QUESTIONS FOR SCHOOLBOYS

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23086, 31 July 1940, Page 14

QUESTIONS FOR SCHOOLBOYS

TO THB EMTOB 01 THE PEESS. Sir, —A paragraph in “The Press” today, with the above title, gives impressions of Mr H. A. H. Insull. headmaster of Cathedral Grammar School, in an address at the St. Matthew’s Victory Memorial School at home. He relates answers to questions, he asked pupils at a State secondary school. First, he asked 35 boys to tell him who was born on Christmas day, and only 15 of them knew. To these boys, he said, Christmas Day and Easter were ]ust public holidays and nothing more. In a booklet for Christians, by Chas. T. Gorham, is a paragraph entitled “Christmas” in which he says: The truth is that there is no authentic tradition that Christ was born in the winter. The date was chosen because the Pagans had been used to a jolly festival at the end of the year, and would not give it up. If the Church would not recognise it, the priests of Mithras would; they celebrated the birthday of the ‘lnvisible Sun’ on Christmas Day. So the people had their wish, and the children’s festival was very properly connected with the birth of the Saviour. . . . Most of our Christmas customs are pre-Christian, and are none the worse for that.” , „ _ (Dean Inge, “Evening Standard, December 24, 1938.) —Yours, etc., , _ H.W.B. July 29, 1940, .