Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1935. CHRISTMAS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 62, 24 December 1935, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1935. CHRISTMAS.

Christmas this year is unhappily ushered in by an international atmosphere such has not prevailed since the Armistice. Serious war clouds menace Europe and even peril be avoided many dark days of doubt and anxiety must pass before the world regains its normal course. But for the time the concerns of the larger world will be forgotten in the joy and pleasure of the festive season. The customary greetings will be exchanged with a light-heartedness that puts in the background alb but the enjoyment of the moment and the expression of good fellowship and cheer raised to its height by the age-long celebration. The ceremonies and the usages that have so long been associated with Yuletide will be carried out with undiminished enthusiasm and unalloyed joy. The spirit of Christmas prevailed through the crusading days, leapt out of various darknesses, giving light to men f*or the better things of life, inspiring many writers, the list of whom culminates in Washington Irving and Charles Dickens, the leaders of the Christmas revival on the Eastern and Western shores of the Atlantic. It is the feast of righteousness, reason, mercy, charity and friendship which should help to bind mankind to dwell together in amity. Dickens depicts this spirit: "I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round —apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that —as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time in the year that I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely and to think of other people as it they were really fellow-passengers to the grave and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. Whatever vicissitudes mankind may be compelled to undergo, humanity will not sacrifice this festival, which is peculiarly dedicated to the joys of the home and which is observed with open heart and open hand. The power of the great story which is identified with Christmas has not passed with time. It still appeals deeply to men; its greatest anniversary still is to them one of those moments in life when the vision of something beyond life breaks on them. For, in the poet s words, we Dimly guess what Time in mists confounds; Yet ever and anon a trumpet sounds From the hid battlement of Eternity; Those shaken mists a< space unsettle, then Hound the lialf-glimpsed turrets slowly wash again.