Meaning of Christmas.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17348, 20 December 1919, Page 1 (Supplement)

Meaning of Christmas.

MEN'S CAPACITY FOR DIVINITY.

Christmastide's message for men is the inherent relation of the heavenly and the earthly. So great gulf fixed separates divinity from humanity. All else in the Christian evangel, even the cross of agony and the empty tomb, gets it value from this truth. As Sir Oliver Lodge asserts, "the humanity of God and the divinity of man is the essence of the Christian revelation." In the cradle of Christ this revelation has its "most compelling setting. "Let us now go even unto Bethlehem' is the .first vital determination in any rational pilgrimage of religious thought. Heaven's Intimacy with Earth. This essential oneness of heaven and earift sets a glory upon our life and its conditions. George Macdonald, in his "Marquis of Lossie," utters the alluring graciousness of the truth : "It makes the earth very holy and very lovely to think that, as. we are in the world, so was He in the world. ... If God should be so nearly one with us that it was nothing strange to Him thus to visit His people— that we are not the offspring of the sourless tyranny of law, that knows not even its own self, but the children of an unfathomable wonder, of which science gathers only the foambells on the shore, children in the house of a living Father, so entirely our Father that He cares even to death that we should understand and love Him !•"'

The heart, of the Christian evangel is in that. Its realisation will save us from viewing earth morbidly, and even turn brave endurance of hardship into regal use of all that may befall. Our world

Christmas and Epiphany wer e once celebrated as one and the same feast. The separation took place at the Council of Nice in 325.

Mince-pies were derived from the pastry images and sweetmeats ■ given to' the Fathers of the Early Church at Rome on Christmas Eve. They used ■to be called " minced" pies.

Christmas Day in prison is like a Sunday. There is no work beyond the necessary cleaning. But there are two services in the prison chapelone in the morning the other in the afternoon.

The first Christmas carol was the wellknown hymn, "Gloiia in Excelsis," sung by the angels to the shepherds at Bethlehem op the first Christmas morning. The first printed one was published in England in 1521.

About three o'clock on the morning of Christmas Day, in some parts of Wales, the people assemble in'church, and, after prayers and a sermon, sing psalms, and hymns until daylight dawns. This is called " the crowning, of th« cock."

By the bounty of an old inhabitant, who once heard some poor children complaining that they had no plums for a pudding, a sum of money is' annually . distributed among the occupiers ot certain old 'hotlses in Stafford for the purchase of plums.

Christmas candles in some parts of the country must be so large as to burn all day, otherwise it will portend evil to the

BY KATANGA.

family for the coming year should they fail in their light. They used to be. presented by the poor as gifts to the rich. Turkey is the largest sultana-producing country in the world, but the crop, according to a responsible authority, nas always to be artificially treated —the ground highly dressed with chemicals and the berries sulphured to give them their bright yellow colour.

A concession made comparatively lately to guests, in His Majesty's "hotels" was that of plum-pudding for Christmas dinner. Very good pudding it is, too, and the . ordinary free person can hardly realise how intensely the, men look forward to such a treat.

Waits was the name originally given to the minstrels attached to the King's Court, whose duty it was to guard the streets at night and proclaim the hour.. They were also in the habit of serenading the inhabitants as well, hoping at Christmas-time to receive their reward.

■ Severe winters were the lot of those living in England during, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Thames having been ice-bound on more than one occasion. As our world grows older summer and winter become less apparent Of prevent winters certainlv bear out this fact..'

There is one prison—and one only— inmates of which will be allowed to smoke on-Christmas Day. This is Camp Hill, the so-called preventive detention prison, near Parklmrst, in the Isle of Wight. Here a pipe, and tobacco are served out to such men(as have earned the privilege, by good

is not orphaned, let alone outcast. There has been one Holy Land; therefore there may be many another. There has been here one Holy Life, full of power and truth and love; why, then, not others ours The Slowly-blossoming Aloe. A deep-seeing Oxford man whose words arc widely treasured in the world Principal Fairbairn, of Mansfield College— held this Christmas truth with firmness. "Humanity," he said, "was like a colossal aLoe, growing slowly through many centuries, throwing out many an abortive bud, but blossoming at length into 'the second Man,' who remains its for ever fragrant and imperishable flower." What humanity is capable of was declared in that blossoming. We need not, we dare not, despair of' a human nature whence such beauty and fragrance have sprung. It were blii.d blasphemy to say that the Creator had exhausted Himself at Bethlehem. Rather is it sane faith to regard Christ as "the first-born of many brethren."

At this birthday festival of the divine Son of Man we may profitably find His life the inspiration and test of our best endeavour. His % blazLng scorn of fraud, His bitter contempt of hypocrisy, His yearning concern over others' welfare, His ready and practical helpfulness — these should woo us again in this season of His honour. He has shown us what may be done in human life. It has all the conditions of divinity. What is wanting is our enthusiasm and determination about our own use of them.

The Master-touch. "Here is the characteristic of Christianity which meets us at the Christmas season," said Professor Peabody to the Harvard students. 'Far once in a year we are delivered from the dogmatics and apologetics of Christianity, and are willing to receive the lyric revelation, it i; natural at Christmas-time to explain one*: meaning in a story. Once upon a time then, in an ancient church, there w'a a great organ on whicß the people hai not yet learned to play. One after another tried the instrument, drew out its stops and wakened some of its harmonies,; but rone of them dreamed of the wonderful music which lay hidden there. Then one day came the Master, sab like other men before the organ; and began to play; and the people below hushed themselves and whispered : 'Is this the organ _ which we have owned so long— this which first sighs and weeps, and then thrills with passion and joy?' From that day the hope of their worship was to reproduce the music which was then revealed, and, when the be'st of them did his best, they said : "This makes us.think of the Master's playing.' Just such an instrument is human life, with its complex mechanism, its possible discords, its hidden harmonies, and many a philosopher and teacher has drawn from within it something of the music which was there. Then one day comes the Master. He knows,' as the Gospel says, what is in man, and, bending over human life, reveals, the music of it;. and from that day forth the hope, of "the world has been to reproduce the harmony ; and when the best of men Jo their best we say: 'This makes us think of the Master's playing.' "

There 'has been so much of the selfish and the sordid in this year of war's aftermath that the ■ Christmas message of the potential grandeur of human life comes with refreshing renewal. Commercialism, class-assertion, political ambition, and other influences arising from the material conditions of a critically-changing ,world, have moved us. The best .in us has had little enough chance of expression. In the Christmas-time—there is none better —we may find place: for the kindlier and kinglier virtues of a divinely human life. : : j * »'■'' .

conduct, and there are not.many w;ho will not enjoy a smoke after their dinner on Christmas Day.

Snow and ice ar e welcome at Christmas, but one can have too much of them at times. The Christmas of 1860 is believed to be the coldest ever recorded for Great Britain. The temperature remained at 17 degrees below freezing-point for over three days. Someone who kept a Christmas diary speaks of having seen " a horse pass with icicles at his nose six inches long and as thick as three fingers."

Terribly cold spells have been experienced at Yuletide abroad. - l)nji a * the year 401 the Black Sea was entirely frozen over; in 452 the Danube was blocked and an army passed across it; while the Dardanelles was completely ice-bound during the Christmas of 642. The enow her lay in .drifts of nearly a • hundred feet in height. he Adriatic Sea suffered two centuries later and remained frozen for seme cfnsideiable time; in 1233 Italy' rivei -courses were blocked with ice, and during. the same period the Rhine could not be navigated.

Some years ago the Christmas concert was the cause of a serious riot in Dartmoor Prison. . There was. not room for all the convicts in the Anglican Chapel, and some three hundred were cut out from attendance. ■ While some of these men were being paraded in the prison vard they suddenly made a rush at the warders. Lumps of coal and stones filled the air. and two warders were badly hurt. The chapel is the only part of the prison I where any Christmas decorations are' seen, but the hymns are the old-fashioned Christmas ones, and the men sing them with real heartiness. I