CHRISTMAS OLD AND NEW

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3711, 21 December 1912, Page 22

CHRISTMAS OLD AND NEW

(By Walter Brett.)

If Christmas is to bo the real thing you must have snow. Everyone says so, and everyone sighs for a Yuletide of the good, old-fashioned sort. Do you not, on Christmas Em, snatch every available minute to peer up at' the sky, to read the weather ? All the time you are hoping to see tho grey or the blue —which ever happens" to be the case—vault of heaven change to the dull copper hue which tells you that there, will be snow before many hours have passed. And when the first little flake falls on to the window-sill you go into transports of childish -glee. You cry out: “At last!'’ and promise yourself tobogganing,. skating, snow-fighting; in fact, the Christmas that you have always been led to believe your fathers enjoyed before you,, from ■ time immemorial. When tho little, fleeting snowflake melts away into a patch of wet —as it must, for, in all probability, it is but an alien, come by chance amongst the rain drops—you mourn for it as for a dear lost one. You mutter to yourself: “Oh, for just one real Christmas/’ For the moment you are-blind tr reason. You cannot realise that it is better to have to don a'mackintosh, am! make a bolt through the- rain for the nearest motor-’bus, or whistle a “taxi,” than to trudge through inches of icy slush because every ’bus’ and cab has been snowed up or is broken down. You want to .see the streets bidden under a tliiclj, white carpet, you want to hear the snow crunch beneath your feet, and feel it trickle through your boots; you want to sec tire whole world changed, as it always is after a heavy snowstorm. Of course, no one will deny that snow, like - <dnu'ity, covers a multitude | of sins, and even one of London’s busy j thoroughfares is picturesque after a fall. Anyway, it is far nicer to look

upon in such circumstances than it is after a gentle downpour of rain. Therefore,, when all is said anti done, it is some consolation to those who sigh for it. to know that our forefathers liked exactly the same sort of Christmas weather as we have in this enlightened century. The meteorological- experts tod us, in long columns of statistics, that more often than not snow does not fall on December 2oth. And when grandfather starts - romancing about the “Christmas Cardv” Christmas he

had when lie was a hoy, .you will know that his imagination is leading him slightly astray.

In dissolving the snowy Christmas theory, a good deal of wind has been taken from the confirmed grumbler’s sails, but there is still much left that he can find fault with.

He can lament, for instance, the loss of what was, at one time, the most important feature of the Christmas festivities, a loss which gives most of us to think longingly of the past. Not so very long ago, you collected together every available -relative and friend; you loaded your dining table with every conceivable delicacy, and forthwith sat down to feast and make merry

Afterwards, you told funny stories, made funnier speeches, and played games—blindman’s buff, oranges and lemons, and, if you were young and greatly daring, kiss-in-the-ring and postman’s knock. Your Christmas Day was a reunion of those from far and 1 near, the one day above all others when homo meant everything to you. Many stories survive of those wonderful family gatherings. Here is one of the best: A merry company were assembled at the Christmas dinner-table, and all enjoyed the good things provided by the genial host and hostess. When there was a lull.in the conversation, one of the guests happened •to ask little Tommy, the son of the house, where turkeys came from. “Dunno,”'he answered, "but I can tell you where this one came from” (pointing to the bird on the table). "Ma got it from a tramp for one and sixpence, ’cause the man said he stole it. Didn’t he, map” Such little eontetempts,. however, if not particularly comforting to the hostess, only served to add to the general merriment. You never let them interfere with' the enjoyment of the feast. Nowadays, all that is out of date.m many homes. If you are not lucky enough to possess a motor-car of your own, you ’phono for a taxi, and you and your wife and your family and your friends drive to the Savoy or some other large hotel, ancl there drink your bumper to "absent friends and to those near and dear to you.” Christmas at the bigger hotels is now just as much the fashion as Christmas at home Was fifty years ago. But if the spirit of modernity has deprived •us of a Christmas feature that wo all esteemed, it has bestowed a favor in also abolishing other less desirable customs.

PICTURE CONTRASTS OF YULETIDE AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS.

"Twenty,” was the response. "Very well, divide this amongst you,”" and an icy douche of water descended upon the heads of the luckless minstrels. There is one other thing that makes us sigh for a Christmas as it ought to be, and almost hate Christmas as it is—the benevolence of the clerk of the weather, who gives us balmy air when we ask for frost. Roller skating is hut a poor apology for the real thing. You skim round and round a dustladen hall, until the perspiration di : jxs from you in showers; you are jostled and pushed by the hosts of other skaters, your ears are deafened with a noise as of the rushing of mighty waters. But you must skate, so you sink all prejudices and "rink.” None the less, you long for hut a brief half hour of the real thing. How pleasant it would be, you think, to feel the yielding ice beneath your feet, to see the wide, glittering, glassy sheet stretching for miles in front of you, to he lulled by the gentle purr as your skates bite into' the frozen mass.

True, the aforesaid chronic grumbler will weep over the coach and four | —now, alas! buried with the deary dead past, and bewail the fate that; Hits liim along tho country roads at twenty miles an hour' “and a bit more”' but he will weep alone. . 1 There inay, of course, have been a charm in the old, lumbering coach. It I might be that there is something essentially- Christmassy in benumbed fingers and feet, in the dreary, bone- I shaking jaunts along uneven lanes, and in the almost inevitable breakdown miles from anywhere. Possibly tht re was an element of humor when Dick Turpin poked his merry face through the coach window, and pleaeantly gave one the option of sacrificing- money or hie —lie was really indifferent which. Certainly it was romantic. But how many of us would consider romance when ic is only possible by the sacrifice of personal comfort? The motor-car, the modern substitute for tho coach, has not the least pretentions to romance, but everyone will give it its due, and say that it is a big improvement on its predecessor. ! Would that the same could be said of another sign of the times—the twentieth century waits. Pictures and stories of the past present to us the hardy old squire* surrounded by bis guests, drinking a bumper to the waits, collected in picturesque attitudes at one end- of the banqueting hall. They are welcome, those waits, and thev leave tbo squire with hearts lightened and pockets heavy. Everyone wants them, and vet." for this very reason, they have time only to bestow upon a few. But what of the waits nowadays? Nobody wants them, hut everybody has them. They come with their cornets and their raucous voices, they tells us that

Good King Wenceslas went out i On the Feast of Stephen, i When the snow lay round about, I Deep, and crisp, and even. ‘ and they go with our maledictions ringing "in their ears —only to come again the next day. I "llera is a story which emphasises ' how very unwelcome are the up-to-date waits: ; Mr. Gray was a newcomer to the district, and had had no experience of that terrible scourge known as the town's brass band.

Consequently, when, a' few days before Christmas, a man called upon him and informed him thatjdi-e band would play “a selection of ’carols in front of certain houses,” lie gladly put him name to tho list of subscribers.

Mr. Gray was surprised, ho »-ever, when the band failed to perform as arranged, and was still more astonished when, on Boxing Day, his visitor called again for the promised donation.

“But.” protested Mr. Gray, “your band did not play in front of my house!’

•My dear sir,” gasped tHe collector, “if our band had —er —troubled you, do you think I should have had the colossal, impudence to call on you this morning? Your name was on the subscribers’ list, consequently you escaped! Pei baps, sir, being a stranger, you don't know our band? All!” —sadly— “in that easv, sir, you’ll never know what you’ve missed.” Unfortunately, there me few of the waits who are so considerate as toaccept a small bribe to stay away altogether.

There only remains, therefore, to deal with them as did a certain Mr. Brown.

It was close upon midnight, and the waits were piping their lay beneath Mr. Brown’s window. ' In a few minutes up went the window, and Mr. Brown was heard inquiring: “How many are there of you?”

Y r ou would feel the cool wind fanning your super-heated face, arid you dream longingly of cosy cottage teas beside a blazing log fire after the day’s sport is over. And- yet, when all is said and done, there is not really such a very great difference between the skating we have and the skating we should like—if you look at the matter from a pessimistic -point of view.

When you skate on the ice, you become just as warm as when you are rinldng, your limbs are just as stiff, and you use the same copious doses of embrocation to ease your battered body the day after. And the teas you have, are they not equally cosy and certainly: ;far more comfortable when partaken of in . the cafes, attached to most modern rinks? When tbo time comes for roller skating to bo as silent a sport as its legitimate brother pastime, there is little doubt that we shall hie us to the rink a few hundred yards away in preference to travelling miles in search of a frozen lake, even when Jack Frost has been in his most freezing mood.

On the whole, much as we may sigh for snow in place of rain, the oldfashioned o'lach-and-four instead of the motor-car, the tuneful waits of a few years ago, and the real Christmas dinner, there is little in the modern •Christmas that we can find fauli with.