Christmas

Press, Volume LXXII, Issue 21974, 24 December 1936, Page 10

Christmas

There are morbid characters, a legion of Toobads, to whom it is easy at any time, as they roll their eyes in search of moral and materia) evil, to declare that in view of this or in the face of something else " Christmas is a mock- " ery." Times like the present, of course, are their paradise of woe; they may spare themselves the trouble of rolling their eyes and, simplifying their search to the process of staring in any one direction, find ample cause to shudder and to denounce the incongruity of eating Christmas pudding on the edge of doom. Others even, by no means given to brooding much or long over the certainty of catastrophe, have their moments of fright and doubt, in which cheerfulness and hope and the sane instinct that prompts men to lay care aside, even if it must be taken up again to-morrow, are submerged by a dark question. What business have they, what right, to be preparing for Christmas jollity, looking forward to it and enjoying its preliminaries and foretastes, under the thunder-clouds of the world and alongside the tribulations of the parish? There is no answer possible to the major prop'iets of calamity, and if there were one, it would be useless. They must enjoy Christmas their own way and " snatch a fearful joy " from its being always a mockery, sometimes a bigger mockery than usual, and this year, no doubt, the biggest mockery of al] time, a Hollywood mockery with an all-star international cast and hundreds of millions of supers. At least it is a good show. The more cheerful, intermittent doubters, whose suffering is in brief pangs and not a long disease, with voluptuous thrills of agony once a year, find their own answer, generally by forgetting that they wanted one, in what the minute or the day brings forth. Though Franco may be fastening his grip on Madrid's broken walls, the children look very happy with their toys. The lamb and green peas are excellent, and a haze of contentment blots out Hitler's motor roads aimed straight at Czechoslovakia and Moscow. Christmas crackers are louder than the machine-guns and bombs in China. Stalin's challenging red is lost in the kinder, ruby light from a claret glass on the white cloth. What Mr Savage does not know about housing and what Mr Nash knows far too well about incomes—these are trifles to

be neglected for the fascinating secrets of small neat parcels; and the conspiracy of the money power is of no account, after all, when a few shillings command such power to change the dull course of days and to make the clock tick through a festival instead of another Friday. There is, however, an answer which better justifies Christmas against the doubts and even mutinies of the spirit than does the natural impetus which bears them down and carries the doubter or mutineer headlong into happiness. It is the plain, historic fact that Christmas belongs to a world in pain, not to an abstract world with which all is well. Its foundation was a message of peace and goodwill, not to men at peace and in charity with each other—they would not have needed it—but to warring and angry men, who were to learn its meaning and promise and are still, so stubborn are head and heart, to learn it. It was, and is, their title to rejoice in spite of their own folly and its consequences, and according to their faith in possibilities of greater good than they had made to appear, or are yet making. Christmas has never celebrated this message in a world where it was not " a mockery," in the Toobad sense. There would have been nothing to celebrate in such a different world, no promise from which to take courage and cheer in the close circle of the enemy's spears and the noise of his rule. There is a truer sense in which Christmas is, indeed, a mockery; it is the traditional mockery of self-destructive evil by those whose faith is in the ultimate strength of good. And it is a faith which is—to say no more—supported in the very fact that for 2000 years the winds and floods of evil have beaten against the comfortable house of Christmas, and it still stands. It may be fancy or it may be a matter of fact that they beat against it now with rising force; the fancy, if it is so, is natural enough, since past storms are never so real to the ear as the one that is raging. But what is not at all conjectural is the imminence of Christmas, and Christmas in a state of the world which much needs mending but is not past it; and that was the state of the world which knew the first Christmas and was bidden to rejoice in it. It is no an irony now than then to greet it gladly, and there is none in the wish, "A "Merry Christmas," whatever the condition of Europe, Asia, the Americas, and New Zealand. It is our cordial wish to our readers.