EDITORIAL.

Southern Cross, Volume 15, Issue 35, 21 December 1907, Page 10

EDITORIAL.

CHRISTMAS IN THE NEW dominion. Christmas again. To the young a year is a long interval, and the anticipated pleasures of each Christmas seem long in coming, but a& we grow older the years follow on each other more and more swiftly, and Christmas steals on us almost unawares. Each Christmas forms a sign-post on life’s journey, and affords a brief breathing place where we may review the past, aad plan for the future. Another year, with its efforts, achievements, and disappointments, is drawing to a close. Tired .workers welcome a brief interval, be it weeks or days, to rest from the monotonous round of daily life, and refresh themselves for the work of another year. School children are looking forward eagerly to the long vacation ; and for the young generally the time is one of eager anticipation of pleasures. In New Zealand the season of rejoicing comes when the earth is wearing its gayest and loveliest aspect. It seems incongruous to speak of "the dying year’’ when all nature is in its fullest flush of vigorous life. Here, instead of the gloomy skies and the frost-bound or snow-veiled earth of the traditional English Christmas, we have the long, bright days of mid-summer with all their glory of foliage and flower. On one of the sunny summer days, or tranquil evenings l , that even our capricious southern summer often allows us, it is pleasure enough merely to be alive ; to drink in the beauties of sky and tree and flower, to listen to the music of wind or wave, the glad song of birds, and to feel oneself a part of the universal life. Now, surely Nature calls on us to lay aside for a season our 'daily toil and anxieties, and rejoice in the loveliness so lavished around us.

Yet perhaps the natural 'gladness and beauty of the season may tend to lessen the special attractiveness; of the old Christmas ; just as. in our land, where the primal doom of toil for daily bread presses so much less heavily than in the old world, a holiday is more lightly prized. Indeed, many who have spent their youth in the old world tell us that ■here Christmas scarcely seems Christmas at all, and this impression may be justified by something more than the altered season, or the different festivities caused by it. Under the new conditions of new lands, old customs and ideas naturally lose their force ; social customs and standards of conduct are modified. To take one instance : in the old world the Christmas message of goodwill and charity makes a special appeal for the poor, for whom the winter is the hardest season. In the southern hemisphere Christmas comes at a period when life is most easily supported ; and i n our land we are happily spared the terrible inequalities of condition common in older countries. Our Christmas donations are for giving extra pleasure rather than for relieving suffering.

But however our methods of observing- Christmas may and must differ from those of our forefathers, it would be deeply to be regretted if for us Christmas should lose its deeper social and its religious significance. We will hope that it will not toe so ; that material prosperity will not induce carelessness about the higher meanings of life, that while forms and dogmas may be altered or abandoned the living spirit of Christianity may burn strong and brightly here as ever it did in more troublous lands and times.

This year our land has attained the status of Dominion. It has outgrown childhood, and entered on a vigorous and progressive maturity. Little more than sixty years have elapsed since the first immigrant ships landed—'not seventy since the British flag first floated over our shores'. A few survivors of those early days of colonisation still linger with us. Surely the most sanguine dreamer among the pioneers scarcely Breamed that within a human lifetime the unpeopled wi.dernessi would be transformed into the New Zealand of to-day, with its well-built busy towns and cities, its wide stretches of smiling farm lands, and its prosperous, enterprising population of nearly a million. There is probably no other country in the world whose people enjoy such a uniformly high standard of well-being as do those of New Zealand. Those of its early founders who aimed to lay the foundations of a state free from the •social evils of the old world, and- the pioneers who bore the burden and heat of the day might well be proud

and happy could they re-visit the scene of their labours. "God’s Own Country’’ was the designation given by the late premier in justifiable pride and fondness to the country in whose development he had so large a share ; and indeed New Zealand both by nature and history is favoured above other lands. There are some dark shades on the general brightness of the picture, and the ardent worker for human improvement will find enough employment for many a year. Our sense of the benefits we enjoy above other lands should not cause us to rest in careless self satisfaction, but make us aspire to, and work for a nobler future. And each of us can help towards the realisation of this aspiration by faithfully living up to the best that is in him.

This is the first Christmas Day of the Dominion. He would be a bold man who would venture to forecast she condition and status' of our land after another sixty years. We may confidently hope that while greatly increased in population and wealth, and holding an important rank among the countries of the world, it will have steered clear of the evils that have hitherto attended the social progress of nations, and will deserve the title ‘"‘God’s Own Country” better than to-day. But let us remember that "Righteousness exalteth a nation,” and that the best way to make our country great and happy ia to obsegve the commandment of love to God and love to our neighbour that was given by Him Whose advent on l earth we now commemorate. Wo have here glanced at the more serious aspects of Christmastide. But those who best realise this should be readiest to enjoy all innocent ■ festivities of the season, and to pass on most heartily the traditional greeting, "A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR.”