The Daily News. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1911. CHRISTMAS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 152, 23 December 1911, Page 4

The Daily News. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 23, 1911. CHRISTMAS.

Throughout Christendom, the Great Birthday comes as a real benevolence. We observe it primarily as the first of all festivals, because it is a birthday, and tlife sentiment that has through the succeieding centuries hallowed the day has made it the (iift Day, the Day of Reunions, the Day of Fellowship, the Day of Forgiveness. Whether in our temporary cessation from the routine of employment we emphasise the reason of the festival in our minds, we certainly feel impelled to put away ignoble thoughts, to extend the hand of friendship, and to allow our better natures to rise above the more sordid things of everyday life. In all Christian countries, wherever people are assembled, Christmas Day is the one spicial occasion of the year when families reunite and live over again in glad reminiscence the times that are no more. To reunite people who have been severed for any length of time is the first essential for a time of mirth and jollity. it is the ability to get out of the ruck, to push back the years, to grasp the hand of a loved relative or friend that specialises Christmas Day. There is a foretaste of coming joys in the "breaking-up" school cero monies, when the voices of liappy children are heard and joy shines in the faces of their parents. There is a touch of the season of festivity in the gaiety of the shops, for at no other time of the vcar are the reasons and necessii ties for spending money so urgent. Insensibly. in pondering on each recurring Christmas Day. the thoughts turn to the long series that so many of us have seen. Some know the Christmas Day of huge fires and great snowstorms, when the necessity of taking a larger amount of food than usual was excusable under the circumstances. Some remember the endeavors of British people in tropical countries to imitate the winter jollity of the Old Country, although perhaps steaming plum pudding and imitation holly fit oddly with linen coats and a Central African or Queensland climate. The determination of the Britisher, wherever he may be, to stick manfully to the social habits of his forefathers is the reason why people of the blood, wherever they

may bo, emphasise the point by indulging in plum pudding. The habit has 110 alimentary usefulness, but it is valuable as an indication of the sentiment that binds so many severed people together. The Arctic explorer will cat his Christmas pudding carefully built in Britain or Australia, the soldier in India stewing in almost insufferable heat will remind himself of the cool broad moors of Yorkshire, or tlie sweet ferny lanes of Devonshire by consuming hot pudding, the lone bushman in the baked interior of Australia will contrive sonne sort of a British pudding, just to remind him,soli that he is still of the blood. At the moment great ships are hurrying across the seas of the earth carrying messages of peace, goodwill, unity and friendship. Everywhere the cables sing the same song. "Peace on earth, goodwill to men."

Along countless thousands of miles of telegraph wires, race greetings from father to daughter, from mother to son, , from child to parent, from man to maid. The whole Christian world organises itself to express or show fraternity. Charity may sleep for eleven months, but it awakes because it is Christmas time. We who naturally think so much of giving our own "a good time" at the season of revel may have moments to spare for the people who cannot have a good time except with our aid. Some of us will remember to have read, perhaps, that there was not a very fashionable gathering at the first Christmas, that the origin of the great Christian festival was a poor little Child. There are still so many poor little children. Christmas to the children is the time of sweet illusion. Bad luck to the wretched Gradgrind who dares dispel the notion that S'.inta Claus fills the stockings and is specially turned on by a beneficent Providence to give the youngsters a good time! The memories of our own childish Christmases are still dear to all of us who have remained unsoured. Christmas keeps us young because of the fine old deceptions we practice on the little ones. Here in New Zealand Christmas comes, or is expected to come, in a mild guise, decked in flowers and glad greenery. The Birthday comes when good old Mother Earth is bursting with the plenitude of her (Stores. It comes, too, this year on the heels of a bitter political fight, when there is necessity for a sacred festival to smooth the feelings of ruffled folks. Christmas is an occasion when the past should be buried deep, a time when there should be sweet forgetfulness, a nobler tolerance. It is a time when resolve should be strengthened, broken friendships mended, old injuries remembered no more, old faces seen again. In days of nervous strain and keen competition there Is still space at Christmas time for natural feelings. To the readers who have helped us during the year, and whom we hope we have in a smaller measure helped, to the people of a specially blessed province, to the folk of the whole pietiu'e land of Xew Zealand, we wish in all sincerity, A MERRY CHRISTMAS.