country, sea or towm it's a holiday and we will enjoy it. At holiday time the world, and everything in it, is our own.

DICKENS found magic in the very name of Christmas. He saw it as an occasion when petty jealousies and discords must be forgotten, when it was proper for man "to reflect upon blessings rather than upon past misfortunes." He saw it, too, as a time "in which, of all times in the year, the memory of every remediable sorrow, wrong and trouble in the world around us should be active within us, not less than our own experiences, for all good." And was there ever a writer who so completely captured the spirit of Christmas as Dickens did — a spirit that has lived on invincibly since nearly 2000 year ago the Child born in Bethlehem of Judea gave His name to the Feast of the Nativity? Man-made visitations can do no more than temporarily over-shadow and lessen its influence for good; it has persisted down through the ages — the most humanising force mankind has known. An American author explains the long-continuing miracle by telling us that the spirit that broods over Christmas is "really Motlier Earth herself out of whose womb proceed all God's cfeatures, from the least of them to man, who dreams himself the greatest."' That explanation will satisfy many people. And millions of people, the world over. in spite of hurts still to heal, in spite of misunderstanding, uncertainty and disiilusionment, will presently observe the gTeat tradition, as of old, in the ever-recurring hope that peace and goodwill shall one day not far off return to gladden the hearts of all natfons.