HOLIDAYS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 48, 23 December 1871, Page 11

HOLIDAYS.

The present festive season is perhaps an appropriate time to ask ourselves the question whether our holidays, “ like angel’s visits,” are not too “ few and far between ?” The lad who only indulged in the luxury of having his hair combed twice or thrice a year, found the operation anything bnt agreeable and pleasant, because he had not been used to it; and it is much the same with our holidays. We don’t know what to do with them. All work and no play makes men dull as well as boys, and incapacitates them for innocent enjoyment. It admits of a question whether our national vices are not to a great extent either the consequence or the cause of the Puritanical prohibition of innocent recreations, and our too high appreciation of mere wealth, without reference to the objects to which it should be applied. Some nations are too indolent or too unambitious to be avaricious ; but the Englishman turns the natural desire for amusemeut into a means of making money. Wesley is reported to have said, with reference to music, that the devil had somehow managed to monopolise all the best tunes; and the same could be said with more truth, of our holidays and pastimes, Left entirely to the arrangement and management of those who rather desire to make a profit out of them, than to direct them to wise ends, neither their social or moral effects are such as could be wished ; though they are such as, under such circumstances, might be expected. Their educational advantages are wholly ignored, and it is only their educational evils which have been brought prominently forward. They are misdirected or undirected, and then we complain of the consequences of our own neglect; and ascribe to national holidays what is in fact the result of our national habits, and in part of misdirected opinions. We have seen it asserted that the Englishman naturally, is incapable of rational enjoyment: that God has not given him that delicate development which he has given to other races ; that his sense of harmony is dull, and his perception of beauty but little better; and that the cold shade of Puritanism which passed over England, sullenly eclipsing all grace and enjoyment, was but the shadow of the Euglishman’s own raelancholly, unenjoying, national character. We don’t believe a word of it. England was once known as “ merrie England ;” and Englishmen at this day are naturally as much capable of enjoyment as any other people. It is not their nature, but their national customs, habits, and modes of thought, that are at fault. Looking either upon worldly enjoyments as in themselves sinful, or "upon the possession of riches as the supreme God, they consider a holiday, as a day mis-spent,

or as a clay lost, and lose sight of the fact that such holidays may be made as , beneficial to the physical and moral , health, as they now too frequently! prove injuriQus to both I hey look upon any merry-making, any outbuist of genuine hilarity, any hearty fun, 01 real joy, os mischevious or foolish. Neither of them would enjoy a holiday if they could, and we very much question if they could they would. When they make the attempt, the day is passed in ehhei dissipation or dull ness; and too frequently recourse is had to the one in the desperate effort to escape from the other, They aim to make it look as little like a real holiday as they can ; and their success ought to surpass their own expectations. Like the citizen s wife m the play, when going on a trip to Richmond, their great desire is to make it look as much like business as possible ; whereas the less appearance of business it has about it, the more salutary it is likely to prove, and the more certain is it to answer its true object. To be merry at Christinas is what we all profess to wish each other : but the term, as the festival, has been inherited by us from our forefathers, and both, we fear, are _ in danger of becoming obsolete. Neither one nor the other appear to harmonize with either the puritanical doctrines of former times or the modern theories of political economy. Merriment, in any case, is not so highly appreciated as in ttio days when kings had jesters, and the people May games and Morris dances, as well as Christmas festivals; and the last we are afraid is following the former to the tomb. If it is still thought to be “ good to be merry and wise," it is held to be extremely difficult, as if anything worth having was easy of attainment and should be abandoned on that account Yet may not true merriment be looked upon as one of the outward and visible signs of a good dis position and a grateful heart; and was not this the view our ancestors took of it when they wished their friends “ a merry Christmas”? The Rev Canon Vance in the course of an address made the other day to his old parishoners at Kyneton made some interesting observations of popular holidays and amusements, in which he maintained weshould be a better nation if we knew better how to enjoy ourselves. “We talked,” said he, “* a great deal of the advantages of education, but whilst directing so much attention to the schoolhouse we paid too little to the play-ground. A boy’s character was formed as much by the habits which he acquired and the companions with whom he associated during the hours of recreation, as by the lessons which he learned during his hours of study, and no greater errors — none more likely to be attended with serious consequences—could be committed than to neglect the one whilst attending to the other. The crying want of the clay was thorough, and at the same time innocent, recreation, for the voting especially, but indeed for both young and old.” Until this lC urging want is supplied it is vain to expect any permanent improvements in the moral and social habits of the people.