That Certain Season.

There may he uncertainty in the East, the situation in the West may be fraught with dubiety; the North and South may doubt the integrity of the international binnacle; Germany may suspect the stability of its daily sausage; Italy may wonder how much longer spaghetti will be shorter; the League of Nations may question the future; the whole world may hesitate on the ropes. But in the midst of uncertainty one thing is certain—Christmas! You can stop a train, a bung-hole or a tooth—but you can't stop Christmas.

It approaches with the inexorability of rent day and measles. One moment you are reassembling your digestive apparatus after the strain and stress of one Christmas, and the next you are preparing to ginger up the gastric processes for another Christmas.

One can almost say, “That was a nice Christmas won't it be,” and still preserve the sequence of time, so fast do Christmases pull a bluff on the calendar.

They are like steps in a stairway upon which one mounts to the “gods.”

That is, if one retains intact a reasonable degree of infantility—an innocent joy in things that don't matter a hoot in the daily double-entry of joy and borrow.