THE RIGHT SPIRIT

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 151, 23 December 1921, Page 13

THE RIGHT SPIRIT

THOSE WHO ENJOY CHRISTMAS— ' AND THE OTHERS CHILDREN'S WILL TO WONDER. The right attitude towards Christmas, the real spirit ot the season, lies in possessing or cultivating the Will to Wonder. If Christmas —and especially the festival as we have built it upon the beautiful old story of the manger at Bethlehem —means anything at all, it is the great carnival of childhood. We only pass within the veil to discover its mysteries and' true delights when we ; become as little children. i It. is easy to divide people into two great classes—thote who apprisciate and enjoy Christmas as it should be appreciated and enjoyed, emering whole-heart-edly into its spirit,, and those who are bored with the whole business,! and can only endure it, by distorting its meaning and destroying its simplicity.-, r We all know the latter, Mass, with their feverish anxiety to get away from the true atnjosphere of Christmas, and make a festival, of their own devising. But let us forget them, as; they forget, us who mean to try again this Christmas, as we tried in harder pluzea during recent rears, to find the Christmas .King, though it be only to touch the hem of His garment. ;< THE CHILDREN. So we come beck to the /children .for our lesson. Thejr are not bored,'or blase; they have the will to wonder.,,and; given, that, all'good things are added unto them. They are so far unspotted by ' the world that they, can still believe in Father Christmas—or if 'hey are' getting a little knowing,, and realise that father and mother are not altogether unconnected with the idea, they are ;wi prepared to wonder how all .these things, reslly come about. V . This willingness to wonder-,-this readiness to be amazed # by' simple things, _to 'laugh at trivial humours', and to enjoy homely fare and fun--is the great secret, of the Christmas festival. Christmas began with, a will to wonder, wfien shepherds, with the simplicity of little children, set out in the rijfht spirit of; wonderment to «cc a tiny Child in a manger. It is right that the zestivel which is ■founded on the coming of that Babe should be a children's, festival, to be understood and enjoyed only by those who come to it with the willingnew to wonder of little children. For one can no more

enter into the kingdom of Christmas than one can enter ipto the Kingdom of Heaven, except he become as a little child.

■■■ ;.PIJN'.OF'': THK SEASON. A \ /This wili to wonder—this readmesi to enter with childish delight into the fun of the season, to do frivolous and undignified things if necessary, even to forget for an biur that you have an adult liver and to brave the plum pudding and the mince pie' because they are mysteriously one with the' spirit of the season—this is the way to make ihe great festival of our home-life a real thing.

. To do otherwise would be to. act as a wet blanket on 'the whole proceedings. You will certainly enjoy yourself the more j if you set aside the cynicism and boredom I which are ,a part of your ohosen,- dignity. | It is very becoming that you should enjoy yourJelf—tho're' is something so wildly irreligious as to be unspeakable in the man or woman who faces Christmas with 'a workaday scowl or frown. ' But I would not have you believe that your.owh enjoyment is the chief purpose of your presence at the1, Christmas, feast. There are other and more important peo- | pie at the table and around the hearth. It i is the children's festival, in honour of a I Child Whose birth in a manger we shall try to tell them about. (And the most wonderful stoiy to read them, at Christ-. mas, passing the wonder of all the fairy stories, is in the seoond chapter of St. Luke.) ■'' ■■ I RENEWING OTJRv CHILDHOOD.. ' '' -. .-■ '•. ■ I So,-for tjhe children's sake—your ownbeing, after; all, of very secondary importance —get up on Christmas morning in the proper spirit of wonder, So that you may go with them,into the secret places of delight which fall open to the touch of a child's hand. ' We are called', upon, each Christmas to wonder at.childish things, which are by so much the most important things of life that, if you remember, they are the first things on which we ever pondered. Each Christmas, if we use the season aright, we renew our youth, for we come back, if we are wise enough to seize the opportunity, to share the wonders and delights and enthusiasms of children. Through all the rest of the year we call them to sit at our feet and learn wisdom there (the calrd audacity of grown folk [ who have made such a mess of the world and then pose as profesors of, wisdom luckily escapes their notice, and we are too stupid to appreciate the irony). But on this festival of the Child of Bethlehem, and of all the other ollildren of the w^rld, especially those of our homes today, we may,, if we come humbly in the proper spirit of wonder, win back something of the right attitude' toWards life. To jwhich it seems not unfitting to say, Amen;— Edgar Rowau, in" the Daily Chronicle..