CHRISTMAS, ITS ORIGIN, ITS SPIRIT.

Bush Advocate, Volume XVII, Issue 4, 6 January 1905, Page 6

CHRISTMAS, ITS ORIGIN, ITS SPIRIT.

Christmas is such a thoroughly established institution, so integral a part of our yearly programme that I really don't think the possibility of dispensing with it ever occurred to me untilA.H.J.'s little poem, "A False Calendar," came to hand, and I "fell to thinking how 'twould be If such a thing were true," and Christmas were wiped off the calendar. Surely winter would seem a long, cold, cruel season without the anniversary that opens our hearts, our homes, and our purses, and possesses us with the spirit of loving and giving, and kindly thought of others.

Our Christmas season is a curious commingling of Christian and pagan ceremonials. When Christianity was making slow headway against polytheism, the early fathers of the church found it expedient to engraft upon the new faith some of the customs and practices of the old. Thus long before the Christian era "the babe in the manger" was a symbol of the birth of the new year, and was part of the Saturnalia, or festival of Saturn, the maddest and most riotous of pagan feasts. The decorations of our houses with evergreens and mistletoe comes from the rites of the ancient Druids, who yearly cut the milkyberried parasite from the trees with silver Knives and much ceremonial. The Druids were not pagans, as the Uomans were; they believed in God, in. a future life, in rewards and punishments for good and evil doing, but their faith was crude and cruel. The giving of gifts, the feasting*, and the benefactions to> the poor which characterise the great Christian holiday were features of the midwinter festival of the pagans, and were grafted upon the new religion to make the transition from the one to the other more easy. Later Christmas revels, the wassail, the "waits," traces of which still survive f_ England, can be followed back to the Yule festival~of the ! ancients, lule being the name of the w^in- ! ter month in which the- days began, to lengthen. Yule was derived from Hi_e r a wheel, the ancient symbol of the si»n. Great logs were drawn to the cavernous fireplaces of those days with great c*remony and merriment, and were lighted as symbolical of the return of t_e> sua' in lengthening days. The early Christiana did not specially celebrate the nativity, but regarded as more sacred the anniversary of Christfs baptism, as the date on which. His ministry began. The institution of the festival of Christmas is attributed to the Emperor Commodus, and it was not until about A.D. 380 that eastern churches generally adopted it. "Christ's Mass"— from which Christmas is derived, was in. earlier times selebrated at the New. Tear (January 6) by eastern Christians. Julius 1., Bishop of Rome, fixed the date we now celebrate as Christmas. Christmas is not, therefore, the- exact anniversary of the nativity, that date being unknown. It is a day set apart tp celebrate the event, much as we set apart Thanksgiving as a day of gratitude and giving thanks for the bountiful gifts of the earth. All Christian, nations observe Christmas. It is a well-nigh universal holiday. Seme of us keep it in spirit; there are few who do not keep it in the letter. The mysteriesbegin weeks prior to its coming. We plan the Christmas surprises, practice selfdenial to swell our Christmas fund,, or give our time to the making of gifts, that we may fitly celebrate its annual returm There is something about the season that inclines the heart to generosity. We want to make others happy. We begin prudently — set a limit to our expenditures and declare, "thus far, and not a shilling 1 over.' But 'the loving and giving spirit" grows apace. We are tempted ; there are so many lovely things in the shops, so many expedients to wile .away tbe cash from our pockets. Just- as long as we keep our motives pure and high, and don't Christmas is real. But when we make gifts because others have given to us; when we measure values; when we let ourselves feel a little envious because others have

received more richly or more abundantly than we, we very soon find out that we have lowered the high meaning of the day and drifted far from its spirit. A. merry Christmas by no means requires expensive gifts. A tree prettily dressed with strings of popcorn and cranberries and hung with apples and oranges delights child eyes as much as if its adornments were more costly. Little things please if chosen with thought of the desires of the recipient. Have a good dinner, and invite some who would otherwise eat a scanty or a lonely one to dine with you. Don't have a selfish Christmas, but let your Christmas giving and your Christinas cheer radiate from your home to bless the poor, the lonely, the unfortunate. Make up your mind to do something toward making some "outsider" have a merry Christmas, and the act will prove a benison upon your own. . Last year a kind-hearted woman invited to her Christmas table a man who called to see her husband on Christinas morning. He was poor, shabby, lonely; he had Kfn down in the depths of despair; he had "eaten husks with swine," and was trying to win his way back to respectability. lie ate as only a half -famished man can t<*t at a home table, and when he went away, warmed and fed, and, better yet, cheered by the kinly welcome and encouraged by being greeted as a friend and an. equal, tears ran down his cheeks as he thank: J his entertainers. Did not that woman's act breathe moie of the true spirit of Christmas than tne entertaining of well to do friends, or the bestowing of rich gifts upon those who already had more than they need? • ■

"Press me closer to you — bathe again mn burning brow," * Cries he to the veteran who is bending o'er him now — 'Tor my pulse is growing fainter — what a tear within thine eye? Weep not, for it is olessed for our conn try thus to die. "Come nearer — comrade, nearer— there is cold about my heart, For I would send some tokens to lovec ones ere we part; Oh, promise — wilt thou promise? — thai from a soldier's grave My dying words shall reach them beside the Hudson's wave? And tell them how we battled 'gainst the Mexican array, 'Gainst Alvarez the dauntless, and Torrejon that day, And how their reinforcements poured from the city gate, But Contreras had fallen — Valencia came too late. "Tell them how Santa Anna — a double traitor born — Fled from us with his army, all broken and forlorn ; And when the bullet struck me (a blessed thought the while), The kind thoughts of our general my suf'rings did beguile. "What makes the moonlight quiver? I do not fear to die, But, oh, I'd love to gaze upon my native northern sky — I see once more the Highlands — or seem to see them here — With the inmates of my homestead, the gentle and the dear. "And laughter now is ringing, joyous upon the air, And one is bending o'er me, a blue-eyed maiden fairTo her my faith was plighted in the happiest hour known, Oh, press me closer, comrade, for the blissful vision's flown. i "Seek thou my aged father, when the battles are no more, Say tho' wayward was my boyhood, my wanderings are o'er — And with my last words give him this well-tried blade of mine, To hang beside my grandsire's — it will not dim its shine. "And bear unto my mother this simple ring of gold, For it is one she gave me, it was her own of old; To me it has been priceless, and I send it to her now, W T ith blood a-welling from my heart, and death upon my brow. "And tell my gentle sister that I loved her to the last, That of the Holy Bible she gave, I've but the clasp; For it was my heart it shielded in Cerro Gordo's fray, . All but that precious relic in blood was borne away. "Take from my neck the locket — you'll find when I am dead — And a curl of shining chestnut then sever from my head — They're for her — my tongue now falters — who hath ever been to me Tlie star that lit my pathway npon life's stormy sea. "And again I hear the Hudson majestic sweep along, While sails are flitting by me with mcl- , ody and song, And I tread our Empire valleys — whose city by the sea Holds all that life had ever of loveliness for me. "I feel my eyes are closing and faintly comes my breath — And voices murmur round me — say, comrade, is this death?"' And his eyes were closed forever in their eternal sleep; But the man of many battles had turned away to weep. And on that field of corpses the moon looked calmly down, With no cloud to mar her glory above the mountain's crown — She looked upon the soldier who bowed hi 3 snowy head, Where tbe starry flag hung weeping above the gallant dead.