CHRISTMAS EVE.

Taranaki Daily News, 27 December 1922, Page 6

CHRISTMAS EVE.

BATTLE WITH THE ELEMENTS. SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS WINS. Onwards from two o’clock *on Saturday afternoon a baftle was waged in New Plymouth, the rain and wind on one side striving to keep shoppers and their children indoors, and the spirit of Christmas on the other, striving with the lure of brightly illuminated shops, windows, and streets to entice pedesti ians to come and buy and make merry. The morning broke with a dull sky overhead, and the phrophecies of the pessimists were fulfilled shortly after two‘o’clock, when distant peals of thunder heralded the approach of the rain, which set in and continued throughout the night. During the morning, Devon street presented the animated spectacle of a market day, but, as the afternoon grew old, the footpaths became crowded with hundreds of mothers, laying in their Christmas and holiday stocks, and with the children to whom the day belongs. Even then, despite the ferns which adorned a great portion of the street and the suggestive cards in the windows concerning the appropriateness of the article marked as a “seasonable gift,” there was not that “C'hristmasey” feeling in the air. and it would have seemed as if the elements had triumphed. The coming of night, however, brought a change. On either side of Devon street was a seething mass of humanity slowly drifting up and down or making a detour into the shops to complete the last purchase in the shopping lists. Old men and children, and young men and maidens, vied with each other in proving that the rain had not damped their spirits, and. if the footpath was temporarily blocked,nothing was thought of a side step out on to the road and into the heavy downpour. But' there was little necessity for that, as the police, with firmness and tact, kept the throng always moving and on the right side of the paths. The night was made merry with many buzzers, tin whistles, whistles of a shriller order, squeakers, mouth organs, and imitation klaxon horns, while one youth, ful] of the exuberance of the season, proclaimed his indifference to wind and rain by parading the sheet minus a top coat, while he drew foith some sort of melody from an accordeon. Mingled with tihe noises there were many hearty hand-shakes and exchanges of Christmas greetings, while anon the plaintive murmur of a little child announced a tiredness and desire for bed. From 9.30 on the crowd gradually began to thin until the closing of the shops at 10 brought the assistants on to the streets to swell the hundreds making their weary homeward

But if the rain failed to damp the ardour of the hundreds who ventured out. it kept hundreds of less valiant spirits indoors, and had an injurious effect on the returns of the shopkeepers. particularly those who were making a speciality of white and light summer goods. She would have neen an optimist who would have purchased white shoes and stockings in face of the rain outside, and so the boot shops and drapers found it. The prospect of a wet holiday season stopped many a prospective buyer from acquiring such articles for his or her self and. as one retailer remarked. “If they don’t buy these things to-day, they won’t buy them later on ” Furthermore the money that would have been spent by those who remained at home on articles casI ually seen in the windows and on the counters represents a big total that the rain prevented from changing hands. Nevertheless who were out spent well, the shop assistants were kept very busy throughout the eveni ing, and with the good trade that had been done during the week, Christmas, 1022, will have seen the confirmation of the practically unanimous opinion of “a better season than last year.” A feature of the buying was the desire of the public to buy useful and utilitarian articles, not things possessing only an ephemeral interest and vanishing value.