THE YOUNG IDEA

Southland Times, Issue 21274, 20 December 1930, Page 13

THE YOUNG IDEA

THAT CERTAIN FEELING

(By

Susan Lee.)

After a year of slumber, he shines well. Which is just another way of saying that it was good to see the sun again. Really it seems that no sooner had QJI.S. made the discovery that spring was here than last Thursday sprang into being in all its heat and glory, and Christmas and midsummer laid hands upon us simultaneously with startling effect. Because you suddenly begin to realize that all your tiredness and fed-up-of-everything-ness and headaches and insomnia are not due to the fact that you are sinking into an early decline to live? but that your mind and body are only trying to express in their own way that the end of the year is upon you. The tonic you have been taking after meals may now be. poured down the kitchen sink, not because you have no further need for it so much as that there is no time to take it. You punctuate the sudden turmoil life has developed into with sort of dazed ex pressions of “Goodness, how this year has flown 1” and gaze fretfully about you as if the months were lurking somewhere in the corners waiting to slip you by. And then you realize it is not the months whose shadows are vaguely troubling you, but the days immediately ahead of you, because they are saturated in the last minute rush which is as much a part of the Christmas season as figs are part of a fig tree. I mean to say, who’d want to avoid it, any more than one would want a figless fig tree, providing one were interested in figs: After a year of slumber, he shines well. The sun decides to take a hand in the festive preparations, and in the flurry of lastminute Christ as shopping you suddenly stop to wonder what on earth you have to wear. The last summer clothes you were so sure would serve over another season are limp and faded and terribly dated in the flash of this new sunlight. You begin to wonder if ”ou haven’t been a little rash in spending so much on presents when here you are with really not a stitch to your back. Perhaps the brass bowl you were considering for Amelia would just embarass her, and two or three nice handkerchiefs would be more suitable. But somehow or other you find yourself with the bowl. You look over your pile of neatly tied packages and remember the people you really didn’t intend remembering this year, and you suddenly know you couldn’t bear not to remember them—and open your purse. And then you discover that the three pound notes you were banking on have disappeared and after an hour or two of agony in which your mind fluctuates between the conviciion that the money has been stolen and that it has dropped out of vour purse, you finally make the amazing discovery that you have spent it, without obvious result.

And the most amazing thing of all about the whole business is that you really wouldn’t have it otherwise. It is true that there are in existence people who have all their Christmas presents bought and tied and labelled weeks beforehand; who don’t have darning and mending and washing and pressing to do in the last hectic days; whose desks and drawers alike are models of neatness, method and serenity; who have all their work in order and go forth ’to meet both presentgiving and holidays with the calm precision of a cow which moves over to a fresh patch of grass. There are people who, having made up their minds to economise both in the quantity and quality of their presents, achieve both ends, and think no more on the matter. There are even people who never rectify omissions, for the simple reason that they do not omit. But what a lot of joy they miss from life, the poor things! Almost as much as the child who ceases to believe in Santa Claus. That reminds me. When is one of the enterprise American film producers going to make Christmas complete with a Santa Claus film ? They have given us epics of clowns and other entertainers, fireman, engine drivers, soldiers, sailors, fishermen, and so many other worthy, although often unrecognized citizens, that it must be surely a matter of time before the simple gentleman of the flowing whiskers and scarlet coat comes into his own. Surely there must be heartaches behind that smiling countenance, the spirit of noble sacrifice in his generous gifts. Al Jolson, for instance, might provide such an impersonization as could make the mind of the entire nation turn to handkerchiefs as Christmas presents. The idea teems with possibilities. Meanwhile there are a hundred and one other things to fill the moments, both waking and sleeping, between now and Christmas. If there weren’t, the Yuletido tradition would be dead. In the heat of the sun feet blister ane burn. But who cares, when there are holidays ahead!