The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1906. CHRISTMAS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 3734, 22 December 1906, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1906. CHRISTMAS.

The tumult of commerce dies down because it is Christmas-time. The people even allow their passions to take a spell and their virtues to appear because it is Christ-mas-time. We claim respite from work and time for pleasure. If we allow the influence of the cheerful season full play, we allow the better nature that all possess to rise to the surface and rescue less fortunate ones from a dull Christmastime. Christmas wasn’t sent along to deepen the gloom. It comes to preach a sermon of cheerfulness. If you are alive and in good health on Christmas Day iqo6, you’ve no occasion to regret the coming of the day. If you’re not well and your clothes don’t fit you or the flax doesn’t pan out to expectations, or the percentage of lambs was a bit disappointing, Christmas is the time to cheer up and believe that next Christmas things will have changed. Every passing year brings its disappointments, but you don’t want to dwell on them. Your particular billet at the moment is to dwell' on the things that haven’t been disappointments. Perhaps you are a newchum and you miss the snow. Don’t’ mind about that. Perhaps you’re an old hand and the season is too dry. Don’t worry. Wuile it’s dry you can’t be 4 rowne d. Perhaps you have been as mean as sin to someone during the past twelvemonths. Now’s your chance to send a Christmas apology. Christmas is the one great yearly opportunity when one may do good without feeling a weak silly fool. You may steel your heart at Eastertime, but you can’t do it at Christmas-time* Assuming that

you are well and fit and prosperous, don’t ’owe anybody any money and have a balance at the bank. Does it occur to you that there are folk who might try till they are black in the face to be happy and can’t be. for lack of the wherewithal ? Have you ever felt the glow of righteousness flowing through your veins when vou have at last paid an account that has been owing for a couple of years ? This feeling is intensified, if at Christmastime you pay up all the goodfellowship you owe, cover some of the meanness with liberality, be a warm human thing instead of a gold-gathering old hunk. Colonially speaking, few years have been falter years than the one that is going to close so soon. There have been few disturbing events, little to make New Zealanders feel anything but proud of their country and glad to belong to it. Christmas is the time of peace goodwill to men. The passing year has been one of peace. There is little to show that it has not been one of goodwill. No vast internal problems face us. There is nothing much to fear from inside. It is only from the outside that the peace, goodwill to man is likely to be disturbed. In the joy of a great yearly holy-day it is unwise to forget that peace goodwill to men is not a permanent institution in this or any other country. We are a happy people whose troubles, like the troubles of a little child, are magnified because we are so young. We are volatile enough to have a good cry and get it over and have a good time afterwards. We have no Czar, no Kaiser, no Grand Dukes and no House of Lords to sow misery or dissention, keep the poor in poverty and fatten the corpulent. Here fortunately enough, the people are ruled by men from the ranks, who have not been allowed to become altogether autocrats. Here it is possible for the humblest as well as the most exalted, to have a merry Christmas. It is a satisfaction that there are none who are extraordinarily exalted. It is only in those countries where the disparities between mass and class are most marked that the people don’t have merry Christmases. New Zealanders take their pleasure gladly, because as a rule there is nothing to be sad about. A strong virile people, who are not oppressed cannot be unhappy and least of all at Christ-mas-time, which is par excellence the season for enjoyment, for reunion creation and reform. It is like a breath of life to the normal adult to see the joy of the normal child at the delights, the surprises, the mysteries and the harmless deceptions ot Christmas. One may, at any other time of the year, forget that he or she was once a child, but at Christmas-time there is no chance to do so. For one thing, it is the birth anniversary of a Child and it is above all a childrens’ day. Christmas stirs the memory. One remembers other Christmases, likely enough Christmases with a setting of snow—the l old-fashioned Christmas in the old days in the old Country, It doesn’t hurt one to remember old times. In remembering them one need not forget old people. Seas are crossed, difficulties overcome, dangers raced, so that people who have been severed shall meet round the Christmas board, so that parents shall be reunited with their children, wives with husbands sweetheart with lover, friend with friend. And it just stikes us as we mention that seas are crossed that in the turmoil to get anxious relatives to those same reunions some people don’t have much Christmas holiday. The railway official must go without Christmas holidays. All of them must be increasingly vigilant, all the more zealous than usual to their duty. In the complexity of our civilisation some one has to suffer. You ought to feel glad if you are not the somebody. Also you ought to be glad if you can be specially kind to the less fortunate just because its Christmas time, the birthday of that transformed the world. The nuts will crack and the corks will pop and the poultry will die and you will eat, drink and be merry, and live to give some one else a chance to eat drink and have a merry holiday too. The law is less stern at Christmas. The peace of the time affect even the Magistracy and the police. It is the greater reason why leniency should She honoured with sobriety and kindness. And Christmas is soon over. Will it affect humanity and arouse humanity’s best instincts for December 25th only or from Christmas Day onward ? That the custom of “keeping up’’ Christmas is a good old healthful one few can doubt, that it will be kept up in an ever-expanding Christendom one may hope, that there will be as little cause to dread the coming of Christmas hereafter as there is to dread the Christmas of 1906, is an earnest wish. Let mirth reign, let friendship prosper, let sadness vanish. Let every one join with heart and soul in an endeavour to enjoy A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!