The Unselfish Christmas

New Zealand Tablet, Volume LI, Issue 50, 17 December 1924, Page 21

The Unselfish Christmas

So many people dread Christmas because of sad associations. Yet you who have suffered most are the very ones who can make Christmas a rich and beautiful day for yourselves and others. Someone who had suffered less could not do it half so well. I hear so many people say: "We do not make anything of Christmas at our housethe day is nothing without children." But even if there are no children in your home there are always, outside your doors, little children in plenty, needing Christmas cheer; and a whole worklful of grown people, too, .in need of a, little warmth and cheer and gladness. And even if there were no children near —welcome some girl of your own age to your home, someone who is not very used to hearty welcomes, perhaps; give some grown-ups the happy assurance that you love them and need them ; some who have begun to believe, maybe, that they are no longer wanted. You will see how pleased they will be! "As pleased as children !" 0, the little, little things that go to make up a happy Christmas! Things so light and inexpensive as the baubles we hang on Christmas trees, and yet if we would only take the trouble to give them, how the whole day would be decked with happiness —no Christmas tree brighter! We are very apt to gauge our Christmas cheer and Christinas giving almost entirely by our own blessings, or our own sorrows, instead of entirely by the needs of others. Even though my Christmas should be touched by the hand of sorrow or disappointment yet the Christmas of those about me shall be, for that very reason, as glad as I can make it. If we could only get completely away from the personal Christmas spirit that forms itself around our own blessings, out into that impersonal spirit of giving which firms itself around the joys of others, if we would replace the old "me" and "mine" with the gentler "thee and thine!" <X> If your heart be in heaven the winds of the earth cannot move it. No action 'of the world can li.irm him who has renounced the world. God spreads bitterness over the false good of earth, as a mother puts quinine en the thumb of a hi by that sucks it, but we make wry faces and still suck our thumbs. —Austin O'Malley, M.D.