CONSIDERING CHRISTMAS

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 4, Issue 6, 1 December 1925, Page 64

CONSIDERING CHRISTMAS

CHRISTMAS. ... I leave my mind a blank, drop the word into it and allow "free association" to take place. There float up out of the void a number of other words: plum pudding, turkey, presents, Christmas tree, stockings, good will towards all men, children's parties, jollification. The list looks harmless and obvious enough. But the psychoanalyst would have no difficulty in showing that it was extremely discreditable in its implications. Turkeys, for example, are almost as bad as snakes. Stockings need no comment. Childrens' parties must be regarded as unspeakable orgies. The inner meaning of Christmas trees can only be mentioned in scientific works published for the sole use of the medical and legal professions. Luckily, however, the experts at Helensville, Waipukurau and Inangahua would interpret it in three entirely different ways. That is the peculiar charm of a science based on the interpretation of symbols. Anything can mean anything else; it is merely a matter of taste and your favourite, theory. Hence the great popularity of psycho-analysis among the lay public; hence also its almost total lack of scientific value. If we must have an interpreter to expound the inner meaning of these free associations evoked in us by the word "Christmas," let it be Charles Dickens. He was as reliable an expert as any of them.

SO much for psycho-analysis. As for plum pudding—l doubt whether I really like the stuff as much as I ought. True, I do not refuse it when it comes on to the table; I even eat of it copiously. But that is not so much because I enjoy it as on principle. Plum pudding is essentially English foreigners, as a rule, turn pale at the sight of it. That is why it must be eaten. "England expects ..." I whisper to myself, as the pudding comes flaming into the darkened dining-room. And I do my duty. But the only part of a plum pudding I really enjoy is the brandy butter. Brandy butter is one of the great culinary inventions of history. There have been Christmases (I am ashamed to confess it) when no plum pudding was made under my roof—only brandy butter, mountains of it. And the mince pies—were they? Alas, they too were represented only by their flavouring: Hennessy's three stars. But these are secrets. Enough.

'""PURKEYS, unhappily, cannot be * eaten with brandy. But they can, on the other hand, be eaten without cabbage. But turkey, I must confess, makes no compelling appeal to my palate. I eat it as I eat plum pudding—on principle. But secretly, when the roast is brought in on Christmas Day, I regret the living bird. It seems to me sad that a creature so fantastic, so nearly fabulous as a large cock turkey should be massacred in order to give me so litttle pleasure. If I were a rich man and had a country estate in the Bay of Plenty, I should keep, to strut along my terraces, not peacocks, but turkeys. Nothing but a natural death should end their pompous walking, their furious and apoplectic gobbling. Nothingunless someone

were to give me that recipe for turning turkey into ambrosia, TF TURKEYS are better alive -*- than dead, Christmas trees, to my mind, are better dead. A fir tree in a pot, festooned with tinsel and blazing with candles, is a more friendly object than the same tree out of doors in the bush, among all its innumerable fellows. True, if it stood by itself or with only a few others of its kind I should like it well enough. Trees only become

SOME FREE ASSOCIATIONS AND A FEW REFLECTIONS ON THE RITES AND CEREMONIES OF THE SEASON

formidable when they grow in quantities together. But then, how malevolent they are! That the ancient Teutons should have been worshippers of trees has never surprised me. I should be a tree-worshipper myself if I lived in a kauri forest worshipping desperately in the hope of propitiating those malignant forces which lie so terrifyingly in want among the woodland shadows. The cult of the Christmas tree is a relic of this ancient treeworship. With us, the tree is a symbol of

joy and merriment. Our feelings might not be quite the same if we lived in a bush instead of in towns. T LIKE Christmas trees for the -*- sake of the presents which hang from their branches. True, the majority of presents are, in themselves, remarkably unacceptable. Calendars are useless; so, in any numbers greater than unity, are diaries. As for "gift books," these are generally the very devil. Who wants new editions of Omar Khayyam? I certainly don't. But such few friends as I possess who can afford to give me something costing a guinea always seem to think I do. Less

pecunious well-wishers, with eigh-teen-pence or a florin to spend on me, imagine that I shall like a duodecimo selection from Marcus Aurelius bound in limp leather, or limper still—"Winnowings from Ella Wheeler Wilcox." There is nothing to be done with such presents but to give them, next Christmas, to somebody else. Preferably, however, not to the original donor. Still, one likes receiving them all the same it is agreeable to feel that one is not forgotten.

'8 s O understand one's fellow-beings *• is a talent ; there is a special genius of friendship and sympathy. This talent, this special genius are as rare as all other kinds of talent and genius. But if friendship is hard to practice, how much more difficult is goodwill towards all men ! Friendship is good will towards a few familiar beings, generally of the same class with ourselves, having the same tastes and many common memories. But what the angels at Christmas bid us feel is good will towards all men towards our office boys ; towards the horrid over-fed grand dames who roll along in Rolls Royces; towards Bolsheviks and striking seamen; towards bookies and policemen; towards Spring poets and printers. Towards everyone, in fact, of whatever colour, whatever creed, whatever politics, whatever cast of mind.

TT is hard almost to impossibility. -* Many people, it is true, imagine that they feel good will towards all men. But that is only because they know such a very few different kinds of human beings. It is easy if one has a thousand a year to feel good will towards all, or at any rate most, of the other people with similar positions and similar incomes. And since, for the majority of men and women, the whole world consists of a few hundred people of the same class with themselves, it is possible for them to imagine that they do feel good will towards all men. It is only when they begin to meet different kinds of people that they discover they don't. Between the educated and the uneducated, the rich and the poor, the clever and the stupid, the active and the contemplative, great gulfs are fixed. And the more one knows of the world the more gulfs one discovers. To be able to overleap those gulfs one must have a genius for good will. How hard it is not to feel embarrassed and tongue-tied with the uneducated, ashamed in the presence of the

very poor, disgusted by the self-in-dulgent rich, bored by the stupid and, in the presence of the bad, halfindignant, half envious! Genuine good will is incompatible with all these various emotions. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction than to be able to feel universal good will; but however hard I try I find that I can't feel it. The best that we can hope to do—those of us who don't happen to be born with a genius for loveis to extend the circle of our good will some little way into the boundless universe of what is indifferent to us or antipathetic. We shall have achieved a great deal if, every Christmas, we have contrived to feel good will towards at least one more human being, or towards the members of a class hitherto ignored or actually disliked. The process should be gradual and lifelong. One might.after the lapse of thirty or forty Christmasses, actually find themselves feeling good will towards the people whom they now regard as demons. The more so as everybody concerned would probably, by that time, be in the grave.

TN Dickens' days one celebrated ■f Christmas at home. Now one goes to an hotel or picnicking. Even in the last few years this habit has enormously spread. I attribute this fact to the infinite suggestibility of the human race and the judicious advertising. But, whatever the causes of this state of things, the fact remains that the typically twentieth-century thing to do at Christmas is to be jolly away from home. The fact that I like to be jolly in private and at home proves that I do not belong to my age. To tell the honest truth, I am delighted to think that I don't. This year, as in former years, I shall stay at home during all the festive season, eating turkey— if my farmer-friend doesn't forget me—to show that I am of the same nationality as Chaucer, and brandy butter to symbolise my consanguinity with Shakespeare and Sir Isaac Newton; I shall give a children's party in honour of Dickens, with a Christmas tree in memory of Prince Albert. In the evening, while the rest of the world is eating in stuffy restaurants and prancing about on the beaches to the din of gramophones, I shall listen to a little real music, drink a pint of wine and discuss life with a friend. And when I retire to bed I shall do my best, in the soothing and meditative darkness, to feel good will towards the expiring year. I hope I shall succeed.