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.

The X's in Xmas.

It takes many Christmases to make a Christmas. One man's, or woman's, or child's Christmas is stranger to another man's, woman's or child's Christmas. Some like to spend the happy days in mastication and meditation. Some hie them hotfoot hither and thither, tasting their freedom on the hoof. Some find solace in somnolence. Some seek fresh spots; others like flesh pots. But all resemble each, in that they taste for a fleeting merry moment the joys of freedom.

Again, the Christmas of youth is not the Christmas of age. Both can claim an equal meed of merriment; but (Continued on page 72).

“Only a ‘one-podding man'.”

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Christmas Rings (Cont. from p. 69 ). youth gets the spirit of the season in double doses; it laps up impressions and sensations more greedily. ‘Tis a pity that the edge of imagination is dulled, as the years accumulate, by constant impact with the tough timber of maturity. But lucky is he who can recapture some of those sensations which caused his heart to leap and loop the loop in the Christmases of his youth; no adult gift from the gods ever equalled in excellence the gaudy tin toys redolent with that delicious scent of fresh paint. It is doubtful if the first prize in an art union could generate the glorious glee engendered by the first dive into the stocking at dawn on Christmas morn; and it's a pity that ageing digestion has detracted so piteously from the joys of the Christmas table. True, we manage to recapture in some measure the enthusiasm of our youth for the exotic emanations from the kitchen. But, alas! The heart is good, but the capacity is sadly impaired. Looking backwards we remember how we watched our father nonchalantly order a second helping of the rich pudding and we recollect how we registered a solemn vow that when we grew up one of our first gestures to the attainment of adulthood would be helping after helping of pudding. But what has happened? We have learnt that, after waiting all these years, we are only one-pudding men; evidently our fathers were better men than we. Such is the irony of ambition.

Slipping the Leash.

But most of us can recapture that glorious sensation of release which made us feel that we were wearing a bullock's heart under our jersey, when we packed away our books and said farewell to the smell of slates, chalk and hidden apple cores, for six weeks of barbaric freedom. An adult is adulterated indeed who cannot feel some of the old sensations when the safe door clangs, the last ledger is placed under proper restraint and the office door bangs behind him on Christmas eve.

On the twenty-fifth day of this merry month Christmas cheer will be manifesting itself in divers ways in many parts.

“A pair of running pants to Uncle Stodge who hasn't seen the toes of his shoes for twenty years.”

Whilst the mariner boxes his compass with the sea-cook's best endeavours, the farmer will pick a wing of the pampered goose in the midst of his broad acres. Chinese, Singalese, Siamese, Portuguese, will all react to the merry moment according to their lights—and livers. For Christmas is almost as universal as whiskers in Siberia.

A Case for Care.

The person who protests that Christmas has been commercialised is one eye short in his mental vision. Of course, it is commercialised; if it were not, where would be the bright lights on Christmas eve, the life and gaiety of the city, the colourful gifts, the seasonal delicacies, the catering to merriment, the coloured bugles, the purple false noses, and all the panoply of the gala and the “props” necessary to stage a successful carnival? Let commerce do its part; let the wheels whirr and the hurdy gurdy of the festive season spin to the strains of “Ain't We Got Fun.” For—

If you can't feel happy at Christmas time, There's something wrong with your reason's rhyme, And you ought to get medical help for your head, For it's clear that up north of the ears you are dead; You're clearly a case for a doctor's inspection, That's if you're immune from the Christmas infection.

Even if you don't believe in Father Christmas; even if you do get cigars you can't smoke, socks you wouldn't be buried in and ties you wouldn't put round the neck of a bottle, that is no reason for you to get a grouch on Christmas. Half the fun of Christmas is its recklessness which causes one to send a cocktail shaker to Aunt Prue who is president of the Tiny Tots’ Anti-gin League, a pair of running pants to Uncle Stodge who hasn't seen the toes of his shoes for twenty years, and a spade and bucket to grandpa. You, in your turn, will receive all the wrong things given in the right spirit, and the more incongruous the gift, the more you will think about the giver. And so, even such errors serve a very useful purpose.

Charge your glasses with the spirit of the season and, looking towards Christmas, give the toast, “Afore ye go.”

A Christmas Wait.