The Festive Season

Taranaki Daily News, 20 December 1924, Page 2 (Supplement)

The Festive Season

(By

Thomas Jay.)

(Copyright.)

I know there are some gloomy fellows who insist on telling us that Christmas isn’t what it used to be. They are long-faced individuals who are never happy unless they are miserable. They don’t believe that there is a good time coming, even if it is a good time coming.

Still it’s a long face that hasn’t got a turning.

Whether Christmas is what it used to be or not, I am sure of one thing, and that is that few of us are going to let it worry our young lives. When a grown man tells you that Christmas is not what it used to be he is simply admitting that the milk of human kindness in his breast has solidified, into a paving stone, and that sort of man will probably, argue that Christmas isn’t even what it is.

As a matter of fact, you cannot help being happy at this time of the year. It is the season of goodwill to all humans, coupling with that the name of the curate and’ the income-tax collector who visits us to know what day next week he shall call again. Indeed, everything is being done to make us happy. It is at this time of the year that parents become popular again and nephews become quite decent little human beings who never do anything wrong.

Everything is being done pleasure and enjoyment. Think of those silent workers in the Christmas pudding foundries throughout the land, toiling from morning to night filling basins with pudding and indigestion. See the pudding engineers at theTr benches drilling holes into which-to push currants; see them in the filling department pushing the pointed ends of the puddings into basins; and in the paint shop where the puddings, in their almost finished condition, are being varnished and measured for a sprig of holly or a Union Jack.

Y T es. Everything is being done to make us supremely happy. Then comes the great day and the great dinner. You finish carving your way through seven courses, the turkey ceases to be a turkey and looks like the ruins of Ypres; you sit .back* with half closed eyes, the bottom button of your waistcoat flies off with a bang like an engine-house door bursting open, and then somebody mentions pudding. And Christmas pudding is an institution. It is something more than a food; it is a fetish, a religion almost, and you cannot ignore it. You cannot refuse the pudding. So you pull yourself together like a man and decide to stand up to it. You struggle through it and then fall back exhausted into a chair. Just then they bring the coffee, but before you can take it indigestion sets in and clenches you with its teeth.

You become aware of the fact that somebody is knocking. Something inside you is up to no good, some rude hand is tearing at the tapestry of your din-ing-room. Dyspepsia is creeping round and looking for something it can grip. Something is loose inside you, something with clogs on. Then some kind soul tells you that you haven’t got indigestion; that you only fancy you 1> ave.

You then plainly intimate that there arc thousands of things In this great world that you fancy, and that indigestion isn’t one of them. In fact, you are not being misled by this thing, and that you have inside information to the effect that it really does exist.

Even dyspepsia is doing its best to make you happy. And then the scientists come along to cheer you up. They always do at this time of the year. They like to see people happy and jolly. They tell us that we must be careful to see that we get enough vitamines with our food, and that wc ought to get the cook to coiint them and make sure.

One man I knew used to be very particular about having vitamines with his meal. He bought a young vitamine one day and kept it chained up to the leg of the dining-room table. Perhaps that is an exaggeration. Perhaps it wasn’t a vitamine after all. Perhaps it was a protied or a calorie. And to make us more happy during this season of goodwill, the scientists generally find out something about some new germ, which is likely to be on the warpath now that we have lowered constitutions owing to our eniovments.

It appears that some germs are dangerous and some are harmless. Germs, as ; you may know, are peculiar little thihgs that pitch on people, and doctors spend their time chasing them up side streets. To’ tell the difference between the two kinds of germs is fairly simple. The method I always employ is simplicity itself. If ever I see a germ in

the middle of the road I just walk up to it, pat it on the back, and call it “Fido.” If it wags its tail it is a friendly germ, but if it growls and shows its teeth then it is dangerous, and I ask some doctor to come along and squirt some vaccine stuff at it« It soon gets tired of that. 1

Christmas is such a jolly time. It Is a time when we welcome the postman with open arms as he brings us jolly little cards and letters, the bulk of the latter invariably beginning “unktes’’ and fixing a date. It is true, as the well-known poet whose name I have forgotten so well, said that “Presents make the heart grow fonder.”

Yet I cannot help thinking that suffix cient thought is not given to the question of presents and the sending of good wishes. For instance, a .little nephew of mine whose sense of humour will one day get him into trouble, last year sent me a very tasty little gift in the shape of a pocket diary with all the quarter days printed in red. But I have other means of letting me know when quarter day come» round, and they are fairly effectual, tot. As I have said, everybody tries to make us happy.

Again. Last Christmas T received a tasty little greeting marked on th© envelope 0.H.M.5., being an intimation from my favourite income-tax collector that he would be glad to hear from me on or before a certain date.

Naturally I reciprocated, and sent' him a dainty little card intimating that if ever anything really serious happened to him I would have great pleasure in attending his funeral, even if it meant that I had to postpone some other entertainment.

This so touched him that he didn’t call for his Christmas .box on Boxing Day. and I decided that the money he should have had should be handed to the political fund of the worshipful company of muffin flatteners. One of the great joys of Christmas morning is to rise with the lark, although I prefer a cup of tea myself, and then see what presents have been deposited in the stockings overnight. Sad to relate that cases are not unknown where, owing to a surfiet of good things the night before, many a man has risen in the morning to find his own stockings full of feet, he having forgotten to take them ofr. The joys of Christmas shopping must not. be overlooked, for here again you can do your little bit in making other people happy. You get into a crowded omnibus, laden with toys for the children, which hang about you in gay festoons—the toys, and not the children—and even if the ’bus is crowded you should carve your way down through the passengers beaming bright* ly upon them as you step over them. If somebody tells you that you are standing on his face, don’t get annoyed. Smile, raise your hat, and say, “XVell, what about it? It’s Christmas isn’t it.”

And there the matter drops. And if you make them happy, what matters? The end of little Tommy’s tcy gun penetrates the eye of a fellow passenger. Wait until his shrieks have died down, smile gracefully, and remind him how lucky it is that he still has another eye left.

Smart reparatee like this will endear you to your fellow passengers. After all, what is Christmas for if it is not for you to spread your radiant joy wherever you go? In Scotland, of course, the festive season lasts much longer. You have probably heard of Scotland, even if you don’t believe it. Tn Scotland they prefer to celebrate New Year’s Day. . On New Year’s Eve it is considered lucky if a dark-haired ‘ man crosses a Scottish threshold with a bottle of whisky under his arm. It is also a land where they 1 make a public fetish of the haggis, with which Scotland is debited, and which has so often prompted from the naturalists and metallurgists the question of whether haggis is a food, a missile, or merely a case of mystery repeating itsel f.

It has been estimated, on the authority of Mr. Haggis MacDonald, late regius professor of criminology, that if all the haggis in the world were collected together they would fill the English Channel. And a lot of people* arc in favour of it.

It is also said of one Scotsman that’ he did away with the idea of putting threepenny pieces in Cliristmas puddings, and substituted 1.0.U.’s Instead. It is a sad reflection that before most of us are convalescent from the Christmas orgies we are called upon to make New Year resolutions which are about as useful as the air they are breathed into.

Hence it is that on January 2 Satan gets in a very busy tifne on those resolutions, which arc broken and abandoned until time brings us once again to that joyous season when forgetting all strife, all personalities, and past differences we join in echoing the timehonoured homely greetings, “Compliments of the season and goodwill toall.”