The Star. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1908. CHRISTMAS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9424, 24 December 1908, Page 2

The Star. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1908. CHRISTMAS.

Although the manner of expressing them varies with tho fashion of the times, it is fortunate that the associations of Christinas, tried by tho ordeal of t)i© years, seem to he eternal. As a festival of purely personal altruism, quito apart from its religions significance, Christmas Day stand:; solitary in the calendar. "It would be tho pity of tho world to destroy it." said Thomas Bailey Aldrich, " because it would bo next to impossible to mako another holiday as good as Christmas." Tli is trnistic philosophy will find an. echo in every heart, for tho celebration of tho Christmas season has growu up with us all individually, and there are few who, reaching hack along the years in the sessions of eweet silent thought-, do not find the memory of early Chrietmases clear-cut when other recollections are but the dim and nebulous beginnings of things. It is this strong personal element that has built a bulwark of secular sanctity around this one white holiday of all tho yearIn the rush and turmoil of modern living — the strenuous life, as the century has cliristened it — it would have been easy to get away from tho associations of Christmas and to have lost the value of tho season in the maze of artificialities which are tho inseparable accompaniment of the day. Instead of that, the season really seems to be acquiring a more definite and a more abiding reflection of the spirit of its genesis. People do not want to pauso to analyse the under-feeling which prompts tho broad and universal benevolence of Yulctide ; it is sufficient that it is there. " Our tokens o? compliment and love," wrote Emerson, "are for the most part barbarous. Ring.9 and ether jewels are not gifts, but apologies for gifts. The only gift is a portion of thyself." But preaching was Emerson's natural gait, and it is quite easy to realise a state of feeling in which even the barbarous ring and the opulent jewel may become a "part of thyself." It is not the gift, but the spirit Ju which the gift is given that counts. The literal individual apportionment of " thyself " would mean but a meagre present at the altar of Christmas, tho purely personal benevolence of a day's duration, which prompts some people to give plum puddings to the plum puddingless and beef to tho hcefless, in the fond conviction that something donated someone pleased has earned a year's repose. Tho regularity of a rule-cf-thumb observance of Christmas from this point of view would be reminis-cr-nt of Mark Twain's lady friend who " eats by a bell, goes to bed by a bell, aud gets up by a bell." Such an appreciation of tho big festival of tho year would be its own death-war-rant. The fact that the Christmas season has weathored the spirit of utilitarianism, and that Santa Claus is still a living entity with the little- ones, through tho tar.'it conspiracy of the elders, is the surest evidence that its foundations are builded into the rock of character, and not laid upon tho shifting sands of expediency. And so tho hearty seasonable good wishes which flutter, whispering everywhere, become not a stereotyped accompaniment to a fixed feast, but the expression of a sercno sincerity, which springs unsoiled from human hearts.