CHRISTMAS CURES.

Taranaki Daily News, 20 December 1924, Page 9 (Supplement)

CHRISTMAS CURES.

All sorts of ailments are believed to be cured at the season of Christmas (says an English paper). The children of Yorkshire carry round a box, covered with evergreen leaves, containing a doll dressed up to represent Christ. They call at each house and ask for money for the Christmas festivities, and those who contribute are allowed to take a leaf from the box, and this leaf is believed to be an absolute cure for toothache.

The country people in Cheshire believe that on Christmas Eve > the Holy Child comes to revisit the earth at midnight, and in some homes where there is a sick child the mother takes the little one from its sick-bed and carries it to the door a few minutes before midnight, and waits there until midnight has struck. If the child recovers its health, she believes it; is because the Christ Child, in passing the door, touched the sick child with His healing fingers. If the child dies, the mother comforts herself with the belief that the Christ Child called the sick child to Heaven to be His playmate. MARRIED LIFE. One evening at a university debating club the subject of discussion was this: “Which is the more conducive to longevity, the married or the single state?” It was carried on with great animation, as one would expect in a society of bachelor undergraduates. The vote was at length taken, when to the surprise of some the married men won by an overwhelming majority. A Yankee, an outsider who had listened to the debate, was heard saying in a pronounced American accent, when the applause over the remarkable denouncement had subsided: “Ah! you young fellows, you don’t know much about it; you are green. It is not that married people live longer, it only seems longer.’*