THE "FOLKSINESS" OF CHRISTMAS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3014, 20 December 1911, Page 88

THE "FOLKSINESS" OF CHRISTMAS.

By Jessie Mackat. j

"FOLKS SHOULD BE FOLKSY." America may be called a forcing bed of language. In its determined and successful weilding of alien elements of population it enriched its vocabulary in a manner only approached by the Imperial commandeering of terms that has added w> materially to the weight of a modern English dictionary. Next, the current speech of America is debased by more of the gunmetai of slang than any other worldspeech. The' atmosphere of hustle and "graft" breeds a veritable spawn of hideous linguisms that cannot live in a more natural air. One such Calibanic term has trailed over all New Zealand during the recent license contest. It has stood for vituperation, declamation, argument,—ithas been the watchword and war cry of the trade, which fondly fancied there wa s & species of effect in it similar to that attributed medievally to the Black Paternoster. But America can conserve as well as create, and in her common speech the archaisms of seventeenth-century England, words like "chore" and "fall" sound quaintly and. sweetly. The culture and the one-time conservatism of New Zealand has been reflected more or less faithfully in the language of her writers. And this reflection also records a naive changing of older forms into a colloquialism more in harmony with Western habit. Such a deflection" is the rare but characteristic ' folksy" of my text. Sooth to say, the writer knows not who originated the frier.dly saying that "Folks should be folksv." but the fact remains that he (or probably she) hit off an American trait to the verv Syllable. "Folksiness" conveys a levelling, humanising, democratising idea for which the ponderous English J lexicon offers no equivalent. The English are not. broadly speaking, a "folsyk" people. They have not unreserve, that wide-eyed, weka-like interest in the life surrounding, that frank need of multiplicity in human relations which strikes one at every turn in American life as American writers" point out. Britons jealously hold the curtain of their inner sanctuary close. They guard well the approaches to the arcana of hearth and heart and soul; in their most democratic sociabilities there is ever a thin invisible dividing line that can be sensed if not explained. _ _ . The Australasians stand midway in" this matter of social expansiveness. We are half irritated and half amused by the caste restrictions of the Mother Country, and take perhaps an impish delight in rasping the susoeptibilitie.s that mark the line of Vere de Vere. But our pasei'on for 'individual liberty ruiß to riot in directions diverse from that of America. We seek amusement gregariously and greedilv ■; we also seek social betterment in Latfaiions, fired by one -rtommon purBut in the end, when the laugh is laughed and the point is carried, we are still f.vv short of that hunger for human communion, social and spiritual, which we may conceive to be covered under the word "folksiness." The Americans are said not to favour fences between their dwellings, and their very domestic architecture points to a reciprocity repellant to British notions; there are none _of the "dens" and "snuggeries" that indicate the British need of 'occasional solitude even in family relations. Even in Australasia we a.re only partially a "folksy" people; and if it be deemed that the American here shows the larger continental spirit and we the circumscribed and insular, we but hug our insularity the closer. And it is this same dogged insularity that has won us many a Waterloo.

There is but one time in the year when the Briton becomes wholly "folksy," and that Ub at. Christmas. It has been somewhat freely said that Dickens created the Christmas tradition of modern England. Certainly we cannot imagine an English Christmas in which the shades of Pickwick and Tiny Tim were not. Nor do we forget that the Christmas tree was not indigenous toEnglishsoil; nor that Santa Glaus is also borrowed from the folklore of the north, along with many of the prettiest observances that endear the seaeon of children's hearts. Also the symbolic magnificence ''of the Latiin ritual and the Greek wholly transoend the simpler but more thoughtful ceremonial of Protestant Christendom. But anyone who has studied medieeval history knows what a delirium of wassail, largesse, prodigal hospitality, and uproarious merrymaking spread over not two, but 12 or 14, days. In fact, from Christmas till Epiphany, or the 12th of January, there was no work carried on, pactically, in old England but roasting and baking. It may be fairly said, however, that Dickens led the van in reforming the Christmas model on modern lines, and refining the spirit that hovered between crude selfindulgence and barren indifference. In everv place where the kindly Saxon tongue is heard thee is a beautiful softening of old rigours, a renewing of old ties, and a desire to bring gladness to the sorrowing, and plenty to the straitened, on that day Has any other creed evolved a motive so potent after the lapse of 2000 years as this of the Christ-child ? For an answer one instinctively turns to the carolHntf lines of Christina Rosselti: Whoso hoars a chiming for Christmas at the highest Hears a sound like angels chanting in their glee, Hears a sound like palm-boughs waving in the highest, Hears a sound like ripple of a crystal sea. Sweeter than a prayer-bell for a saint in dying, Sweeter than a death-bell for .a saint at r«st, Music struck in Heaven with earth's faint replying; " Life is good, and death is good, for Christ is best!"