A Note on “That Christmas Feeling”

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 236, 24 December 1927, Page 22

A Note on “That Christmas Feeling”

(Written for THE SUN by FRANCIS YEW) T ONG years ago there was a beggar supplication, rich in beggar charm— Christmas is coming and the ducks are getting fat) Please put a penny in the blind man’s hat. Now, that was an appeal very hard to refuse, wasn’t it? Supposing you had a goose tied up by a piece of string in the backyard, or a roystering rooster eating all that was fed to him, unaware of his impending fate, or a turkey gobbling all that came his way and as full of pride as his breast was to prove full of meat, or a couple of ducks fattening inside a few feet of wire-netting. Wouldn’t that appeal of the beggar move you—the beggar whom you imagined would have, to dine off the drumstick of a thrown-out fowl unless you came to his assistance? Yes, indeed, that is why the beggar dined more lavishly than you.

Never mind! We are all beggars if it comes to that, for we beg, by devious ways, for each other’s goodwill. It all depends on how we beg whether we get it. We all go begging at Christmas time- —that softening season which maketh glad the heart of man. Aged Christobel remembers that Chritmas of the long ago when she rejected the man who is now the father of five. Racked with remorse, she sends him a Chritmas card wishing him the happiness that both have missed. The long-absent son pulls his graceless self together and sends to his anxious parents something which costs him tuppence and cause them to weep with joy at his recollection and with their tears wipe out the £2OO he owes them. Is It not splendid, this Christmas spirit? Goodness! Here comes our tailor, approaching in glad heart. Do we want a Christmas suit? We do. “But old chap, I haven’t finished paying you for the'last." “Never mind about that,” says the tailor, outdoing the reformed Mr. Scrooge. His smile Is so exhilarating that we plunge further Into debt! We see this smile all round us. All Auckland is a mirror of delight. Already they are saying, “Happy New Year, old man!” Pleasant anticipation! The great thing is that they all mean it. Petty jealousies, little quarrels, 1.0.U.’s and You Owe Me’s are all forgotten. We drop our hatreds and we make more lively our loves. It is a great and glorious thing that we have this grand legacy of forgetfulness and remembrance unified in the spirit of Christmas.