THE CHRISTMAS ATMOSPHERE.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 11, 28 January 1905, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE CHRISTMAS ATMOSPHERE.

IT FILLS THE HEART WITH PEACE AND GOODWILL.

Among all evenings of the year, and all the days, there is no other evening like Christmas Eve, no other day like Christinas Day. Whether the eve and the day be dark and stormy, or still and fair; does not matter. The difference is not in the weather or the season, but in that more subtle atmosphere which, from generation to generation through all the centuries, has been our inheritance from that first Christmas Eve aiid Day when a new-born babe sent its wailing cry from the manger of Bethlehem, says St. Nicholas. The world looks different through this Christmas atmosphere. However festive or sad the occasion, however gay or gloomy the streets may be. whatever may be our surroundings, the Christmas feeling is there. No one may say just wherein it lies. It is like an unseen halo that glorifies and makes holy every good thought and impulse, while it iu darker relief whatever is tragic, unworthy, or vicious. A great disaster on Christmas Eve or Day shocks us as it docs no other season. A great joy comes in that sweet raiment of gladness that only Christmas brings. Through nineteen centuries ha? this light lingered round the hearts of men, and through all those ages it has not grown dim. Year after year slips by and is added to the past. But with each Christmas Eve and Day our homes and our highways arc once more filled with the old, sweet joy—the halo from the star which rose o’er Bethlehem.