Ao’ wonder the inhabitants of this giddy globe were barbarians before the advent of the Christmas festival. Imagine a life devoid of the anticipation and realisation of Christmas. It would be as dull as a raspberry tart without the raspberries. It would be a long lane without a tuning; a thing of duty and a cloy forever. No holidays! No jolly days down by the sea! Nothing to look forward to, or to look back on! No plans to make and break, and remake and rebreak before the great annual decision is made on “where shall we go?” No tooting trains hot to hit the rails to somewhere and anywhere. No merry locomotions with bags packed to bursting point. Just three hundred and sixty-five days of dullness to be followed by a serried series of saddened summers and wilted winters, unpunctuated by the unifying uplift of Christmas. Oh my, oh me, oh lackaday! “Christmas comes but once a year,” is not a mere bald statement of fact. It is a warning to one and all to squeeze the juice of the Christmas orange to the last drop; to drain to the dregs the cup of cheer. For Christmases never come back. A Christmas untasted is a Christmas wasted. Man's estimated span of life is seventy Christmases, and if he uses only sixty-nine of them he cannot say that he has lived to the full; he cannot claim to have eaten the apple of existence, skin, core and pips. Such is the value of Christmas from the physical, spiritual, mental and moral viewpoints, that even one wasted Christmas makes life a vain pretence and an unfinished symphony. The fact that, at least once a year, your mind turns over the leaves of friendship's ledger and enters thereon a mark of appreciation, makes the season one to value above pride and pelf. People whom the exigencies of the inner man, and the outer woman (presuming you're married), have relegated to the waiting-room of your consciousness are ushered into the reception chamber of your thoughts by the cheery hand of Christmas.

You think, “Old Uncle Herb! He's not a bad old blitherer—even though he hates work like poison. I'm sure he needs a new pair of braces. He always has needed them since I can remember.” But in giving Uncle Herb a pair of braces, you give him far more than a mere contrivance to keep his trousers vertical. You give him a mete of kindness and charity and affection, so that when he puts the braces on, he feels more braced than if he were wearing as many pairs of braces as a trousered centipede. The necessity, or the urge, to gladden someone with some gift (the fact that probably it is of no earthly intrinsic use to them doesn't matter a thimbleful of carraway seeds) causes such people to exist for you. It stirs memory; it promotes charity; it does you good and it does them good; so there you are.