CHRISTMAS EVE CROWDS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 152, 26 December 1923, Page 8

CHRISTMAS EVE CROWDS

BUSY DAY AND NIGHT

SUCCESSFUL YULETIDE.

"Christmas comes but once a year," runs the old ditty, and perhaps even the shopkeepers who did such a roaring trade'on Monday were glad by the time the closing hour arrived that this is. so, even if the Christian celebration of the Nativity is not kept with strict regard to the time of year -when Eastern custom demands, or 1923 years ago did demand, that shepherds should watch their flocks by night.

"This is the busiest Christmas since the slump," commented one man on Christmas Eve, and the crowds which thronged the streets all day and well on into the night, certainly indicated that this was so. From every point of view it was a bright and merry Christmas. Wellington was in carnival mood, and money circulated freely. Conditions, meteorological were not propitious in the afternoon, and for a couple of hours there was steady rain, accompanied by a blustery northerly wind, which did not auger well for the youngsters' night o' nights. .By 6 o'clock, however, the weather cleared, with the result that the new "keep to the left" rule was soon relegated, to limbo and go-as-you-please-if-you-can became the order until well on to 11 p.m. A sharp shower shortly after 9. & clock, when the wind shifted round to the south, caused many to make sudden dashes for refuge, but squeakers, shrill whistles, clanging tram bells, and exuberant youths were still loudly audible, and did their best, to excel in competition with carolling bands, which interspersed "Christians Awake" with "Yes, We Have No Bananas" at sundry street corners. The trams did good business, practically everything on wheels was out, and motormen had many anxious moments in threading their way through the huge presses of pedestrian traffic in Cuba- street, Manners street, Willis street, and Lambton quay, on which thoroughfares the bulk of the people converged from the suburban areas b«fore darkness set in. Not for many a long day was so much concentrated humanity seen in Wellington, and the oldest inhabitant" and the latest arrival from Home rubbed shoulders and jostled one another with the best of intentions and great expectations of more Yuletide festivities to come The thronged shops and the dazzle of and old, the more so.for those mites whose parents for once relaxed stnet Plunket nursing rules to allow their offspnng to see what-Christmas Eve is like instead of pushing them off to tho Chnstmases, alf performing the 01 , e v,SdT °f Ce f°r the g°od St- N&holw, Ef« il m uany a y°un? heart-' Long before the shade of St. Nicholas setout custom onf g ? stabll*e nocturnal custom of descending chimney pots to redeem his numerous promises to fill un K-LSdThSsseii hteS Sa a nddb° ySt-T^ kd "«**