Christmas

New Zealand Listener, Volume 20, Issue 496, 24 December 1948, Page 5

Christmas

HRISTMAS for most of us &. has come too soon this year. We are not ready for its jollity or its loving kindness, and we don’t know how to. get aaa It is there facing us in the calendar, but it is not yet in our minds and hearts. We are cold, dull, suspicious, after a year of anxiety and disappointment. We don’t love some of our neighbours and we don’t want to love them, because we can’t get it out of our consciousness that they, are working day and night against us. Well perhaps they are. Perhaps they are bent on our destruction. Perhaps they hate us, and perhaps they would look on any friendly gesture from us as a reason why they should go on hating us. They are not likely to be less suspicious of us than we are of them, and since we wash our dirty linen in public and not behind\a very high wall, we must expect them to be more suspicious. But that is not a reason why we should let them spoil our Christmas dinner. We can’t help being grown-up most of the time, but the crowning folly is to be grown-up and cynical all the time, to trust no emotions, and surrender to no watm impulses. Christmas offers peace, not merely to men of good will, but to men of bad will; happiness for a day at least to all, and an end to foolish inhibitions. It offers these things at no price but the good sense to take them, lights the fire, and asks us to draw near and get warm. We are poor slaves if we say No, sit shivering in the coldest corner of the room because’ we are sure that as soon as we move closer and get comfortable the window will blow in or the wood give out. ’