RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 77, 23 December 1939, Page 10

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights On Current

Events

(By

Kickshaws.)

Kickshaws wishes all his readers a Merry Christmas.

Every Christmas reunion emphasizes how the little ones are growing up, it is stated. No sooner does one finish Sitting up with them thau you’re sitting up for them. .

A psychologist iu marriage declares that a woman should not marry a man till she is sure she is his mate. The normal procedure, of course, is to make sure she’s his match.

All motorists have been asked to bo as economical as possible with motor fuel. Within the limits of the internal combustion engine it is usually possible to make the gallon last further. The internal combustion engine, , however, has its own limitations. In theory one gallon of motor fuel that drives the average car 20 miles has the energy to drive it for well over 100 miles. Unfortunately, there is no known way to get round this wasted energy. Private motorists, however, might well appreciate that with a properly adjusted carburettor a low speed causes a better consumption of fuel. Sudden accelerations use up more spirit than most of us imagine. The work required in sudden acceleration may demand the full power output of the engine. In some cases smaller jets may produce an economy, but not always. It is usually necessary to fit smaller choke tubes and in modern ears there is often no provision made for this change. Coasting downhill helps, but tests show that coasting in neutral downhill with the engine idling uses about as much fuel as if the ear travelled the same distance on the flat with the engine at work.

Maybe the people who were alive when the first Christmas cards appeared were lucky. They had an opportunity to send something novel to their friends. What was their opportunity has become our duty. One individual hit upon the idea of sending a small gramophone record as a Christmas card with a message of personal greetings, but everybody does not have a gramophone. There must be something else this present civilization can think up to replace the Christmas card which has had a very long spin. It has made the fortunes of several well-known printing firms, and many that are not so well known. Maybe crackers have come to stay. There is not the retaliatory aspect about a cracker that there is about a Christmas card. Christinas cards work on the snowball system or the chain letter. The cracker dates from 1850 when Tom Smith saw a blazing log crackle into harmless sparks. He spent the next two years perfecting the cracker. The result is 20,000,000 crackers are now made by the one firm. The materials themselves afford a year’s work for various specialized firms.

One wonders if they will be singing about Good King Wenceslas over in Bohemia this Christmas, because things seem to be very different. It seems strange indeed that Protestants join in the chorus to sing the virtues of a Catholic Saint, who was martyred well over a thousand years ago. It is certainly progress in the right direction that such unanimity should have occurred about this carol. Indeed, the carol mentioned was written 80 years ago by the Rev. J. M. Neale on the legends which ■ surrounded this king. The words were fitted to a mediaeval tune, which had seen service as a spring carol. Wenceslas himself was the grandson of a Bohemian Prince named Borivoj, and the first Czech saint named Ludmilla. Wenceslas was brought up among fiery old women loving power and ambition. At 18 M enceslas assumed power. He was too advanced for the times and everybody wanted to kill him. Eventually they killed him on the way to church, having bolted the doors so that he could not find sanctuary. That is the cold fact about the king we hear in the carol. Scenes of brutality in the same area today have changed little.

Wenceslas became a legend in Bohemia centuries ago. His lance, borne at the head of the Czech armies, was stated to presage victory. Certain of the tribes bore his image on their shields, declaring that they owed success to its protective influence. A Wenceslas canticle became the national anthem of the Czechs. It was sung clandestinely during the Great War, although it’was forbidden by the Austrians Two of its lines adorn the Wenceslas statue in Prague. Wenceslas is the natural hero of Bohemia. He is a kind of Nelson to them, only more so. One wonders if his virtues will be carolled this Christmas. Nevertheless, the time will come when they will be be so sung. The history of those parts is, in fact, represented by the ways that the virtues are sung of this king. They were sung during the dark years after the battle of the White Mountain. They were sung during, the revolutionary times of 1848, when the Czechs strove to throw off the yoke of Austria. * * *

The curious fact about new hymns of the Christmas variety is that there never appear to be any new ones. We still sing the outburst of a drunken poet laureatte, ’.‘While Shepherds Watch etc.” Furthermore. ‘‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing” is nearly two centuries old, being composed by Wesley. ians Awake” was first, penned in IHo tor the little daughter, Dolly, of a man who lived in Manchester. "O Come All Ye Faithful” was the product of a religious movement in Oxford in the middle of last century, nearly 100 years ago The Latin original “Adestes Fideles” goes back to a much remoter date. Heber’s lyric “Brightest and Best of the Sons of Morning” takes us back over 100 years. America gave us ‘it Came Upon the Midnight Clear” over 00 vears ago. Phillips Brooks wrote “O Little Town of Bethlehem” ou Christmas Day, 1860. Over 80 years ago Mrs. Alexander wrote for her children “Once in Royal David’s City. The time has come when something ought to be done about it. Are we never to have any new carols? Ye poets, awake.

Some ]»eople have suggested that Father Christmas is out of place in countries such as New Zealand, where the festival takes place in mid-Summer. This mav be the ease. We sympathize with Father Christmas, but there seems to be no solution. Efforts have been made in some countries to ursurp tin. honour, but it is doubtful it’ the children approve. In 1930 the authorities in Mexico abolished Santa Claus, beatd and all. They considered he was our. of place in a country where snow is never seen. They de-frocked Father Christmas and handed over the honours to Quetzcoal. This is an Indian God. half bird, half snake, worshipped by the Aztecs before the days of the Spanish invasion. The new Father Christmas handed out presents in the approved style. One wonders, however if Hie children appreciated the activities of a half bird half snake affair, especially if it appeared at nigte secretly by way of the chimney.,