Christmas Games.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 20, 18 December 1906, Page 2 (Supplement)

Christmas Games.

BY W. L. ALDEN.

Why people should celebrate Christmas with games, is at first sight by no means plain. What possible connection is there between the Christmas anniversary and the noise, confusion, and the laughter of Christmas games P W r hen the King’s birthday arrives we do not feel it to be necessary to have our hair cut, or to sit on our top-hats and smash them. The recurrence of Whit Sunday does not bring with it an irresistible desire to break the household crockery or to kill the cat. Yet it would be quite as rational to do these things on the anniversaries just mentioned as it is to play games at Christmas. What, then, is the explanation of our universal custom of celebrating Christmas with games? It will be noted that an invariable characteristic of Christmas games is their noisiness. The game with which the mistletoe is associated is necessarily very noisy; Sir Roger de Coverley involves more or less uproar of an alleged musical character; and blindman’s buff is little better than an insurrection. A quiet Christmas game is apparently never played. We thus see that noise is an essential feature of Christmas games, and this fact will probabl}' give us a clue to their origin.

The savage has but two ways of celebrating any important event—either he over-eats himself, or he makes a horrible noise. If he can do both, so much the better. When Christmas arrives we imitate the savage with disgraceful fidelity. Wo gorge ourselves with roast goose or roast turkey, and we play the noisiest games that can be played outside of the football ground. Of course, we are unconscious that we are imitating savages ; our conduct is simply the result of heredity.

Thousands of years ago our remote ancestor, the cave man, celebrated his chief holiday—say the anniversary of the day on which he killed and ate his worst enemy—by feasting on boiled rhinocerous, and by subsequently drumming as loudly aB possible on the upturned and empty kettle. In these days we are not cannibals, but at Christmas we approach as closely as possible to cannibalism by eating too much roast goose. We no longer take pleasure in beating at the bottom of a copper kettle, but we feel instinctively

that our greatest festival must be celebrated with noise. Thus we can explain, by the theory of heredity, the origin of our two chief Christmas customs. And the explanation is doubtless right, for, as we all know, heredity is now the correct scientific explanation of everything—from the shape of our skulls to the way in which we lie on our beds. W'hile we can thus account for the noise of Christmas games we have not

yet accounted for the games themselves. Why, when there are so many ways of producing noise, do we select games as the appropriate method of making a satisfactory Christmas uproar ? What are the conditions necessary to Christmas games ? They are—first, the presence of a large number of persons of both sexes, and second, their desire to endure one another with decency. Take twenty people of assorted sexes and shut

them up in the drawing-room on Christmas night, and each one feels that he or she do something to enable him or her to live through the evening. To sit still and reflect that the quiet and secluded corner, which the safe digestion of the Christmas dinner so imperiously demands, is unattainable and that the evening must be spent in conversing with uninteresting people upon tiresome themes, is something that no man will willingly

do if there is a possible alternative. Games are intended to supply this alternative, and to enable the Christmas sufferer temporarily to forget his sorrows. Probably they accomplish this end to some extent, but it may be fairly questioned whether the remedy is not worse than the disease.

The supposition that there can be any pleasure derived from playing Christmas games cannot be for a moment enter-

tained. We all know that it is not true. Take the ceremonies of the mistletoe—ceremonies that have no real title to the name of game, although they are arbitrarily classed under that head. Can there be any pleasure in kissing the wrong girl under mistletoe P Of course, it will be said that you may kiss the right girl, but if she is only one among a dozen girls the proportion of undesirable kisses to the one desired kiss is preposterously

large. Then, can a man take any pleasure in seeing the girl of his heart kissed by other men ? No matter how heavily he may have drugged himself with roast goose the spectacle is one which fills him with secret and inexpressible rage. There may be a sort of mild pleasure in seeing a man whom yon cordially detest groping around with a bandage over his eyes, against the sharp corners of the furniture, but it is a pleasure wholly unworthy of a Christian man. The game of blindnian’s-buff is exhausting, undignified, and certain to involve one in difficulties with the girls whose dresses are torn by the unconscious feet of the blindfolded man. It is true thet there are redeeming points, even in blindman’s-buff; for is there not a case on record of a man who, while blindfolded, caught the family cat, and in the excitement mistook the cat’s fur for the back hair of his maiden aunt ? His triumphant proclamation that he had caught Aunt Jane iuduced the latter to change her will the very next day, thereby depriving the blindfolded nephew of a comfortable legacy to which he had looked forward for years. Still, poetic justice seldom overtakes the man who consents to be blindfolded, and those occasions when a Christmas guest finds it possible to extract oven the feeblest pleasure from blindman’s-buff are extremely rare. Sir Roger is simply an athletic exercise, falsely called a game. It is as tiresome as golf, end nearly as exhausting as cycling. And yet even middle-aged men who have within an hour or two eaten a Christmas dinner, are made to engage in the violent inanities of Sir Roger on Christmas evening. On the following day, when in the agonies of abdominal remorse, a man is ready to take a solemn oath never again to meddle with the fatal sport, but as sure as the next Christmrs

sees him alive, he will end Christmas evening with the inevitable Sir Roger. It may be unhesitatingly asserted that no one enjoys Christmas games who is more than ten years of age. It need hardly be said that children of that age should be in bed on Christmas evening instead of being permitted to infest tbe drawing-room, Their enjoyment oi Christmas games is, therefore, no excuse for the latter. We might as well excuse bull baiting on the ground that it gives pleasure to the dogs. We play Christmas games solely because an heredifc t y custom compels us to do so. Nobody who lias arrived at years of discretion enjoys them, and ninety-nine people in a hundred detest them.

When we think of the quiet, comfortable games with which Christmas might be celebrated, the objectionable character of our present Christinas games becomes the more apparent. There is the delightful game known as “ Two in the Conservatory.” It is played by a young man and a young woman.

The two retire to a quiet corner in the conservatory where they are concealed from view by flowers and vines, and there discuss in low tones such pleasing themes as the best Route to the North Pole, or the Kinetic Theory of Gases. Any number of young men and young women can play at this simple but charming game, provided a sufficient number of quiet comers can be found in the conservatory. It can even be played on the stairs almost as well as in the conservatory, and the same young man, if he is an accomplished player, can play half-a-dozen sets with half-a-dozen different young women in the course of an evening. The enormous superiority of this game to anything that is done under the mistletoe must be apparent even to the most careless observer. It involves none of the publicity, the romping and the other disagreeable features of the latter game, though it must be confessed, that, in some instances, the loser has had good cause to regret that he ever attempted to play it.

Then there is the pipe game. This is played only by men, but, perhaps, that is one of the advantages of it. The player withdraws to some quiet place, either within or without the house. Having seated himself he fills an ordinary brier-wood pipe with good tobacco, and lights the tobacco with a match. Almost

any match may be used, but as a rule the wooden match is used by the best players. The player can either finish his game in one innings with the pipe, or he can refill it and enjoy another innings. Men who habitually play this game assert that it i 6 peculiarly adapted for Christmas evening, especially if the Christmas dinner has been a good one. That it is vastly preferable to blindman’s-buff, or Sir Roger, is admitted by nearly all medical men ; except, of course, young practitioners, who are anxious to add to the number of their patients, and look upon the usual Christmas games, with their subsequent harvest of sufferers from dyspepsia, as something especially designed for the good of the medical faculty. I may mention one more admirable Christmas game. It is called Bedfordshire, and is one of the earliest games with which we make acquaintance in our childhood. The player retires from the drawing-room about an hour after dinner is over, and just before the orthodox Christmas games begin. When he reaches his room lie removes the greater part of his clothing, puts on his night-gown, and after extinguishing the light, gets into bed. There he remains until half-an-hour before breakfast time on the following morning. This game ought to be a popular favourite, and when a man has once learned to play it on Christmas evening, he can never be induced to play any other. I have suffered much from Christmas games. I have played blindman’s-buff and caught the corner of a particularly hard pianoforte with my forehead. I have undergone the toil of Sir Roger, and caught pneumonia in consequence of being overheated. I have been compelled to kiss girls uuder the mistletoe who, I am certain, did not want to be kissed by me, and whom I certainly did not want

to lost. On the other hand, I have the memory of one delightful Christmas Eve which I spent in a rational manner. I was nearly 700 miles distant from my I home, and I went to dine wit h a bachelor uncle who warned me that lie detested the practice of giving Chris'mns presents. land uniformly refused to accept any. There was no one at the dinner table exmy uncle and myself, and about «i_rlit o’clock that excellent man mid to me: “Now, nephew, I’m going tobed. There is the port, and there are the cigars, and you’ll find plenty of books in the library. Good-night !” Tho port and the cigars were admirable, and in the library I found a volume of Guy De Mauparshiit which I had never prevhandy seen. I went to bed at ten o’cloek, and 1 have ever since considered that my excellent uncle’s idea of entertaining Christinas guests was worthy of universal imitation.