The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1930. CHRISTMAS.

Hokitika Guardian, 24 December 1930, Page 4

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1930. CHRISTMAS.

Aga[n we are on the threshold of Christmas. It is a hurrying world nowadays, each year so crowded with events great and small that the time passes with such rapidity, and the young year of a comparatively short time ago has grown up and is soon to depart and make way for the next. Christmas has a universal appeal and recognition which makes it always a world holiday and to many nations and people a seasonal holy day. There is that wonderful reverberating message of old which is heard anew at this time, and ago does not wither nor custom state its universal applicaton. Christmas seems to provide a breathing space for humanity as it were, in which to ponder and take stock of the well being of kith and kin. It is homing time for families who assemble in happy reunions. Friendships, too, are renewed and cemented. Christmas in particular liberates the duty of giving, and all the world is busy remembering some one in the kindly not which so befit Christmastide. It is the season of our since rest humanity and the opportunity for the expression of goodwill and esteem to all and sundry. Christmas must play a wonderful part in the life of the world. No sooner has one Ohristmase passed than in factories and industries, preparations for the next are put in hand. The makers of gifts never let up in their work creating those little symbols of goodwill and esteem which pass one to the other as Christmas presents at this special season of the year. Ihe toy-makers never seem to exhaust their ideas of novelties to gladden the hearts of the young on Christmas morn. Santa Claus is an undying tradition which the old delight to guard and the young, revel in. After all, the season is rightly for the young. Tt is well to imprests them in their impressionable years with the spirit of Christinas. Dickens embalmecT that spirit in his tale of old, and the words of Tiny Tim still ring true round the world. So, too, in the carols of old, brought down from the time of the distant Kincp of earliest recorded history, the spirit of Christinas is expressed in simple words that all may understand. Those carols seem to be a reechoing of the earliest angelic song which her--1

aided the birth of Him who was to figure for all time as the Light of the world. “Peace on Earth, and Goodwill to all men,” is surely an all-em-bracing massage, the import of which will stand for all time as an injunction to mankind. Peace, the world lacks in many countries; good-will, too, is often absent. But if they were really conjoined as the spirit of Christmas would desire, what a changed and happy world it would be. The strife and struggle which for ever wages is not in keeping with Christinas tenets. That it ijs so is to be deplored; but it may not be, if the spirit of Christinas could ho accepted with an open mind, and the message put into real practice. Just now there are national difficulties of all kinds to be faced. Momentarily, Christmas will create a truce, and feuds and raucous will die down, and the season will be devotionally received. How wonderful it would ibe if that true spirt of Christinas were to continue after the season passes, and on through the coming year strife were to give way to peace, and rancour to goodwill. Man with all his triumphs and advancements, has not yet conquered himself. With scientific means he sets out to control and harness great natural elements, hut himself he leaves out of the eivteuory. Why not a. fresh beginning at this season of the year P There is great gain'in a well ordered eountrv. ‘Where the machinery runs smoothily there is no grating and no dislocation. How much happier the world and its people’s might be if the spirit of Christman now in the air, were accepted univerrdly and applied round the globe. What a notable transformation it would be! Yet it is not impossible. All things, are possible and with that thought we may close hoping that the best will yet come to. pass, and that in this period of the year our readers will enjoy to the fullest and heartiest content A MERRY CHRISTMAS.