Christmastide

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVI, Issue 11, 24 December 1925, Page 11

Christmastide

IN NORTHERN CLIMES when the sleigh bells make a merry tumult; when the snow mocks the lily for purity; when the rime frost, shot through with the sun, makes diamond points of the bare tree branches; when a riot of colour marks the shop windows in the city—that expresses the time and the world which Santa Claus has made his own.

You may know that the world is made over in the new when Brown stops his car and insists upon giving a lift to the tired washerwoman, on her way home to her dismal lodgings. You may know, when Jones finds a sudden restriction in the throat, as he watches the open-eyed wonder of his youngsters in toyland, that we are in a world where all is joy—and the gas meter forgotten ! If there is anything the average man detests it is carrying parcels. He carries them now with urbanity and candor, and makes no apology. Something has happened, and this something has made the world over in the new. That hideous vice, selfishness, has been eliminated—for the nonce. The Christmas season means many beautiful things; but in a special degree it means the consecration of child life. It means a new sense of spiritualization. dulled by the cares and troubles of the year. The mind and heart rise above material things. There comes into the general breast the deep conviction that in the spirit and true life of man there is more than the pursuit of dollars. A certain solemnity mingles with the joy of the sacred season. That two and two are four is a vital truth ; but a greater truth still is that man is a spiritual being. That feeling of the spiritual is in the air. All gladly succumb to it. It links us with the divine. It refines and softens and uplifts. But. in a peculiar degree, the Christmas time stands for the child in the human economy. Eyes can still feel moist over the story of the Divine Child; but the best and most precious meaning of Christmas is that it sets a sacred value on child life. The child is the prospective truler of the planet. As we know more about psychology, child life will deepen in importance. In every child amazing possibilities are bound up. If one had vision he might see. in the nurse’s arms, an organism that might reconstruct a world or bring a planet about the general ears. The child is valuable on his physical side, and this value is being added to ; but the child is precious beyond all estimate for the things that arc asleep in the unawakened brain. The child is linked at this season of the year to human and divine love. He is brother to the Child in the Manger. The Star that bends over him is that which glittered in the blu* of an eastern night. The love that would go out in longing finds, at hand, human replica of that Infant, which, in His young playtime, said to his Mother: “Wist ye not

that I must be about my Father’s business ?” One of the greatest things in the world is the sense of wonder in childish eyes. In the eyes of the first man who stood upright, that sense of wonder was fear; in the eyes of the child his wonder is unwedded to fear. It is open-eyed and sweet and candid and wholly beautiful. That is the joy o>f joys—when parents have made those big sweet eyes bigger with delight at the lovely things Santa Claus has brought. The toys are sentiment. They are breathing, living, enjoying creatures. It is easy to believe in Santa when he is so thoughtful and generous. If we could penetrate to the seat of thought it would be profoundly interesting to find how the child had peopled the mimic world with the creatures which bedeck the store windows—people who are alive, and who suffer and enjoy like the grown-ups—-only the grown-ups are usually drab enough. The wonder of the child is worth all the Christmas trouble. One knew a citizen who. for years, went to the woods and dragged home, for miles, a Christmas tree that his little girl might express, when the tree was pranked forth, all the innocent wonder which can only be seen in the eyes of a child. The whole labour and fuss, the toys, the pudding, the anxious planning—have their meaning and justification in the unbounded delight of the child—fresh from the hand of God, readv to be fashioned for time and eternity. It is a solemn thought- - the growth and bent of character in the young, but it will ho an immense help to cultivate in the young life the things that are beautiful and uplifting ; the things that tell a beautiful story, and give the sense of poetry, lacking which the life is as bare as the haggard fields of autumn. This is why wise parents insist upon the reality of Santa Claus; and if he were not real in spirit the poor old world would bo undesirable and triste indeed. This love for the child ,always operative, becomes a passion at the Christmas season. See a mother, with half a dozen little ones tugging at her skins —patient, young again for their sakes, willing to be “scrooged” on the street, to be pushed about in toy la nd—that her children may be happy. One need not trouble about theology. It will be sufficient to let the Christmas spirit animate the days and hours —that spirit being best typified in the child. Even those who are without religious experiences feel their eyes moist as they contemplate the haphappiness of the children, and link thai happiness, somehow, to that beautiful story of the Child in the .Manger. This child love, freshly awakened, is a great asset for civilisation, at the present posture of affairs, and should be encouraged. The humanizing effect of the Christmas season is marvellous. There is something higher involved than creature delights, but it is through the human wo reach up to the Divine; and one is not the less spiritual because of turkey and cranberry sauce!