SECRET GIVING.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 302, 21 December 1935, Page 8 (Supplement)

SECRET GIVING.

MESSAGE FOR CHRISTMAS. Seasonable thoughts on the legend of St. Nicholas are expressed in an article which was contributed to "The Christian World" by Mr. Arthur Porritt, the brilliant English writer. It is as follows: — The Legend of St. Nicholas—the forerunner of our Santo Claus and Father Christmas—comes down to us in many forms; but in the form which I think is the loveliest Nicolaue was an Asiatic Christian, young, wealthy, chivalrous and saintly from his infancy, who lived at Patara, in Lycia, in the fourth century, and who "did good by stealth and blushed to find it fame." He was the patron saint of anonymous benevolence. Once, hearing that a nobleman had been reduced to penury and was preparing to sell his three beautiful daughters (for whom he could provide no dowry) into a house of shame, to spare them the horrors of poverty, Nicolaus stole into the nobleman's garden by night and threw a bag of gold through the window as a marriage portion for the eldest daughter. Twice he repeated this act; but on the third occasion the watchful father discovered the identity of his benefactor, who fled the district to escape being praised for hie secret generosity. The ritual of Santa Claus, repeated on Christmas Eve in thousands of Western homes, owes its origin to Nicolaus of Patara.

I could wish that this Christmas — when the mood to seek happiness by conferring happiness steals into the hearts of the least unselfish of tis —the Nicolaus spirit of secret generosity might spread its wings.

I have a fear that it may go very hard with many people this Christmas —not merely in the three million homes mad sad by unemployment, but in tens of thousands of other homes where, through no fault of their own, fathers and mothers are feeling the pinch of straitened circumstances.

What a glorious opportunity for anonymous benevolence we shall have this Christmas, if we only have the will to give without any wish to be thanked! A postal order or a bank note and a registered letter envelope are all that are needed. Will you follow in the footsteps of St. Nicholas and translate an old legend into a modern reality?

It is the giver in secret whose happ ness will be greatest this Christmas.