HERE AND THERE

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18055, 15 January 1927, Page 8

HERE AND THERE

AN EYE FOR EVERYTHING. Christmas Babies Are Clever. If you were born on Christmas Day you are to be congratulated. According to an ancient belief, special gifts are bestowed on the Christmas-born And the queer part of it is that seep tical folk who like to put such beliefs to a practical test have done so. and admitted that the gifts do exist. What are they? The most important seems to be the possession of an hypnotic power of healing the sick and banishing pain by the laving-on of hands. Next comes the power of “second sight"—an uncanny gift of peeping into the future Further, the Christmas-born (according to the old belief) will always be far above the average in mental power. Tests made over many years by a Midland schoolmaster proved that was so. He also substantiated another item—that the Christmas-born would excel in the art of music. In some of the children the musical gift has been noticed before it was known that their birthdays were on December 25 K Why Turkeys? Fashions in Christmas dinners come and go. Our forefathers enjoyed peacock pie and boar’s head. To-day, on seven tables out of ten. there is roast turkey. That bird dominates the eating side of Christmas, and yet—sorry, but the truth’s the truth—of itself it isn't worth twopence a pound in food value! Its fieslt is dry, tasteless, and holds no nutrition, or none worth mentioning. That’s why—the point may not have struck you—it has to be stuffed with savoury herbs, basted with bacon fat, and helped down with sauce. Turkeys were never intended as food for man. That's why they have to be forcibly fed with boiled chestnuts, and so on, X o make them put cn flesh. Where The Fruits Grow. When you buy your supplies of currants, raisins, figs. Brazils or dates, do you ever give a thought to what they are, how they got their names, or where they come from? Dates, from Arabia and Persia, grow on the date-palm. The name is derived from the Greek word "dactylos,” meaning a finger. Dates, before being pressed, look exactly like human fingers, and the resemblance still remains irt those you buy. "Brazils" are from Brazil They are the produce of a tree called the “juvia.” They grow in a hard shell about the size and shape of a child’s head, and each shell contains about fifty nuts. Currants are a variety of small grapes, dried. The name is our corruption of "Corinth”—where they grow most abundantly'. k Three Yuletides a Year. There is one place where Christmas is kept three times a year—in the Church of Nativity at Bethlehem, the reputed site of the Stable of the Inn. The Roman, Greek and ArmenianGreck bodies have each their respective section of the church, but their Christmas celebrations do not occur on the same day. The Latin Christmas is celebrated at the Roman Catholic altar on December 25. Thirteen da\ r s later the Orthodox Easterns perform the Greek rite. Another thirteen days later the Armenian Church keeps its own ceremonial of Byzantine Faith. Holly Berry Beliefs. As far back as the fifth century Christians invested holly branches with a symbolism that helped to keep sacred memories alive. The crimson berries symbolised the blood shed on Calvary by the Founder of the Christian religion; the prickly leaves held remembrance of the Crown of Thoms; and the bitterness of the holly bark was symbolic of the draught of which Christ partook while hanging on the Cross. Once, in fact, there was a custom cf making a decoction from the bark, and drinking it in the midst of Christmas celebrations, so that—in the words of an old writer—“Ye shall not forget the Cross as ye rejoice in the manger.'' To show how tradition grows, it was not long More the sim pie symbolism of the prickly leaves passed into a belief that the Crown of Thorns was itself formed of twisted holly branches. From that sprang another belief—that it was not until after Calvary that holly berries were red. The change came, it was said, because the green berries on the branches used for the Crown of Thoms were covered with blood. The oldest belief connect ed with holly is that it was the "burn ing bush" referred to in the Old Testa ment.