Christmas!

Upper Hutt Weekly Review, Volume I, Issue 2, 20 December 1935, Page 1

Christmas!

He is a callous man who can pass through this season or the year without gathering something helpful from the spirit that prevails. It is a season yearly urging the human race towards that great ideal which is to solve the perplexities disturbing the peace and well-being o£ the whole world. The impetus lies in that characteristic of the Season which custom has established to submerge one's self and to think of others. Scarcely a human being in all the civilized world but for the moment shakes himself free from the shackles of self-centred thought and reaps the joy of contemplating the pleasure he has given to those around him by some kind thought expressed, some gift bestowed. Poor and rich alike seek to rise to this great theme, and the marts of the world are kept busy to supply the need. Those who are fortunate enough to enjoy good health remember those who are sick, the hospitals are garlanded with flowers, and gifts and happy thoughts bring smiles to the faces that have known pain. There is joy in the hearts of the men and women who for days

Local News and Advertisements kindly send to Mr. R. Ashford, R.S.A. Rooms, Upper Hiztt

before the great day of giving, trudge wearily home beneath, the burden, of parcels to be surreptitiously hidden until that day arrives. It may be profitable to recognise that the universal growth of this Christmas spirit is the result of ideals instilled into us at childhood. There is no time so wonderful to the child mind as Christmas time and the memory of it is carried onward into our adult years, so that to forget ourselves in thinking of others at this season becomes a rite. If then this great ideal towards which the world looks, this peace, economic and political, for which the world longs, is to be established it must first be planted in the child mind. Great men have recognised this fact and are building u.p a multitude imbued with some such high ideal. On the other hand we see terrible instances where the minds of the children of whole nations have been deliberately instilled with thoughts of hatred and bloodshed, and further cultivated through the period of adolescence for the sole purpose of creating an instrument by which the selfish aspirations of the nation can be realized at the cost of others. This last is the cause of the fear that shakes the whole world to-day. Let us, then, who are British and love the hope of international brotherhood and peace, see that the minds of our children are led aright and remain unpolluted by thoughts of selfishness and greed.