CHRISTMAS.

West Coast Times, Issue 703, 25 December 1867, Page 2

CHRISTMAS.

Christmas once more — the season when the Christian world rejoices and has ever rejoiced. And when the Pagan world long, bug ago, rejoiced too, for man, in regions where the year ends in gloom and tears, has always instinctively sought to counteract the sadness of departure by mirth and festivity. 'At Iol — our Christmas time — the heathen Dane, as Scott graphically poi-Lrays, drew up his galleys on the nearest shore, and with pirate crew, feasted in pine-built sheds — when filled with mead, rushing forth on the frost-covered ground—" their red locks flowing loose" — " To dance around the blazing pile Making such barbarous mirth the while As best might to the soul recal The stormy joys of Odin's hall!" And as a contrast to such a picture, behold the cheery fireside and family gathering in the memoj'y of each one of us ! The blazing yule-log twinkles across the wide valley of years ; the cleav song of the waits, breaking the crisp frosty midnight air, haunts like a ghost from the past ; the white falling snow-flakes and red berries on the holly-bough are things many of us will never see again, and no doubt better for many of us we never should. Christmas here is in the prime and vigor of the year, not in its sorrowful decline. It descends with no doleful gravity without, and is therefore in some sort of consequence less provocative of gaiety within — for as the metaphysical German has declared, " everything works itself out by its opposite." The anniversary here presents the sunshine of external nature, in lieu of the early sunshine of the heart, a more gladdening and potent thing. It has substances instead of shadows — and shadows are more incentive to the emotional, and, therefore, more incentive I to happiness, for happiness is a rainbow of tho imagination. And do not the best of us hunt shadows for our lifelong, and forsake substances — kick them over as dull and gross, less allied to the spiritual and unseen, towards which human aspiration is ever strain'ug. Christmas is one of the few things which has suffered by transplantation — which appears to less advantage in our glorious clime than in the fogs and bleak breezes of wheezy, frost-bitten, north-west Europe. We may ascribe the difference of pleasant impression to a score of causes, each with something of plausibility or reasonableness ; but tho real difference after all from the potency of association. We are in the mass " exiles far away," though denizens of a newer and happier land ; and while acknowledging the superiority of nature here, the better opportunity for independence of soul and manly exertion, we cannot, on such an occasion as has once nioro come round, divest ourselves of reminiscences, and we miss the material circumstances which surrounded the sources of them. The child who sat at a smiling mother's knee, the schoolboy away from books aud birchrod • for a brief and joyous vacation, the youth who looked in bright eyes beneath tho mistletoe, cannot cease to remember now that he is a man on a distant shore, the smallest concomitant of the sweet festival of the bygone. It was dreamland — the early years — when the Merlinwand of love aud fancy mado melody out of the churlish howling of the wind, and the heart's brightness out of the savage gloom of a Hyperean winter. Yes sir — " the lovely young Lavinia," or whatever else who called her — mono — or polysyllabically — and for my own part, en pamntftese, I think a girl's name should be as short as your path, if you only take the right one, to the paradise of her approbation— Lavinia was at the core of it all ! Whether she was of the sugar-longs or curling-tongs age (young ladies used to curl their hair in that fairy epoch) and whether you were in the jacket or " all round collar " — chrysalis or butterfly stage, the sentimental circumstance has left its mark on you — a dispensation of Providence be aware to keep " tho mark of the beast " from ever defacing you. And so it all springs vp — sentiment and chilbains — a cold in the head and fervor unutterable in the soul, enwrapped alike in poetic interest in the manner of a picturesque northwinter muffler — and so no wonder you turn away from the garish sunlight as a stranger and intruder on your associations ! You feel like the Jew by the waters of Babylon — you cannot sing the songs of Israel — you cannot realiso a " nievrie Christmas " in a semi-tropical midsummer !] But your posterity, gentle reader, will not be so. The next generation will have no exotic associations — they will have lit on a southern equivalent for your past holly and ivy period, which will wreathe the anniversary here with a poetry of memory racy of the sunlight soil. So go your way with cheerful spirit after all — recognising tho real meaning of the tho case — but if you were even now in Europe you could not enjoy Christmas as you were wont to do, inasmuch as you have passed the years of fresh emotion as well as left the land of shadows. Recall your boyish Christmas again, even though you must give it a material garland of flowers in lieu of holly berries and snow-flakes, and in the belief that you will thereby find balm in Gilead I heartily wish you many returns of the season.