ENGLAND'S CHRISTMAS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVII, Issue 17361, 7 January 1920, Page 7

ENGLAND'S CHRISTMAS.

FIRST PEACE; FESTIVAL.

HUGE-SCALE REJOICING.

ORGY OF EXPENDITURE

LONDON, Dec. 21. " Daddy is home" is the Christmas keynote of all classes of society. In hundreds of thousands of cases it is the first Christmas the children have had with daddy far four years.

Festivities will be on the grand scale. Old-time Yuletide functions are little changed, except that children's jazzing is : replacing parlour games. Many writers ; call it the " ragtime Christmas," with j ragtime music and ragtime expenditure, i After long waits the queues in the over-1 crowded stores were forced to take rag-! time food, for turkeys were scarce, and the supply was cornered at the controlled , price of 2s 9d a pound, and many tasty j makeshift- dishes were used. j The expenditure, if judged by pre-war I

standards, has been prodigious. Shopkeepers admit that money melted as it never did before. The stores are satiated with selling, end are closing for four days from Tuesday. London's revels include special dinners and dances at the hotels, a grown-up party round a 20ft Christmas tree at the Ritz. and a ball at the Albert Hall. The Court, including Queen Alexandra and the Prince of Wales, have gene to Sandringham. London is overcrowded, and rooms are unobtainable, but the city has managed to absorb 10,000 sailors, who have been given special leave from the fleet for the first real peace Christmas. Jewellers, furriers, and motor agents are doing enormous business. The favourite present in tho West End, which, at theatre-time, now presents the bewildering spectacle of a seemingly endless flow of luxurious limousines, is an order for a motor-car not yet built. The spectre behind the feast is the starvation of Austria and Russia. England's fund for Austrian children has reached £250,000. Holland's trade unions, which are entitled to two days' holiday, have decided to work one day, and devote their pay to Austria. A touching feature of the scene ir London is the special pilgrimages to the cenotaph in Whitehall by great number! of country people. These relatives of dead soldiers an taking tho opportunity of the holiday t( lay beautiful wreaths on the cenotaph, anc j an immense mass of flowers is accumulat ing.