YULETIDE GOODWILL

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume XXIV, 22 December 1926, Page 9

YULETIDE GOODWILL

CALL FOR WIDER FEELING. PAY BILLS BEFORE GIVING PRESENTS.” The commendable suggestion that the sphere of the Yuletide spirit of goodwill might be broadened by the payment of tradespeople’s bills this Christmas is made by the Rev. Canon Cocks in the December issue of St Augustine’s Gazette. In expressing the wish that his parishioners may have a very happy Christmas, Canon Cocks writes: “I think we all think Christmas is a time to be happy, and we l certainly most of us try to make some one else happy with our Christmas presents. But we too often confine our efforts to our own friends and relations. We ought to go a little further than that and widen the feeling of goodwill. I do not mean that we ought to send presents broadcast, but I think that more of ns might try to make people who are not in what we call thriving circumstances have a good time. A good many people feel this eall, too. and make quite a respectable effort to help. But there is one class of people that we sometimes forget, and though they are a prosaic folk, I think that Christmas should not pass without remembering them. I refer to our trades-folk. Goodwill and happiness would flow all the better if we made a point of clearing up our bills and getting receipts in their place. It must spoil a good many

people’s happiness to know there is so much money out that they cannot meet their responsibilities. We mean to pay sometime: why not now? It probably makes more happiness to pay our debts than to give presents. The Message of Christmas. “Now just a word about the reason why Christmas is a. day of joy. I sometimes think that we shout so loudly that “Jesus Christ is born today” that we forget why that is a cause for such congratulation. We do not- get the trite Christian spirit by merely having an extra big dinner, even though eating has always gone with a time of universal rejoicing; but the real reason goes deeper than that. Christmas Day began the new outlook upon life and God. The message of Christmas is love. God loves mankind as their Heavenly Father, and this will in time teach men to love one another. The message has not yet reached the hearts of men sufficiently to make them change altogether their outlook or their feelings towards one another, but it is gradually breaking down ‘'our opposition. And in spite of war and in spite of strikes, in spite of our systems of prison and the like, the message is having its effect, and before very long will bring about that new outlook that will give us cause to rejoice. Do your part to help it along. Make up your quarrels, try and make at least one new friendship, and let it be of some one who wants a friend; pay your debts and give your presents, and there will be joy in heaven over another sinner who has changed his way of thinking and got a bit nearer to the wav of Christ.”