Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1905. CHRISTMAS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3614, 23 December 1905, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1905. CHRISTMAS.

The calender has made yet another turn, and the whole world is on the verge of fittingly celebrating Christmas with all its joys. At least, this is one part of the year when daily labours should be discarded by all, when every possible mode of conveyance is utilised by the home-wending brother, sister, son or daughter, all with the one motive in view—-to spend Christmas day at home. Even the imaginative powers of a magical genius are at a loss to understand the endless joy brought to many a aether’s heart at the thoughts of ’/ule-tide approaching, for does it iot bring with it the re-appearaiice )f her boy or girl, who has perhaps been away at educational school studies, or may be following the arduous pursuits of livelihood. How we wish Thomas Bracken, when penning “ Not Understood ” ' lad dedicated a verse to the lelight brought by the coming of ! he Yule. His was the pen which :ould have done such an emotional task justice. We have arrived at hat stage on the Almanack when 11-will should be borne by no man, vhen differences should sink into /blivion and be forgotten. At east we should all be human, loing harm to no man, but comaitting such acts of charity as will >lease the sick and weakly, and imeliorate the sufferings of the poor. The “Lyttelton Times” irovides a pretty sentiment when •t says Christmas Day is a day sacred to the gentler emotions, the festival of gifts commemorating the charity that never faileth. It is a day sweet with a legacy of :ender tradition ; a day when little hands at every bedside, with the earliest dawn, will draw closer the easy bonds of home, and when eager trebles will lisp anew the ever-wonderful mystery of Santa Claus. What other ghost of the centuries is left to us ? The march of intellect, that veritable “Jack che Giant-killer ” of all the fond illusions of sentiment, has slain them all. “ Saint Valentine,” “ The Bogie Man,” “ Lob Lie by the Fire,” and the “Water Babies” are no more, and even Father Time has had his scythe beaten into a pneumatic tyre and his hour glass twisted into a Greenwich chronometer. Only Santa Claus remains, and he survives because he is the tangible embodiment of that spirit of goodwill which pulses in the heart of all Christianity, from the smoking surge-beat shores of the wellremembered Home land to our own sweet summer isles, It is for the dear old ghost to teach the first Christmas lesson to little hearts, to lay those first memories whose store is swelled by each succeeding Yule, until our boys and girls, in turn, crossing the vague threshold of childhood, are privileged to understand the fuller, richer sentiment of Christmas, and, to care to see, with the loyalty of faith, that children, too, make happy Christmas. We therefore publish our final number before Yule by trusting all our readers spend “A Mkrry Christmas.”