A CHRISTMASY FEEL.

Auckland Star, Volume LIV, Issue 300, 17 December 1923, Page 5

A CHRISTMASY FEEL.

• IN QUEEN ST. ATMOSPHERE.

CHRISTMAS COLD—CHRISTMAS HOT. SHOP WINDOWS POPULAR. With sunburned faces, and just that something about their clothes that suggests a week or so behind the city styles. You can see lobs in the streets just now. The pre-Christmas invasion from the country has begun, and the town is putting on its very best "good will towards men" expression. Even if all these Christinas and New Year greetings which are so liberally scattered abroad be not genuine, and even if hal of them are merely conventional like "Dear sir" and "Yours sincerely" of ojr letters, still one cannot help thinking the town is all the better for the Christ masy feeling that once a year gets the better of our usual busy hunt-the-pound note style of existence. He must be a curmudgeonly sort of person whose na turc takes on no glow whatever from the good feeling that radiates for a week or so from December 25th b;>ti before and after. It is true that we most of us over-eat —could anything be more superfluous than the mountain of good things wit.i which we load our dinner tables, with the thermometer at 80 in the shade, just to perpetuate a rather pleasing custom of our ancestors in a land where the Christmas thermometer was gener ally below zero? —but every year people are cutting down the orgy, and providing the family with something'more in keeping with the climate. The oilfashioned still adhere to the goose or turkey, and that essentially British production the plum puding, but the wise partake sparingly of these seasonal and time-honoured dishes, and some elderly people are quite content to treat like the golden mohurs brought by the border tribes in the North-West frontier of India —gifts which are merely touched and remitted by the British officer. It is also true some thousands of gallons of cream —not milk—are consumed during the Christmas week-end, but that is mainly a matter between the yout i of the family and their digestions—and no man knows the limit of the ordinary boy's capacity in that respect. Generally speaking, we may take it that the "colonial Christmas is much more abstemious than that of the Old Land, mainly because the climate vetoes unlimited cheer, such as those Christmas revellers at "Dingley Dell" were capable of consuming; and again, liecause of the climate, there is less of the traditional great family gathering round the Yule-log. You cannot have a real old-fashioned Christmas without snow and a fire. Out in New Zealand we make more of a holiday than a family re-union of Christmas, and scores of families spend it away from home. And the spread of the motor has been a great factor in the decision of the struggle of beach and bush versus the family gathering at home. Still, the Christmas spirit is strong in New Zealand —except down Dunedin way. where they consider such things almost papistical, and bottle up all their conviviality for New Year's Eve— and Auckland being the centre for such j a lot of back country has always been i a merry spot in the last week in DecernI ber. Down Queen Street you can feel i Christinas in the air. The keep-to-the-left rule is quite useless in that thori oughfare just now. not because the I country people have not yet picked it |up even as indifferently as we towns.----1 people have, but because the shops have I three deep line:; peering into tbeui. Puzzled fathers and mothers wonder what on earth to give the kiddies, and most of the mothers seem to have brought one or two of the family along with them. Children to-day are pretty sophisticated, and generally know how many beans make five, but one of the few pleasant myths still current for truth in some "families is evidently Santa Claus. Most of the shop-keepers are wearing a pleased expression, so one ■ presumes that Christmas. 1023. is really a prosperous one—it certainly looks it— [ and there is only one thing' that shop- | pers should keep in mind, and that is |to shop early; it is much more conj venient. and kinder to the busy sl»>|. j assistants.