CHRISTMAS TO-DAY

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17223, 14 December 1923, Page 19 (Supplement)

CHRISTMAS TO-DAY

NEW FASHIONED WAYS. The great difference between. Christmas past and Christmas present seems to be that it is no longer spent at home; and that is all the difference in the world, remarked Mr Maurice Hewlett, the famous English writer, in the " Daily Chronicle.” If you are revelling publicly, at an hotel or restaurant, you are turning a festival into a festivity, a holiday into a beano. You will spend deal more money—but that is part of the business, if you have slid, as it is j so easy to slide, into the modern superstition that the more money you spend the more pleasure you will get. No doubt some people—Sardanapalus, Nero, Louis XIV.. the Prince Regent—held to the same error long before our time; but my point is rather that Tom, Dick and Harry hold to it now —and that Mrs Tom is of their opinion. However, I have no desire to speak of them, my lines being cast rather with those who have none too much money or credit to spend—the meek who have literally inherited the earth in these days, when the proud have filled the hotels and left the country to them. A CHILDREN’S FEAST. The meek, as always, stay at home ! for Christmas. They don’t go to I Brighton as the nearest they can manI age to the Riviera, nor to Hampstead I 1 Heath as their equivalent, is still a children's feast. They are stockingstuffers, the tree-dressers. If chestnuts are still to be roasted, it is their I fingers that will be burned; if raisins ! are still to be hot in the mouth, they j will set the snap-dragon bow!; if blindman’s buff is not as dead as Dickens, it is in the revealing windows of mean streets, or behind the lit panes of cottage casements, that you must look for it. I can’t now speak for Londoners—it is long since I was one; but for the village-people I can answer that children rule the roost at Christmas, as indeed they pretty much do at all times of the year.

I was thinking when I began to write of the mighty as well as the rich —for not all of them are rich ttlike —who, whether rich or not, always made the most show, and still do. But here is another difference in the spirit of their revelry now, that whether Christmas be spent at home or not, it is not spent in the country. The great houses of today are shut up, some of them because they are shut down, others because their owners please to be elsewhere. So far as country life is concerned now, we have come to the end of a dispensation, and must prepare ourselves for changes which will be serious, even tremendous. A GREAT CHANGE. The “ great house ’ is ceasing to be reckoned in the country; soon it will simply cease to be. Hard times, change of habit, it’s all one. We must learn to do without his lordship or “ squire.” What he does with himself at Christmas—whether he dines and jazzes at a London hotel, or a Swiss, or at Cannes or in Cairo, we need not inquire. We have learned to do without him. are learning slowly to do for ourselves. We don't feast in public in the country though we dance in that fashion. Our revelling, if we are cottagers, is strictly kept at home. “ A cada puerco veine su San Martin,” said Sancho. The proverb holds in the West of England.

St. Martin is a wailful season, the air throbs with it; but one gets used to such things, and besides—one looks forward. On this very day of writing, -vkl.in 500 feet of my house, a farmyard has been turned into a shambles. A hecatomb of turkeys have paid the bill for their high year of living. That was no road for one’s morning stroll. Heavens! and yesterday I say those noble birds like ships in full sail—“ with all their bravery on, and tackle trim, sails filled, and streamers waving ” —swelling and curveting in a meadow, as if life was one long round of gallantry and panache. Alas for them! But those slaughtered paladins are for our betters. They will make to groan the tables of the Ritz and Carlton. We here shall eat our pigs, literally from head to feet. And for our drink, it will be mead. Metheglin, if you will have it: I prefer the monosyllable. It is a noble liquor, but asks, even demands, moderation. Personally, I take it in a liqueur glass, like cherrybrandy, which, however, it does not at all resemble. There is nothing sweet and good about mead; nothing sticky or viscid. It is a thin, clear, ambercoloured bever, slightly aromatic, very insidious, ruthless to those exceed.