"HERES to a FEAST of JOLLITY and MIRTH" says STANIFY LUPINO

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19762, 18 December 1935, Page 24 (Supplement)

"HERES to a FEAST of JOLLITY and MIRTH" says STANIFY LUPINO

(The Famous Stage and Screen comedian.)

WHAT do you suppose an inhabitant of Mars would think, if he happened to plump down in the middle of one of our cities or towns on Christmas Day ? My idea is that he would fancy that the Earth had got toothache, and gone to the dentist’s. The streets are empty and desolate. The shops are shut, the houses and flats are silent, passers-by are rare and they hurry along oblivious of each other, as if bent on desperate and urgent missions. _ If the visiting Martian had a spark of sense in him, he would want to change all this. Why don’t we make Christmas a real feast of jollity and mirth, as it used to be (so we are told) in the Good Old Days? ■. 1 TT Shall I tell you my idea of a real Happy Christmas? Being only readers, you are powerless to say no, so I will. First of all, I would have paper chains in the gayest colours strung across all the streets, high enough not to affect passing traffic. I would have a wild display of flags and bunting at every window. I would have bonfires lighted, under police supervision and control to avoid the risk of fire, on such places as Hampstead Heath and Hyde Park; not just little fires, but the real thing that we saw on November 11th, 1918, with crowds of cheering people gathered round them. .... I would have carols sung for public charities, by the choirs” of such places as the Abbey and Westminster Cathedral —not sung in churches, but in the open, in places like Trafalgar Square, and Oxford Circus. I would spread the spirit of good-fellow-ship and cordiality. I would have sedate business men, headed by Mr Montagu Norman, dance along the Strand wearing paper hats and pulling crackers with passers-by. I would have beautiful girls clad as Christmas fairies patrolling the streets in groups and dispensing pennies to all the children they could find—probably quite a lot, if they looked down some of the summy alleys. FATHER—FOR A DAY! ' All the street decorations that art and ingenuity could devise should be hung by people dressed as clowns, pierrots, Columbines and fancy-dress representations of all sorts. Anyone who felt the Father Christmas urge upon hiift could dress as such, take a sackful of toys, and distribute the contents through the streets as he went along. I guess there are thousands of men —crabbed old bachelors, point-de vise young clubmen, cheery clerks and jolly factory- , hands, some with children of their own and others who look wistfully at other people’s —who would simply adore the task of parading the streets with a sackful of gifts, if

only, like myself, they weren’t so painfully shy! But in this ideal Christmas of mine, you * see, everyone would do such things, and we should all be able to cast off, for a day' or two, the self-consciousness which burdens most Britishers from the cradle to the grave, and prevents us from ever giving play to our best feelings, save in a shamefaced and furtive way. I’ll tell you another thing I would certainly have in my dream Christmas-town, and that is lots of mistletoe. Bunches of mistletoe would hang over factory exits and office doors—and stage-doors too, for the matter of that; and then wouldn’t we have a jolly time, boys! I KISSES FOR SALE. \ Never, I think, would there have been such unlimited chances to give and collect charity as in the Christmas I have planned. Why, nurses could tote round collectingboxes and charge for their kisses under the mistletoe; Lord Trenchard could erect paperchain barriers and fine motorists who broke them, all in the good cause; and endless personal gifts could be made directly by revellers who saw out-of-works and giftless youngsters in the course of their day of rejoicing. I would make it an offence, punishable by being universally pelted with confetti, for strangers to pass one another in the streets on Christmas Day without giving a cordial “Happy Christmas!” or “Good Luck!” I am certain that public-spirited butchers would club together and give oxen, to be roasted whole in the road in the grand old Pickwickian style, and served up as roast beef to all comers who brought their own plates and cutlery. Speeding motorists might run over a few turkeys just beforehand, and put them into the general fund. So let’s go gay and make Whoopee this Christmas, hoch, hoch! Let’s get out and about; let’s paint the home town red—or better still, paint it red, white and blue. Let's have the streets teeming with their millions, not going to work or coming back from a football match, but intent on helping each other to have a high old time. What’s the use, anyway, of the present system of isolating little groups of households into watertight (or anyhow some-thing-tight) compartments, shunning the streets, shutting the pubs, singing carols furtively under windows with an eye lifting for,the old boot, and having the servants up into the dining-room for a solemn glass of wine with the family, when everybody feels uncomfortable. That’s not the real Christmas spirit—let’s have decorations and joyrides and mass rejoicings and paperchains.