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Star (Christchurch), Issue 19255, 17 December 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

ENOTHER YEAR is drawing- to a close; in a few days 1930 will be added to Time’s wallet, “in which he keeps alms for oblivion.” But before it goes there intervenes the cheerful Yuletide, when even the most callous of us tries to make amends for the many acts of omission that lie strewn along the road we have travelled since last December. At the New Year we will make the good resolutions we hope will fill 1931 with red-letter days. At Christmas we hope to be shriven for the many things we have left undone, for the many opportunities we neglected, when with a little trouble we might have helped a lame dog over the stile. When the cynic sees his neighbour expand under the genial influence of the season, he smiles and mutters something about the ease with which some people can delude themselves. But the world would be a much less pleasant place if we all thought as the cynic does. Happily, regard for the picturesque old traditions and ceremonies that cluster round the season are deeply rooted in the race, and long may it be before they fall into desuetude. Even the least sincere man is better for the beneficent spirit that broods over Christmas; he may not mean all he says, and he may give with the hand and not with the heart, but even he cannot escape the benison that seems to fall on mankind at the time of carols, the time of

HVER SINCE the day when our rough but devout ancestors set up the first Christmas Tree, and dragged home from the forest the first Yule Log, we Anglo-Saxons have made Christmas Day the great rallying day for the scattered members of the family; he is indeed a lonely man and to be pitied if he has no hearth to home to at this gracious season, no matter how humble the hearth may be. This homing of the family to gather round the Yule Log is one of the characteristics of the race. Christmas is essentially the children’s time, but every adult lives his life over again in witnessing the joy of the youngsters. Very few parents have ever been able to decide whether it is wise or unwise to keep up the fiction of Santa Claus, but in the indecision some memory from the past, memory of the weeks of expectation, and of the thrill of waking up to see what the bearded old gentleman had * brought in his reindeer sleigh, wins the day, and there are still scores of thousands of little Anglo-Saxon boys and girls nurtured in the pleasing tradition that goes back to the time when tlje race lived amid the pine forests across the English Channel. And w e being- only children of a larger growth still love the dear old season, taking pleasure in wishing and being wished