THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1879.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVI, Issue 5650, 25 December 1879, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1879.

The hearty enjoyment of the Christinas time which is seen in all these colonies — with iestive gatherings, and pastimes, public and private—is a pleasant token of the material prosperity and brisk, healthy, popular spirit to be expected in new countries where the battle of life is easier than in the old world. We may often grumble and may often have reason to grumble; but, nevertheless, things do not go very badly where holidaymaking can be entered upon so universally and with so much zest and goodwill. And it is the right variation. All work and no play would never do, and as the Yankee song snys :—

To raise a good tune on life's fiddle Wo must now and then rosin the bow

Let us make the most of our advantage, and let U3 have a due appreciation of them. .Let U3 not forget how much holiday - making in general, and this Christmas merry - making in particular, have died out in tho very countries from which most of us have come. And if, under the happier circumstances of these new lands we have revived the joyous oelebration of the sacred season, lot us not complain because a bettor climate fives to a merry Christmas here in tho outh another and a difl'eront aspect from 4hat made dear bj- memory or tradition. Certainly no mode of keeping the festival has ever been so celebrated as that of England in the olden time. Nothing else of the kind was like it. Thoro was profolic he-art in our rude and vigorous forefathers about everything they thought and did, and their joyous doings at this season have been made picturesquely known to us by chronicle and legend, and by the brush of the painter; and yet it is curious to note how much that peculiar joyousness was enhanced—how very largely it was aided by things which of themselves would seem so unfavourable as the inclemency of a northern winter and the turmoil and

insecurity of a feudal age. In that feudal age, when thoee revels were moat famous, everything contributed to make them so. The great people were petty prinoes in their own domains, with large bodies of retainers. War was every baron's vocation, and it was his interest to attach and draw around him not only his kinsmen, but his tenantry and dependents of every degree. The mass of the people were engaged in agriculture, and the return of the snows and floods of winter mide a pause in their toil, suspended the labour of the fields. The same influence of the season, forbidding the ordinary sports, rendered indoor pastimes necessary. The festivities usually extended over the whole whiter—from All Hallow's Eve to Candlemas ; and they were equally welcome to all ranks—to people who had too much leisure, as well as to those who had too much work. We can see by the records that at ordinary times life used often hang heavily in the castle. There were not many waye of getting through the hour 3, and the ladies, as well as men, resorted to falconry, angling, and semetimes the chase. Indeed, one of our earliest authorities on field sport 3 was Juliana Berners, daughter of a noble family in Essex. After the introduction of printing her " Treatyses perteyning to Hawkynge, Uuntynge, and Fyssli3-nge with an Angle, & also a Right Noble Treatyse of the Lanyuage of Cot Armours," were transferred from manuscript to print by Wynkyn de Worde in 1486. Not many ladies in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had the fair Juliana's gift of letters, and if they had, crabbed manuscripts and the rare occasional tome in "black letter" would have been of small service in the way of light entertainment. Even in the following century, when learning grew to be the fashion for woman of rank as well as men, books were still few. That is a resource of modern times. The shifts to find amusement are shown by the institution of the professional jester, indispensable in every mansion. We can, therefore, understand how eagerly the winter was looked forward to with its long spell of Christmas pleasures, which had a mystical as well as a material charm for all classes. The darkness and dreariness of surrounding mture gave the zest of contrast to the brightness of the indoor mirth. The quaint revelry, boisterous but harmless, of " the Lord of Misrule ;" the walls gay and graceful with ivy, with the red-berried boughs of " the holly tree," and with the mistletoe fetched into light and laughter from the darknese and silence where it loves to grow ; the minstrele within, the carol of the waits, without—all these things stirred the imagination while they gratified the senses ; and it must be recollected that if it was a reverent it was also a superstitious time. Portents of all sorts were believed in : spirits rode the northern lights—the wind at midnight in the woods—the figure of the lonely otter as he listens, half lifted from the stream— all suggested something weird and unearthly. To children born at this period used to be attributed the power, in after years, of seeing and commanding spirits —a very doubtful advantage, if we were to judge by what was said of the ghastly looks of Philip of Spain, who was declared by his subjects to possess this privilege. In a superstitious age intolerable, indeed, would be that northern winter with its snow-flakes, drenching rains, and piercing winds, if it were not illuminated by social festivity. Interests, motives, feelings of all kinds contributed to that particular and most picturesque Christmas style. It was, what it was sometimes called, a '-'• truce of God" in a proud, jarring, and turbulent society, and men were glad of a brief interval to lay aside strife and distinctions of rank, and to exercise the gentler faculties of their nature.

That old mode of Christmas keeping has passed away, like the circumstances which contributed to its peculiar character. Merry and brilliant a3 was the revelry they helped to make, many of those circumstances were neither happy nor beautiful. We have a better state of things at this side of the intervening gulf of time, and we have a better climate at this side of the ocean ; and assuredly the faculty of enjoyment does not decline because fortune is more favourable. As Ovid tell us, " man changes his sky, but not his nature, by crossing the world." The colonists of England have still the hearty spirit, the healthy taste for hone3t pleasure of their vigorous forefathers. We do not complain, because the great festival with us has a flavour of the shore of the greenwood. We do not enjoy ourselves the less because Christmas does not come on the wing 3 of winter, to draw us round the blazing hearth, but visits us in airs soft as that Syrian season, when the shepherds watched their liocks by night in the fields of Bethlehem. And if our Christmas time is more like the original, so also is it more appropriate to the character of tho religion which was then introduced on earth —genial, bright, and hopeful—not gloomy, chilling, and terrible, as too many in all ages would have us believe. Yo3, Christmas has come round again. The schoolboy rejoices over hii holidays, his pantomime, his ball, and bat, and oar. Wo who are no longer schoolboys will enjoy ourselves likewise, and let us do so, not forgetting that there are those among us who cannot share our ccladness, for " the poor will be always in the land." Nothing keeps the heart green like this Christmas ivy, or can make it bright like the berries of the holly, but the sense of doing good to others as well as to ourselves.