TIME TO BANISH CARE.

Taranaki Daily News, 24 December 1921, Page 11

TIME TO BANISH CARE.

THE GAME OF MAKE-BELIEVE. Unless one forgets that one is grownup and haf put away childish things, how is it possible to catch again the spirit of Christmas, the old glorious sense of freedom, the irresponsibility, the attitude of drifting wherever that spirit willed? Surely this year of all years, with the years of war behind it, justifies the attempt. One wonders if even the children of these days can feel “Christmassy” as those of others felt. One hears and reads that the modern child is already quite grown-up, too well-informed to play the game of superior to the lure and glitter of tinselled baubles. To be consequential is fatal —it bars the door and blocks up the keyhole against romance. Go about impersonating a bundle of regrets over the past, dissatisfaction concerning the present, tremblings for the future, complaints about a real world so different from the world of dreams, and you make it inevitable that one person at least will spend a right miserable Christmas, with only this for satisfactiqn that it is thoroughly deserved! Instead, don your prettiest frock—-by .preference not a new one, such being conducive to the self-consciousness that, like other ghosts, should be shunned at this time—and, if possible, spend it with those who are still children, old-fash-ioned children, where laughing voices, fun and frolic, holly and mistletoe, and all the joys of Christmas will conspire to resuscitate the world of the past. Forget the things you cannot have, the thousand and one things that have been and never more can be, and simply be glad to be alive and feel that life is sweet. In this way —the sermon is ended—you prepare yourself to receive the Christmas spirit.