CHRISTMAS.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 7, Issue 420, 23 December 1884, Page 2

CHRISTMAS.

Cheistmas and its surrounding are evidences to us that things are upside down in these antipodean lands. A Festival that was originally intended to celebrate the shortest day 'is here held at the longest. The yule lo?, a very sensible article in the depth of a European winter, is burnt by some fantastic people in the colonies when a small iceberg would be a more suitable ornament. The plum pudding and other heavy articles are obstinately eaten, blazing hot, while the eater is sweating at every pore. What more could be required to prove the persistency of national custom ? Yet the absurdity seems not; to be felt, even when it is pointed by rec Elections, stories, poetry and pictures, all glittering with icicles and full of skates, furs and snowballs. Ihe Briton will religiously keep his Christmas if he can at any cost to constitution and comfort, though it be the only religious festival he observes in the year ! Weil, he will be free, he says ; so let him be a slave to dustom. It is evident that one of two things is needed in _ these sunny lands-: either that the Christmas bill of fare be read this day six months, or that the goose be taken refrigerated instead of roasted and that the ice and snows wanting outside be artificially provided for the table. We would personally prefer the former expedient, which would have the advantage of delivering our internal mechanism from the strains inflicted by two great f estivals t within eight i diys. However, until these reforms are ; properly arranged we will bear with I meekness all the sorrows of the present system .and drive dull fftve away» Why

should we not ? Why not for one clay persuade ourselves that wo are merry and going to bo happy? We will imagine that all our subscribers and patrons have paid in full, and that our own bills are all fully met. We will imagine that those' contemporaries who borrow our tit bits without acknowledgment will do so no. more, j We will imagine that that most troublesome correspondent,nnd that cynical critic, and the printer's devil are all dead, and we will hare a merry Christmas regardless of expense. 'Punch' once represented Old Christmas up his ( . own tree with' bills for geese, plums, ' sugar, brandy, and all the rest in the i form of wolves waiting for him to come down. But up a tree or down a well, let the old man look after himself ; we mean j to have a jolly time and charitably wish all our readers

A Merry Christmas.