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Book of Christmas /
THE BOOK OF CHRISTMAS
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., Limited
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
U ic- /3.— ^'^'»-^'
THE HOLY NIGHT. Correggio.
Copyright, 1909,
By the MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published October, 1909. Reprinted
December, 1909.
Nnrbjoolt iPreBg
J. S. Gushing Co. —Berwick & Smith Co.
Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
INTRODUCTION
/^AROLS are still sung in almost numberless churches,
^'-' lights glow on altars bound and wreathed with spruce
and holly, trees are set up in innumerable homes, and mobs
of merry children sing and dance around them, stockings
take on grotesque shapes and hang gaping with treasures
for early marauders on Christmas morning, and hosts of
men and women keep the day in their hearts in all peace
and piety.
The festival, dear to the heart of sixty generations,
has survived the commercial uses which it has been com-
pelled to serve; the weariness of buying and selling in the
vast bazaar of nations, stocked with all manner of things
which stimulate the offerings of friendship; the wide-
spread sense of irony which success without happiness
breeds; the indifference of feeHng and satiety of emotion
fostered by great prosperity without that grace of culture
which subdues wealth to the finer uses of life. It has sur-
vived the cynical spirit that distrusts sentiment and sneers
at emotion as weaknesses which have no place in a scientific
age and among men and women who know life. It has
survived that preoccupation with affairs which leaves
little time for feelings, and that resolute determination to
make men good which leaves scant room for efforts to make
them happy.
vi Introduction
But even in this age of hard-headed practical sagacity
and hard-minded goodness ruthlessly bent on doing the
Lord's work by the methods of a police magistrate, Christ-
mas carols are still sung; and the organization of virtue
in numberless societies with presidents and secretaries, and,
above all, with treasurers, has not dimmed the glow of the
love which bears fruit in a forest of Christmas trees, with
mobs of merry children shouting around them.
The plain truth is that the world is not half so heartless
as it pretends to be. In its desire to wear that air of weary
omniscience which is supposed to bear witness to a wide
experience of life it often pooh-poohs appeals which make
its well-regulated heart beat with painful irregularity.
There is as much hypocrisy in the scornful as in the senti-
mental ; and the worldly-wise man often sniffles behind the
handkerchief with which he pretends to stifle a sneeze. We
pretend to have become too wise to be moved by lighted can-
dles or stirred by children's voices singing of angels and
shepherds ; but in our heart of hearts the old story is dear to
us, and we are eager eavesdroppers when the ancient mys-
teries of love and sympathy and friendship are talked about
by the poets or novelists.
We speak patronizingly of those old-fashioned Christmas
essays in the "Sketch Book," and we pretend to be amused
by the recollection that ''The Christmas Carol" once filled
us with an almost insane desire to make somebody happy.
But it is noticeable that the old text-books of Christmas
sentiment reappear year after year in an almost endless
variety of forms; and that in an age when the strong man
boasts of his distrust of emotion, and the strong woman
holds sentiment in the contempt one feels for out-grown
toys, books that have to do with Christmas are read with
Introduction vii
surreptitious pleasure. We apologize publicly for our inter-
est in them and deprecate the attempt to revive a faded inter-
est and recall a decayed tradition; but in private we read
with avidity these survivals of archaic feeling and prehistoric
emotion. When "The Birds' Christmas Carol" appeared,
we laughed over it so as to hide our tears. Mr. Janvier's
charming account of Christmas ways in Provence capti-
vated us, and we found excuse for its tender regard for old
habits and observances in the fact that Mr. Janvier has been
in the habit of spending a good deal of time with a group of
unworldly old poets who still dream of joy and beauty as the
precious things of life, and hold to the fellowship of artists
instead of forming a labor union. Mr. Thomas Nelson
Page, Mr. F. Marion Crawford, and Mr. F. Hopkinson
Smith have written undisguised Christmas stories with as
little sense of detachment from modern life as if they
were telling detective tales; and, what is more astonishing to
the worldly-wise man, these stories have a glow of life, a
vitality of charm and sweetness in them, that make scorn
and cynicism seem cheap and vulgar. And here comes
Dr. Crothers and stirs the smouldering Christmas fire
into a blaze and sits down before it as if it were real logs in
combustion and not a trick with gas, and makes gentle
sport of the wisdom of the sceptic. These recent revivals
of Christmas literature show a surprising vitality, and have
met with a surprising response from a generation popularly
believed to be given over to the making of money and the
extirpation of human feeling. It is even said that ther^ are
men and women of such insistent hopefulness that they an-
ticipate a time when the aged in feeling, the worn-out in
sentiment, the infirm in imagination, and the crippled in
heart will be brought again within sound of Christmas bells.
viii Introduction
There is little hope of bringing in the reign of good feeling
by lighting a single Christmas fire, but a long line of such
fires touching the receding horizon of the past with a happy
glow is like a revival of a fading memory; it makes us
suddenly aware of half-forgotten associations with the days
that were once full of life and rippling with merriment like
a mountain stream suffused with sunlight. We surrender
ourselves so completely to the noisy activities of our own
age that we forget how infinitesimal a portion of time it is
and how misleading its emphasis often is. It is only a point
on the face of the dial ; but we accept it as if it were a present
eternity, a final stage in the evolution of men. That many
of its sacred texts are the maxims of a short-sighted prudence,
many of its major interests as short-lived as the passions of
children, many of its ideas of Hfe the cheapest parvenus in
the world of thought, does not occur to us; its cynicisms
are often reflections of its spiritual shallowness, and its
scepticisms mere records of its meanness or corruption.
Like all the times that have gone before it, it is a fragment
of a fragment, and the only way to see life whole is to get
away from it and look down on it as it takes its little place
in the larger order of history.
In this greater order of time the long line of Christmas
fires glows like a great truth binding the fleeting generations
into a unity of faith and feeling. When we light our fire, we
are one with our ancestors of a thousand years ago; we
evade the isolation of our time and escape its provincial
narrowness ; we rejoin the race from whose growth we have
unconsciously separated ourselves; we open long-unused
rooms and are amazed to find how large the house of life is
and how hospitable. It has hearth room for all experience
and for every kind of emotion ; for the thoughts that move
Introduction ix
in the order of logic; for the emotions that rise and fall like
great tides that flow in from the infinite ; for the vigor that is
born of will, and for the power evoked by discipHne. It is
when the different ages, with their diversities of interest and
growth, send their children to sit together before the Christ-
mas fire that we realize how wide life is, and how impossible
it is for any age to compass it. The faith against which one
age shuts the door stands serene and smiling in the centre
of the next age ; the joy which one generation denies itself
lies radiant on the face of a later generation ; the imagination
which the reign of logic in one epoch sends into the wilder-
ness returns with full hands to be the master of a wiser
period.
Before the Christmas fire that for two thousand years has
sunk into embers to blaze again into a great light at the end
of the twelfth month, men are not only reunited in the un-
broken continuity of their fortunes, but in the wholeness
of their life ; in their power of vision as well as of sight,
in their power of feeling as well as of thought, in their power
of love as well as of action.
This large hospitality of the Christmas fire, before which
kings and beggars sit at ease and every human faculty
finds its place, makes room for every gift and grace; for
reason, with severe and wrinkled face; for sentiment,
tender and reverent of all sweet and beautiful things; for
the imagination, seeing heavenly visions, and the fancy
catching glimpses of quaint or grotesque or fairy-like
images, in the flame; for poetry, singing full-throated with.
Milton, or homely, familiar and domestic with the makers
of the carols; for the story-tellers, spinning their fascinating
tales within the circle of the embracing glow; for humor,
full of smiles or filling the room with Homeric laughter; for
X Introduction
the players, whose mimic art shows the manger, the shep-
herds and the kings to successive generations crowding the
playhouse with the eager joy of children or with the sacred
memories of age; for the preachers, to whom the season
brings a text apart from the disputes and antagonisms of
the schools and churches; for companies of children, im-
patiently waiting for the mysterious noise in the chimney;
and for graybeards recalling old days and ways, — yule
logs, country dances, waits singing under the frosty sky,
stage coaches bearing guests and hampers filled with dain-
ties to country houses standing with open doors and broad
hearths for the fun and frolic, the tenderness and senti-
ment, the poetry and piety, of Christmas-tide.
At the end of nearly two thousand years Christmas shows
no signs of decrepitude or weariness ; its danger lies not in
forgetfulness but in perverted uses and overstimulated ac-
tivities. Its commercial availability is pushed so far that
its sentiment often loses spontaneity and charm in excessive
organization and prodigal distribution. The Christmas
shopper suffers such a perversion of feeling that she hates
the season she ought to bless ; and the modern Santa Claus
is so intent on the ingenuity or the cost of his gifts that he
overlooks the only gift that warms the heart and translates
Christmas into the vernacular.
If Christmas is to be saved from desecration and kept
sacred, not only to faith but to friendship, its sentiment
must be revived year by year in the joyful celebration of the
old rites. We have been so eager of late years to rid our-
selves of superstition and ''see things as they are," that we
have lost that vision of the large relations of things in which
alone their meaning and use is revealed. We have studied
the field at our doorsteps so thoroughly that we have
Introduction xi
lost sight of the landscape in which its little cup of fruitful-
ness is poured as into a great bowl rimmed by the horizon.
One day out of three hundred and sixty-five, detached from
its ancient history and isolated from the celebrations of
centuries, cannot keep our hearts and hearths warm ; we
must rekindle the old fires and join hands with the vanished
companies of friends who have kept the day and made it
merry in the long ago. The echoes of ancient song and
laughter give it a rich merriment, a ripe and tender wealth
of associations. The mirth of one Christmas overflows into
another until the sense of an unbroken joy, sinking and
rising year after year like the tide of life in the fields, is
borne in upon us. This sense of the unity of men in the
great experiences steals back again into our hearts when we
hear the old songs and read the old stories. Alexander
Smith, whose book of essays, "Dreamthorp," is one of the
books of the heart, — for there are books of the heart as
well as books of knowledge and books of power, — kindled
his imagination into a responsive glow by rereading every
Christmas Day Milton's "Ode on the Morning of Christ's
Nativity." When one opens the volume at this great song,
it is like going into a church and hearing the organ played
by unseen hands; the silence is flooded by a vast music
which lifts the heart into the presence of great mysteries.
But there is a time for private devotions as well as for public
worship, for domestic as well as religious celebrations; and
for every hour and place and mood there is a song and story.
There are tender hymns for the devout, and spirited songs for
those who celebrate together old days and ancient friend-
ships; there are quaint carols for those whose hearts long
for the quiet and pleasant ways of an olden time, and there
are roaring catches for those whose gayety rises to the flood;
xii Introduction
there are meditations for the solitary, and there are stories
for the little groups about the fire.
A Book of Christmas is a text-book of piety, friendship,
merriment ; a record of the real business of the race, which
is not to make money, but to make life full and sweet and
satisfying. It is a book to put into the hands of young men
eager to start on the race and of young women to whom the
future holds out a dazzling vision of a prosperity of pleasure
and success; for it translates the word on all lips into its
only comprehensible terms. In the glow of the Christmas
fire the man who has made a fortune without making friends
is a tragic failure, and the woman who has won the place and
power she saw shining with delusive splendor on the far
horizon and missed happiness faces one of life's bitterest
ironies. It is a book for those who have fallen under the
delusion that action is the only form of effective expression,
and that to be useful one nmst rush along the road with the
ruthless speed of an automobile; forgetting that action is
only a path to being, and that the joy of life is largely found
by the way. It is a book for those ardent spirits to whom
the one interest in life is making people over and fitting
them into their places in a rigid order of arbitrary good-
ness, forgetting that to the heart of a child the Kingdom of
Heaven is always open, and the ultimate grace of it is the
purity which is free and unconscious. It is a book for the
sceptical and cynical, whose blighted sympathy and insight
regain their vitality in the atmosphere of its love and kind-
ness, its fun and frolic, its fellowship of loyal hearts and true.
Above all, the Book of Christmas is a book of joy in the
sadness of the world, a book of play in the work of the
world, a book of consolation in the sorrow of the world.
Hamilton W. Mabie
CONTENTS
FAGE
Introduction .... Hamilton W. Mabie v
SIGNS OF THE SEASON
" The Time draws near the Birth of Christ " Alfred Tennyson 4
An Hue and Cry after Christmas . Old English Tract 5
The Doge's Christmas Shooting . F. Marion Crawford 6
Thursday Processions in Advent . . William S. Walsh 7
The Glastonbury 1 horn . Alexander F. Chamberlain 9
In the Kitchen .
Christmas in England .
Christmas Invitation .
A Christmas Market .
. Old English Ballad 1 1
. Washington Irving 12
William Barries 16
Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick 1 7
The Star of Bethlehem in Holland . Bow-Bells Annual 18
The Pickwick Club goes down to Dingley Dell
Charles Dickens 19
A Visit from St. Nicholas . . . Clement C. Moore 24
Crowded Out Rosalie M. Jonas 26
II
HOLIDAY SAINTS AND LORDS
My Lord of Misrule T. K. Hervey 31
32
St. Nicholas Collated
An Old Saint in a New World Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer t^t^
St. Thomas Collated, W. P. R. 35
Kriss Kringle .... Thomas Bailey Aldrich 36
II Santissimo Bambino . . . Collated^ W. P. R. 37
xiii
XIV
Contents
PAGE
The Christ Child ....
. Elise Traut
38
The April Baby is Thankful
. " Elizabeth "
38
Good King Wenceslas
Old English Carol
41
Jean Valjean plays the Christmas Saint
Victor Hugo
42
St. Brandan
Matthew Arnold
45
St. Stephen's, or Boxing Day
Collated, W. P. R.
47
St. Basil in Trikkola ....
J. Theodore Bent
48
III
CHRISTMAS CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS
The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ
From " llie Golden Legend''''
Folk-lore of Christmas Tide Collected by A. F. Chamberlain
Hunting the Wren . . . Quoted by T. K. Hervey
The Presepio Hone's Year Book
Hodening in Kent . Contributed to The Church Times
Origin of the Christmas Tree . . William S. Walsh
Origin of the Christmas Card
The Yule Clog .
** Come bring with a Noise "
Shoe or Stocking
Jule-Nissen
"Lame Needles" in Euboea
Who Rides behind the Bells?
Guests at Yule .
William S. Walsh
. T. K. Hervey
Robert Herrick
Edith M. Thomas
Jacob Riis
J. Theodore Bent
Zona Gale
Edmund Clarence Stedman
55
58
61
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
1Z
76
78
IV
CHRISTMAS CAROLS
" I saw Three Ships "
"Lordings, listen to Our Lay
The Cherry-Tree Carol
"In Excelsis Gloria" .
Old English Carol
Earliest Existing Carol
. Old English Carol
From the Harleian MSS.
" God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen '
Old English Carol
83
84
86
87
87
Contents xv
PAGE
The Golden Carol . . . .Old English Carol 89
Caput apri refero resonens laudes domino
From a Balliol MS. of about 1^40 90
" Villagers All, this Frosty Tide " . Kenneth Grahame 90
Holly Song .... William Shakespeare 92
" Before the Paling of the Stars " Christina G. Rossetti 92
The Minstrels played their Christmas Tune
William Wordsworth 93
A Carol from the Old French . Henry W. Longfellow 95
"From Far Away we come to you" . Old English Carol 97
A Christmas Carol . . . James Russell Lowell 98
A Christmas Carol for Children . . Martin Luther 99
CHRISTMAS DAY
The Unbroken Song . . . Henry W. Longfelloiv 104
A Scene of Mediaeval Christmas John Addington Symonds 105
Christmas in Dreamthorp . . . Alexander Smith ill
By the Christmas Fire . . Hamilton W. Mabie 113
Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity . John Milton 114
Christmas Church .... Washington Irving 119
Dolly urges Silas Marner to go to Church . George Eliot 124
Yule in the Old Town .... Jacob Riis 127
The Mahogany Tree . William Makepeace Thackeray 132
The Holly and the Ivy . . . Old English Song 134
Ballade of Christmas Ghosts . . . Andrezv Lang it,^
Christmas Treasures Eugene Field 136
Wassailer's Song .... Robert Southwell 138
VI
CHRISTMAS HYMNS
A Hymn on the Nativity .... Ben Jonson 143
While Shepherds Watched . . . Nahum Tate 144
Phillips Brooks 145
Margaret Deland 146
Edi7iiind H. Sears idt"]
. Eugene Field 149
Edwin Alarkham 150
xvi Contents
O, Little Town of Bethlehem
The First, Best Christmas Night .
It Came upon the Midnight Clear
A Christmas Hymn
The Song of the Shepherds
A Christmas Hymn . . . Richard Watson Gilder 152
A Christmas Hymn for Children Josephine Daskam Bacon 153
Slumber-Songs of the Madonna . . . Alfred Noyes 154
VII
CHRISTMAS REVELS
" Make me Merry both More and Less "
Old Balliol MS. of about 1^40 164
The Feast of Saint Stephen in Venice F. Marion Crawford 165
The Feast of Fools William Hone 167
The Feast of the Ass William Hone 168
The Revel of Sir Hugonin de Guisay ....
William S. Walsh 170
Revels of the Inns of Court . . . T. K. Hervey 172
King Witlaf's Drinking-Horn . Henry W. Longfelloiu 175
Old Christmastide .... Sir Walter Scott 176
Christmas Games in " Old Wardle's " Kitchen
Charles Dickens 179
A "Mystery" as performed in Mexico Bayard Taylor 183
VIII
WHEN ALL THE WORLD IS KIN
Christmas Night of '62 . William Gordon McCabe 191
Merry Christmas in the Tenements . . Jacob Riis 192
Christmas at Sea . . . Robert Louis Stevenson 200
The First Christmas Tree in the Legation Compound, Tokyo
Mary Crawford Eraser 202
Contents
xvn
PAGE
Christmas in India .... Rudyard Kipling 208
A Belgian Christmas Eve Procession All the Year Round 210
Christmas at the Cape .... John Riincie 215
The " Good Night " in Spain
Christmas in Rome
Christmas in Burgundy
Christmas in Germany
Fernan Cahallero 21 6
John Addington Sytnonds 218
M. Fertiault 222
. Amy Fay 225
Christmas Dinner in a Clipper's Fo'c'sle
Herbert Elliot Hamblen 227
Christmas in Jail .... Rolf Boldrewood 229
Colonel Carter's Christmas Tree . F. Hopkinson Smith 231
IX
CHRISTMAS STORIES
Christmas Roses •
The Fir Tree
The Christmas Banquet
A Christmas Eve in Exile
Zona Gale 241
Hans Christian Andersen 245
Nathaniel Hawthorne 257
Alphonse Dandet 275
The Rehearsal of the Mummers' Play . Eden Phillpotts 280
X
NEW YEAR
New Year Richard Watson Gilder 298
Midnight Mass for the Dying Year Henry IV, Longfelloiv 299
The Death of the Old Year . . Alfred Tennyson 301
A New Year's Carol .
New Year's Resolutions
Love and Joy come to You
Ring Out, Wild Bells .
Martin Ltither 303
" Elizabeth " 303
Old English Carol 305
Alfred Tennyson 307
Ja?}ies Russell Lozvell 308
Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age
Charles Lamb 309
XVlll
Contents
New Year's Rites in the Highlands
The Chinese New Year
New Year's Gifts in Thessaly
" Smashing " in the New Year .
New Year Calls in Old New York
PAGE
Charles Rogers 315
H. C. Sirr 316
/. Theodore Bent 319
Jacob Riis 322
William S. Walsh 323
Sylvester Abend in Davos
. John Addington Symonds 325
XI
TWELFTH NIGHT — EPIPHANY
" Now have Good Day 1 " .
A Twelfth Night Superstition
Twelfth-Day Table Diversion
The Blessing of the Waters
La Galette du Roi
Drawing King and Queen .
St. DistafPs Day and Plough Monday
Old English Carol 337
Barnaby Googe 338
. John Nott 339
J, Theodore Bent 341
. William Hone 344
Universal Magazine 345
Hone's Year Book 346
XII
THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
" As Little Children in a Darkened Hall "
Charles Henry Crandall 350
Christmas Dreams
The Professor's Christmas Sermon
Awaiting the King
Elizabeth's Christmas Sermon
Nichola's " Reason Why " .
The Changing Spirit of Christmastide
A Prayer for Christmas Peace
Under the Holly Bough
Christmas Music .
A Christmas Sermon .
Christopher North 351
Robert Browning 358
F. Marion Crawford 359
" Elizabeth " 361
Zona Gale 362
Washington Irving 363
Charles Kingsley 365
Charles Mackay 366
John Addington Symonds 367
Rdbert Louis Stevenson 368
Contents
XIX
LIST OF PLATES
The Holy Night ....
Correggio
Frontispiece
The Holy Night ....
C. Miiller
PAGE
facing 16
The Arrival of the Shepherds .
Lerolle .
. „ 40
The Bells
Blashfield
72
The Madonna
Bellini .
„ 96
The Virgin adoring the Infant Christ
Correggio
„ 120
The Madonna
Murillo .
M 152
Holy Night
Van Ulade
„ 184
The Holy Family with the Shepherds
Titian .
„ 216
Madonna della Sedia
Raphael
„ 272
The Adoration of the Magi
Paolo Veronese „ 304
The Adoration of the Magi
Memling
» 344
I
SIGNS OF THE SEASON
SIGNS OF THE SEASON
An Hue and Cry after Christmas
The Doge's Christmas Shooting
Thursday Processions in Advent
The Glastonbury Thorn
In the Kitchen
Christmas in England
Christmas Invitation
A Christmas Market
The Star of Bethlehem in Holland
The Pickwick Club goes down to Dingley Dell
A Visit from St. Nicholas
Crowded Out
'T^HE time draws near the birth of Christ:
-*- The moon is hid; the night is still;
The Christmas bells from hill to hill
Answer each other in the mist.
Four voices of four hamlets round,
From far and near, on mead and moor,
Swell out and fail, as if a door
Were shut between me and the sound:
Each voice four changes on the wind,
That now dilate, and now decrease,
Peace and goodwill, goodwill and peace.
Peace and goodwill, to all mankind.
Alfred Tennyson
An Hue and Cry after Christmas ^ ^^ ^>
"Any man or woman . . . iJtat can give any
knowledge, or tell any tidings, of an old, old, very old
gray-bearded gentleman, called Christmas, who was
wont to be a verie familiar ghest, and visile all sorts of
people both pore and rich, and used to appear in glitter-
ing gold, silk, and silver, in the Court, and in all shapes
in the Theater in Whitehall, and had ringing, feasts,
and jollitie in all places, both in the citie and coicntrie,
for his comming: . . . whosoever can tel what is become
of him, or where he may be found, let them bring him
back againe into England."
'T^HAT curious little tract "An Hue and Cry after Christ-
-■- mas " bears the date of 1645; ^^^ we shall best give
our readers an idea of its character by setting out that
title at length, as the same exhibits a tolerable abstract
of its contents. It runs thus: *'The arraignment, convic-
tion, and imprisoning of Christmas on St. Thomas day
last, and how he broke out of prison in the holidayes and
got away, onely left his hoary hair and gray beard stick-
ing between two iron bars of a window. With an Hue and
Cry after Christmas, and a letter from Mr. Woodcock, a
fellow in Oxford, to a malignant lady in London. And
divers passages between the lady and the cryer about Old
Christmas; and what shift he was fain to make to save
his life, and great stir to fetch him back again. Printed
by Simon Minc'd Pye for Cissely Plum-Porridge, and are
to be sold by Ralph Fidler Chandler at the signe of the
Pack of Cards in Mustard Alley in Brawn Street."
Besides the allusions contained in the latter part of this
title to some of the good things that follow in the old man's
train, great pains are taken by the "cryer" in describing
him, and by the lady in mourning for him, to allude to
5
The Book of Christmas
many of the cheerful attributes that made him dear to the
people. His great antiquity and portly appearance are
likewise insisted upon. "For age this hoarie-headed man
was of great yeares, and as white as snow. He entered
the Romish Kallendar, time out of mind, as old or very
neer as Father Mathusalem was, — one that looked fresh
in the Bishops' time, though their fall made him pine away
ever since. He was full and fat as any divine doctor of
them all ; he looked under the consecrated lawne sleeves
as big as Bul-beefe, — just like Bacchus upon a tunne of
wine, when the grapes hang shaking about his eares; but
since the Catholike liquor is taken from him he is much
wasted, so that he hath looked very thin and ill of late."
"The poor," says the "cryer" to the lady, "are sory for"
his departure; "for they go to every door a-begging, as
they were wont to do (good Mrs., Somewhat against this
good time); but Time was transformed. Away, he gone;
here is not for you.^' The lady, however, declares that
she for one will not be deterred from welcoming old Christ-
mas. "No, no!" says she; "bid him come by night over
the Thames, and we will have a back-door open to let him
in;" and ends by anticipating better prospects for him
another year.
T. K. Hervey
The Doge's Christmas Shooting ^^:> -^^ ^^^
A T certain fixed times the Doge was allowed the relaxa-
-^^ tion of shooting, but with so many restrictions and
injunctions that the sport must have been intolerably irk-
some. He was allowed or, more strictly speaking, was
ordered to proceed for this purpose, and about Christmas
6
signs of the Season
time, to certain islets in the lagoons, where wild ducks
bred in great numbers. On his return he was obliged to
present each member of the Great Council with five ducks.
This was called the gift of the ''Oselle," that being the
name given by the people to the birds in question. In
152 1, about five thousand brace of birds had to be killed or
snared in order to fulfil this requirement; and if the un-
happy Doge was not fortunate enough, with his attendants,
to secure the required number, he was obliged to provide
them by buying them elsewhere and at any price, for the
claims of the Great Council had to be satisfied in any case.
This was often an expensive affair.
There was also another personage who could not have
derived much enjoyment from the Christmas shooting.
This was the Doge's chamberlain, whose duty it was to
see to the just distribution of the game, so that each bunch
of two-and-a-half brace should contain a fair average of fat
and thin birds, lest it should be said that the Doge showed
favour to some members of the Council more than to others.
By and by a means was sought of commuting this annual
tribute of ducks. The Doge Antonio Grimani requested
and obtained permission to coin a medal of the value of a
quarter of a ducat, equal to about four shillings or one
dollar, and to call it "a Duck," "Osella," whereby it was
signified that it took the place of the traditional bird.
F. Marion Crawtord in Salve Veneiia!
Thursday Processions in Advent ^:> ^^ <:>
HTHE Eve of the festival of St. Nicholas, December 5,
■^ in mediaeval days was the occasion when choir and
altar boys met and in solemn mimicr}'' of the procedure of
7
The Book of Christmas
their elders elected a boy-bishop and his prebendaries who
remained in office and moreover exercised practically full
episcopal functions until Holy Innocents Day.
In the full vestments of the church these minor clergy
made "visitations" in the neighborhood usually on three
successive Thursdays, and collected small sums of
money known as the "Bishop's Subsidy." Says Barnaby
Googe : —
"Three weeks before the day whereon was borne the Lorde of
Grace,
And on the Thursdays boyes and gyrles do runne in every place
And bounce and beat at every doore, with blowes and lustie snaps
And crie the Advent of the Lord, not borne as yet perhaps,
And wishing to the neighbors all, that in the houses dwell,
A happy year, and everything to spring and prosper well;
Here have they peares, and plumbs and pence, each man gives
Willi nglie.
For these three nights are always thought unfortunate to bee.
Where in they are afrayde of sprites, cankred witches spight.
And dreadful devils blacke and grim, that then have chief est might.
:|c 3|c :)« * * 4: !|(
In these same dayes yong, wanton gyrles that meete for marriage
bee,
Doe search to know the names of them that shall their husbands bee
Four onyons, five, or eight, they take, and make in every one
Such names as they do fansie most and best do think upon;
Thus neere the chimney them they set, and that same onyon than,
That first doth sproute, doth surely beare the name of their good
man."
In these same December nights it is that these "yong
gyrles," according to Barnaby, creep to the woodpile after
nightfaii and at random each pulls out the first stick the
hand touches.
'Which if it streight and even be, and have no knots at all,
A gentle husband then they thinke shall surlie to them fall;
8
Signs of the Season
But if it fowle and crooked bee, and knotties here and there,
A crabbed churlish husband then they earnest!}' do feare."
In the last days before Christmas, says Lady Morgan,
Italian pifferari descend from the mountains to Naples and
Rome in order to play their pipes before the pictures of
the Virgin and the Child, and — out of compliment to
Joseph — in front of the carpenters' shops.
Somewhat akin is the old English custom of the carry-
ing about the images of the Virgin and Christ in the week
before Christmas, by poor women who expect a dole from
every house visited.
In certain parts of Normandy the farmers give to their
children, or to little ones borrowed from their neighbors,
prepared torches, well dried; with which these little folk
— no one over twelve is eligible for the office — run hither-
and yon, under the tree boughs, into fence corners, singing
the spell supposed to command the vermin of the field.
W. S. Walsh gives this translation of their incantation: —
Mice, caterpillars, and moles.
Get out, get out of my field ; or
I will burn your blood and bones:
Trees and shrubs,
Give me bushels of apples.
Condensed from Some Curiosities of Popular Customs.
The Glastonbury Thorn and other Plant Lore
of Christmastide <:> ^^ -<:> ^> ^^
T^HE legend of the Glastonbury Thorn is that after the
^ death of Christ Joseph of Arimathea came over to
England and a few days before Christmas rested on the
9
The Book of Christmas
summit of Weary-all Hill, Glastonbury. There he thrust
into the ground his staff which on Christmas Eve was
found to be covered with snow white blossoms; and until
it was destroyed during the Civil wars the bush continued
so to bloom, as cuttings from the original thorn are said
to bloom in the same wonderful way even yet ; but, with a
fine disregard for the Gregorian reformation of the Calen-
dar, the blossoms do not appear until the 5th of January.
The Sicilian children, so Folkard tells us, put pennyroyal
in their cots on Christmas Eve, "under the belief that at
the exact hour and minute when the infant Jesus was born
this plant puts forth its blossom." Another belief is that
the blossoming occurs again on Midsummer Night.
In the East the Rose of Jericho is looked upon with fa-
vour by women with child, for ''there is a cherished legend
that it first blossomed at our Saviour's birth, closed at the
Crucifixion, and opened again at Easter, whence its name
of Resurrection Flower."
Gerarde, the old herbalist, tells us that the black helle-
bore is called ''Christ's Herb," or "Christmas Herb,"
because it "flowreth about the birth of our Lord Jesus
Christ."
Many plants, trees, and flowers owe their peculiarities
to their connection with the birth or the childhood of
Christ. The Ornithogalum umhellatum is called the "Star
of Bethlehem," according to Folkard, because "its white
stellate flowers resemble the pictures of the star that in-
dicated the birth of the Saviour of mankind." The Galium
verum, "Our Lady's Bedstraw," receives its name from
the belief that the manger in which the infant Jesus lay
was filled with this plant.
"The brooms and the chick-peas began to rustle and
10
Signs of the Season
crackle, and by this noise betrayed the fugitives. The
flax bristled up. Happily for her, Mary was near a
juniper; the hospitable tree opened its branches as arms
and enclosed the Virgin and the Child within their folds,
affording them a secure hiding-place. Then the Virgin
uttered a malediction against the brooms and the chick-
peas, and ever since that day they have always rustled
and crackled." The story goes on to tell us that the Vir-
gin "pardoned the flax its weakness, and gave the juniper
her blessing," which accounts for the use of the latter in
some countries for Christmas decorations, — like the holly
in England and France.
"One Christmas Eve a peasant felt a great desire to eat
cabbage and, having none himself, he slipped into a neigh-
bour's garden to cut some. Just as he had filled his
basket, the Christ-Child rode past on his white horse, and
said: 'Because thou hast stolen on the holy night, thou
shalt immediately sit in the moon with thy basket of cab-
bage.' " And so, we are told, "the culprit was immediately
wafted up to the moon," and there he can still be seen as
" the man in the moon."
Alexander F. Chamberlain
The Signs of the Season in the Kitchen ^:y ^^^^
" nPHE cooks shall be busied, by day and by night,
■^ In roasting and boiling, for taste and delight,
Their senses in liquor that's happy they'll steep,
Though they be afforded to have Httle sleep;
They still are employed for to dress us, in brief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beel
II
The Book of Christmas
"Although the cold weather doth hunger provoke,
'Tis a comfort to see how the chimneys do smoke;
Provision is making for beer, ale, and wine,
For all that are wiUing or ready to dine:
Then haste to the kitchen for diet the chief,
Plum-pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef.
" All travellers, as they do pass on their way.
At gentlemen's halls are invited to stay,
Themselves to refresh and their horses to rest.
Since that he must be old Christmas's guest;
Nay, the poor shall not want, but have for relief
Plum -pudding, goose, capon, minc'd-pies, and roast beef."
From Evans' Collection of English Ballads
Christmas in England ^^ "^:>
<:^
THERE is nothing in England that exercises a more
delightful spell over my imagination than the linger-
ings of the holiday customs and rural games of former
times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw
in the May morning of life when as yet I only knew the
world through books, and believed it to be all that poets
had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of
those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal
fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred,
social, and joyous than at present. I regret to say that
they are daily growing more and more faint, being gradu-
ally worn away by time, but still more obliterated by mod-
ern fashion. They resemble those picturesque morsels of
Gothic architecture which we see crumbling in various parts
of the country, partly dilapidated by the waste of ages, and
12
Signs of the Season
partly lost in the additions and alterations of latter days.
Poetry, however, clings with cherishing fondness about the
rural game and holiday revel, from which it has derived
so many of its themes — as the ivy winds its rich foliage
about the Gothic arch and mouldering tower, gratefully
repaying their support by clasping together their tottering
remains, and, as it were, embalming them in verdure.
Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas
awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations.
There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends
with our conviviality, and lifts the spirit to a state of hal-
lowed and elevated enjoyment. The services of the church
about this season are extremely tender and inspiring.
They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith,
and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announce-
ment. They gradually increase in fervour and pathos
during the season of Advent, until they break forth in
jubilee on the morning that brought peace and good-will
to men. I do not know a grander effect of music on the
moral feelings than to hear the full choir and the pealing
organ performing a Christmas anthem in a cathedral, and
filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony.
It is a beautiful arrangement, also derived from days
of yore, that this festival, which commemorates the an-
nouncement of the religion of peace and love, has been made
the season for gathering together of family connections,
and drawing closer again those bonds of kindred hearts
which the cares and pleasures and sorrows of the world are
continually operating to cast loose; of calling back the
children of a family who have launched forth in life, and
wandered widely asunder, once more to assemble about the
paternal hearth, that rallying-place of the affections, there
13
The Book of Christmas
to grow young and loving again among the endearing me-
mentoes of childhood.
There is something in the very season of the year that
gives a charm to the festivity of Christmas. At other times
we derive a great portion of our pleasures from the mere
beauties of nature.
sf: ***** *
In the course of a December tour in Yorkshire, I rode
for some distance in one of the public coaches, on the day
preceding Christmas. The coach was crowded, both in-
side and out, with passengers, who, by their talk, seemed
principally bound to the mansions of relations and friends
to eat the Christmas dinner. It was loaded also with
hampers of game, and baskets and boxes of delicacies;
and hares hung dangling their long ears about the coach-
man's box — presents from distant friends for the impend-
ing feasts. I had three fine rosy-cheeked schoolboys for
my fellow-passengers inside, full of the buxom health and
manly spirits which I have observed in the children of this
country. They were returning home for the holidays
in high glee, and promising themselves a world of enjoy-
ment. It was delightful to hear the gigantic plans of
pleasure of the little rogues, and the impracticable feats
they were to perform during their six weeks' emancipation
from the abhorred thraldom of book, birch, and pedagogue.
They were full of anticipations of the meeting with the
family and household, down to the very cat and dog;
and of the joy they were to give their little sisters by the
presents with which their pockets were crammed; but the
meeting to which they seemed to look forward with the
greatest impatience was with Bantam, which I found to
be a pony, and, according to their talk, possessed of more
14
Signs of the Season
virtues than any steed since the days of Bucephalus. How
he could trot! how he could run! and then such leaps as
he would take — there was not a hedge in the whole country
that he could not clear.
They were under the particular guardianship of the
coachman, to whom, whenever an opportunity presented,
they addressed a host of questions, and pronounced him
one of the best fellows in the whole world. Indeed, I
could not but notice the more than ordinary air of bustle
and importance of the coachman, who wore his hat a
little on one side, and had a large bunch of Christmas
greens stuck in the button-hole of his coat. He is always
a personage full of mighty care and business, and he is
particularly so during this season, having so many com-
missions to execute in consequence of the great interchange
of presents.
Perhaps the impending holiday might have given a more
than usual animation to the country, for it seemed to me
as if everybody was in good looks and good spirits. Game,
poultry, and other luxuries of the table, were in brisk cir-
culation in the villages; the grocers', butchers', and fruit-
erers' shops were thronged with customers. The house-
wives were stirring briskly about, putting their dwellings
in order; and the glossy branches of holly, with their bright
red berries, began to appear at the windows. The scene
brought to mind an old writer's account of Christmas prep-
arations: — "Now capons and hens, besides turkeys, geese,
and ducks, with beef and mutton — must all die ; for in
twelve days a multitude of people will not be fed with a
little. Now plums and spice, sugar and honey, square it
among pies and broth. Now or never must music be in
15
The Book of Christmas
tune, for the youth must dance and sing to get them a
heat, while the aged sit by the fire. The country maid
leaves half her market, and must be sent again, if she for-
gets a pack of cards on Christmas eve. Great is the con-
tention of Holly and Ivy, whether master or dame wears
the breeches. Dice and cards benefit the butler; and if
the cook do not lack wit, he will sweetly Uck his fingers."
Washington Irving
Christmas Invitation ^^ ^^ ^^^ ^:> ^^
/'^OME down to marra night, an' mind
^^ Don't leave thy fiddle-bag behind.
We'll shiake a lag an' drink a cup
O' yal to kip wold Chris'mas up.
An' let thy sister tiake thy yarm,
The wa'k woont do 'er any harm :
Ther's noo dirt now to spwile her frock
Var 'tis a-vroze so hard's a rock.
Ther bent noo stranngers that 'ull come,
But only a vew naighbours: zome
Vrom Stowe, an' Combe, an' two ar dree
Vrom uncles up at Rookery.
An' thee woot vine a ruozy fiace,
An' pair ov eyes so black as sloos,
The pirtiest oones in al the pHace.
I'm sure I needen tell thee whose.
We got a back bran', dree girt logs
So much as dree ov us can car:
We'll put 'em up athirt the dogs,
An' miake a vier to the bar,
i6
THE HOLY NIGHT. C. MuUer.
Signs of the Season
An' ev'ry oone wull tell his tiale,
An' ev'ry oone wull zing his zong,
An' ev'ry oone wull drink his yal,
To love an' frien'ship al night long.
We'll snap the tongs, we'll have a bal,
We'll shiake the house, we'll rise the ruf,
We'll romp an' miake the maidens squal,
A catchen o'm at bline-man's buff.
Zoo come to marra night, an' mind
Don't leave thy fiddle-bag behind.
We'll shiake a lag, an' drink a cup
O' yal to kip wold Chris' mas up.
William Barnes
A Christmas Market -'Oy ^^ ^^ ^> ^^
OUT of doors the various market-places are covered with
little stalls selling cheap clothing, cheap toys, jewel-
lery, sweets, and gingerbread; all the heterogeneous rub-
bish you have seen a thousand times at German fairs, and
never tire of seeing if a fair delights you.
But better than the Leipziger Messe, better even than
a summer market at Freiburg or at Heidelberg, is a Christ-
mas market in any one of the old German cities in the hill
country, when the streets and the open places are covered
with crisp clean snow, and the mountains are white with
it, and the moon shines on the ancient houses, and the tinkle
of sledge bells reaches you when you escape from the din
of the market, and look down at the bustle of it from some
silent place, a high window, perhaps, or the high empty
steps leading into the cathedral. The air is cold and still,
c 17
The Book of Christmas
and heavy with the scent of the Christmas trees brought
from the forest for the pleasure of the children. Day by
day you see the rows of them growing thinner, and if you
go to the market on Christmas Eve itself you will find only
a few trees left out in the cold. The market is empty,
the peasants are harnessing their horses or their oxen,
the women are packing up their unsold goods. In every
home in the city one of the trees that scented the open air
a week ago is shining now with lights and little gilded nuts
and apples, and is helping to make that Christmas smell,
all compact of the pine forest, wax candles, cakes, and
painted toys, you must associate so long as you live with
Christmas in Germany.
Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick in Home Life in Germany
The Star of Bethlehem as Seen in Holland -^^
' I ^HE Star of Bethlehem, as seen in Holland, is a pretty
^ but a cheap sight, for it costs nothing. 'Tis the
Harbinger of Christmas — a huge illuminated star which
is carried through the silent, dark, Dutch streets, shining
upon the crowding people, and typical of the star which
once guided the wise men of the East.
The young men of a Dutch town who go to the expense
of this star, which, carried through the streets, is the signal
that Christmas has come once again, are swayed by the
full intention of turning the Star of Bethlehem to account.
They gather money for the poor from the crowds who
come out to welcome the symbol of peace, and having done
this for the good of those whom fortune has not befriended,
they betake them to the head burgomaster of the town,
who is bound to set down the youths who form the Star
i8
Signs of the Season
company to a very comfortable meal. 'Tis a great insti-
tution, the Star of Bethlehem, in many Dutch towns and
cities; and may it never die out, for it does harm to no
man, and good to many.
Bow-Bells Annual
The Pickwick Club goes down to keep Christmas
at Dingley Dell ^==^ ^^^^ ^^^ ''^^^ ^^
A S brisk as bees, if not altogether as light as fairies,
-^^ did the four Pickwickians assemble on the morning
of the twenty-second day of December, in the year of grace
in which these, their faithfully-recorded adventures, were
undertaken and accomplished. Christmas was close at
hand, in all his bluff and hearty honesty ; it was the season
of hospitality, merriment, and open-heartedness; the old
year was preparing, like an ancient philosopher, to call his
friends around him, and amidst the sound of feasting and
revelry to pass gently and calmly away. Gay and merry
was the time ; and right gay and merry were at least four
of the numerous hearts that were gladdened by its coming.
The portmanteaus and carpet-bags have been stowed away,
and Mr. Waller and the guard are endeavouring to insin-
uate into the fore-boot a huge cod-fish several sizes too
large for it, which is snugly packed up, in a long brown
basket, with a layer of straw over the top, and which has
been left to the last, in order that he may repose in safety
on the half-dozen barrels of real native oysters, all the
property of Mr. Pickwick, which have been arranged in
regular order, at the bottom of the receptacle. The
19
The Book of Christmas
interest displayed in Mr. Pickwick's countenance is most
intense, as Mr. Weller and the guard try to squeeze the
cod-fish into the boot, first head first, and then tail first,
and then top upwards, and then bottom upwards, and then
side-ways, and then long-ways, all of which artifices the
implacable cod-fish sturdily resists, until the guard acci-
dentally hits him in the very middle of the basket, where-
upon he suddenly disappears into the boot, and with him,
the head and shoulders of the guard himself, who, not cal-
culating upon so sudden a cessation of the passive resistance
of the cod-fish, experiences a very unexpected shock, to
the unsmotherable delight of all the porters and by-standers.
Upon this, Mr. Pickwick smiles with great good humour,
and drawing a shilling from his waistcoat pocket, begs the
guard, as he picks himself out of the boot, to drink his
health in a glass of hot brandy and water, at which the
guard smiles too, and Messrs. Snodgrass, Winkle, and
Tupman, all smile in company. The guard and Mr.
Weller disappear for five minutes, most probably to get
the hot brandy and water, for they smell very strongly of
it, when they return; the coachman mounts to the box,
Mr. Weller jumps up behind, the Pickwickians pull their
coats round their legs, and their shawls over their noses;
the helpers pull the horse-cloths off, the coachman shouts
out a cheery "All right," and away they go.
They have rumbled through the streets, and jolted over
the stones, and at length reach the wide and open country.
The wheels skim over the hard and frosty ground ; and the
horses, bursting into a canter at a smart crack of the whip,
step along the road as if the load behind them, coach,
passengers, cod-fish, oyster barrels, and all, were but a
feather at their heels. They have descended a gentle
Signs of the Season
slope, and enter upon a level, as compact and dry as a solid
block of marble, two miles long. Another crack of the
whip, and on they speed, at a smart gallop, the horses
tossing their heads and rattling the harness as if in exhila-
ration at the rapidity of the motion, while the coachman
holding whip and reins in one hand, takes off his hat with
the other, and resting it on his knees, pulls out his hand-
kerchief, and wipes his forehead partly because he has a
habit of doing it, and partly because it's as well to show
the passengers how cool he is, and what an easy thing
it is to drive four-in-hand, when you have had as much
practice as he has. Having done this very leisurely (other-
wise the effect would be materially impaired), he replaces
his handkerchief, pulls on his hat, adjusts his gloves, squares
his elbows, cracks the whip again, and on they speed,
more merrily than before.
A few small houses scattered on either side of the road,
betoken the entrance to some town or village. The lively
notes of the guard's key-bugle vibrate in the clear cold air,
and wake up the old gentleman inside, who carefully
letting down the window-sash half way, and standing sentry
over the air, takes a short peep out, and then carefully
pulling it up again, informs the other inside that they're
going to change directly; on which the other inside wakes
himself up, and determines to postpone his next nap until
after the stoppage. Again the bugle sounds lustily forth,
and rouses the cottager's wife and children, who peep out
at the house-door, and watch the coach till it turns the
corner, when they once more crouch round the blazing
fire, and throw on another log of wood against father comes
home, while father himself, a full mile off, has just ex-
changed a friendly nod with the coachman, and turned
21
The Book of Christmas
round, to take a good long stare at the vehicle as it whirls
away.
And now the bugle plays a lively air as the coach rattles
through the ill-paved streets of a country town; and the
coachman, undoing the buckle which keeps his ribands
together, prepares to throw them off the moment he stops.
Mr. Pickwick emerges from his coat collar, and looks about
him with great curiosity: perceiving which, the coachman
informs Mr. Pickwick of the name of the town, and tells
him it was market-day yesterday, both which pieces of in-
formation Mr. Pickwick retails to his fellow-passengers,
whereupon they emerge from their coat collars too, and
look about them also. Mr. Winkle, who sits at the ex-
treme edge, with one leg dangling in the air, is nearly pre-
cipitated into the street, as the coach twists round the sharp
corner by the cheesemonger's shop, and turns into the
market-place; and before Mr. Snodgrass, who sits next
to him, has recovered from his alarm, they pull up at the
inn yard, where the fresh horses, with cloths on, are al-
ready waiting. The coachman throws down the reins
and gets down himself, and the other outside passengers
drop down also, except those who have no great confi-
dence in their ability to get up again, and they remain
where they are, and stamp their feet against the coach to
warm them; looking with longing eyes and red noses at
the bright fire in the inn bar, and the sprigs of holly with
red berries which ornament the window.
But the guard has delivered at the corn-dealer's shop,
the brown paper packet he took out of the little pouch
which hangs over his shoulder by a leathern strap, and has
seen the horses carefully put to, and has thrown on the pave-
ment the saddle which, was brought from London on the
22
Signs of the Season
coach-roof, and has assisted in the conference between the
coachman and the hostler about the grey mare that hurt
her off -fore-leg last Tuesday, and he and Mr. Weller are
all right behind, and the coachman is all right in front, and
the old gentleman inside, who has kept the window down
full two inches all this time, has pulled it up again, and the
cloths are off, and they are all ready for starting, except the
''two stout gentlemen," whom the coachman enquires
after with some impatience. Hereupon the coachman and
the guard, and Sam Weller, and Mr. Winkle, and Mr.
Snodgrass, and all the hostlers, and every one of the idlers,
who are more in number than all the others put together,
shout for the missing gentlemen as loud as they can bawl.
A distant response is heard from the yard, and Mr. Pick-
wick and Mr. Tupman come running down it, quite out
of breath, for they have been having a glass of ale a-piece,
and Mr. Pickwick's fingers are so cold that he has been full
five minutes before he could find the sixpence to pay for it.
The coachman shouts an admonitory ''Now, then, gen'l-
m'n," the guard re-echoes it — the old gentleman inside,
thinks it a very extraordinary thing that people will get
down when they know there isn't time for it — Mr. Pick-
wick struggles up on one side, Mr. Tupman on the other,
Mr. Winkle cries "All right," and off they start. Shawls
are pulled up, coat collars are re-adjusted, the pavement
ceases, the houses disappear; and they are once again
dashing along the open road, with the fresh clear air blow-
ing in their faces, and gladdening their very hearts within
them.
Such was the progress of Mr. Pickwick and his friends
by the Muggleton Telegraph, on their way to Dingley
Dell; and at three o'clock that afternoon, they all stood
23
The Book of Christmas
high and dry, safe and sound, hale and hearty, upon the
steps of the Blue Lion, having taken on the road enough
of ale and brandy, to enable them to bid defiance to the
frost that was binding up the earth in its iron fetters, and
weaving its beautiful network upon the trees and hedges.
Charles Dickens
A Visit from St. Nicholas ^:> ^:::y ^:::i>' ^^^
"nrWAS the night before Christmas, when all through
-*■ the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads;
And mamma in her kerchief, and I in my cap.
Had just settled our brains for a long winter's nap —
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from my bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.
The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Gave a lustre of midday to objects below;
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer,
With a little old driver, so lively and quick
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick !
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came.
And he whistled and shouted, and called them by name:
" Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet ! on, Cupid ! on, Donder and Blitzen !
24
Signs of the Season
To the top of the porch, to the top of the wall !
Now dash away, dash away, dash away all ! "
As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky,
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With the sleigh full of toys — and St. Nicholas, too.
And then in a twinkling I heard on the roof
The prancing and pawing of each little hoof.
As I drew in my head, and turning around,
Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur from his head to his foot,
And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot;
A bundle of toys he had flung on his back,
And he looked like a peddler just opening his pack.
His eyes, how they twinkled ! his dimples, how merry !
His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry;
His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow.
And the beard on his chin was as white as the snow.
The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth.
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath.
He had a broad face and a little round belly
That shook, when he laughed, like a bowl full of jelly.
He was chubby and plump — a right jolly old elf;
And I laughed, when I saw him, in spite of myself.
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.
He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
And filled all the stockings; then turned with a jerk,
And laying his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang in his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle.
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle;
25
The Book of Christmas
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight:
"Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night 1"
Clement C. Moore
Crowded Out ^^ ^^^ ^^:> ^^ ''^^ ^'^
IVrOBODY ain't Christmas shoppin'
■^ ^ Fur his stockin',
Nobody ain't cotch no turkkey,
Nobody ain't bake no pie.
Nobody's laid nuthin' by;
Santa Claus don't cut no figger
Fur his mammy's little nigger.
Seems lak everybody's rushin*
An' er crushin';
Crowdin' shops an' jaminiii' trolleys,
Buyin' shoes an' shirts an' toys
Fur de white folks' girls an' boys;
But no hobby-horse ain't rockin'
Fur his little wore-out stockin'.
He ain't quar'lin, recollec',
He don't 'spec'
Nuthin' — it's his not expectin'
Makes his mammy wish — O Laws I —
Fur er nigger Santy Claus,
Totin' jus' er toy balloon
Fur his mammy's little coon.
Rosalie M. Jonas
26
II
HOLIDAY SAINTS AND LORDS
TTERE comes old Father Christmas,
-■■ -*■ With sound of fife and drums;
With mistletoe about his brows,
So merrily he comes ! "
Rose Terry Cooke
30
My Lord of Misrule ^:iy -^^y ^^ ^;^ ^:y
"T7IRSTE," says Master Stubs, "all the wilde heades
-*■ of the parishe conventynge together, chuse them a
grand Capitaine (of mischeef) whom they innoble with the
title of my Lorde of Misserule, and hym they crown with
great solemnitie, and adopt for their kyng. This kyng
anoynted, chuseth for the twentie, fourtie, threescore, or
a hundred lustie guttes like hymself, to waite uppon his
lordely majestic, and to guarde his noble persone. Then
every one of these his menne he investeth with his liveries
of greene, yellowe or some other light wanton colour. And
as though that were not (baudie) gaudy enough I should
saie, they bedecke themselves with scarfifes, ribons and
laces, hanged all over with golde rynges, precious stones
and other jewelles : this doen, they tye about either legge
twentie or fourtie belles with rich hankercheefes in their
handes, and sometymes laied acrosse over their shoulders
and neckes, borrowed for the moste parte of their pretie
Mopsies and loovyng Bessies, for bussyng them in the
darcke. Thus thinges sette in order, they have their
hobbie horses, dragons, and other antiques, together with
their baudie pipers, and thunderyng drommers, to strike
up the Deville's Daunce withall" (meaning the Morris
Dance), "then marche these heathen companie towardes
the church and churche yarde, their pipers pipyng, drom-
mers thonderyng, their stumppes dauncyng, their belles
iynglyng, their handkerchefes swyngyng about their heades
like madmen, their hobbie horses and other monsters
31
The Book of Christmas
skyrmishyng amongst the throng: and in this sorte they
goe to the churche (though the minister bee at praier or
preachyng) dauncyng and swingyng their handkercheefes
over their heades, in the churche, Hke devilles incarnate,
with suche a confused noise that no man can heare his
owne voice. Then the foohshe people, they looke, they
stare, they laugh, they fleere, and mount upon formes
and pewes, to see these goodly pageauntes, solemnized in
this sort."
Quoted by T. K. Hervey
St. Nicholas ^^^r^*' ^=^ -^^^ ^^^ -^^^ "^^ "^^^
A CCORDING to Hone's "Ancient Mysteries" Saint
-^^ Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, was a saint of great virtue
and piety. . . . The old legend is that the sons of a rich
Asiatic, on their way to Athens for education, were slain
by a robber innkeeper, dismembered, and their parts hid-
den in a brine tub. In the morning came the Saint, whose
visions had warned him of the crime, whose authority
forced confession, and whose prayers restored the boys
to life. The Salisbury Missal of 1534 contains a curious
engraving of the scene, in which the bodies of the children
are leaping from the brine tub at the Bishop's call even
while the innkeeper at the table above their heads is busily
cutting a leg and foot into pieces small enough for his
purposes.
Ever since, St. Nicholas has been the special saint of the
school-boy, and certain of the customs of montem day at
Eton College are said to have originated in old festivals
in his honor.
St. Nicholas is the grand patron of the children of France,
32
Holiday Saints and Lords
to whom he brings bonbons for the good, but a cane for
the naughty child. In Germany he acts as an advance
courier examining into the conduct of the children, dis-
tributes goodies and promises to those with good records
a further reward which the Christ Child brings at Christ-
mas time. But his own peculiar celebration takes place
in a tiny seaport of southern Italy where it is curiously
interwoven with ancient usages possibly remaining from
some worship of Neptune.
On St. Nicholas's Day, the 6th of December, the sailors
of the port take the saint's image from the beautiful church
of St. Nicholas and with a long procession of boats carry
it far out to sea. Returning with it at nightfall they are
met by bonfires, torches, all the townspeople, and hundreds
of quaintly dressed pilgrims, who welcome the returning
saint with songs and carry him to visit one shrine after
another, before returning him to the custody of the canons.
W. S. Walsh quotes a writer in Chambers' "Book of
Days" as saying: "Through the native rock which formes
the tomb of the saint, water constantly exudes, which is
collected by the canons on a sponge attached to a reed,
squeezed into bottles and sold to pilgrims as a miraculous
specific under the name of the "manna of St. Nicholas."
An Old Saint in a New World ^^ ^^ ^^^ ^:^
T 1 fHILE Catholicism prevailed, St. Nicholas was every-
^ * where the children's saint. In Holland, where his
personality was modified by memories of Woden, god of
the elements and the harvest, he had a peculiar hold on
popular affection which persisted into Protestant times.
The children of the Dutch still believe that St. Nicholas
D c 33
The Book of Christmas
brings the gifts that they always get on the eve of his titular
day, December 6. In New Amsterdam this day was one
of the five chief feastdays of the year. After New Orange
became New York the characteristic traits of the Dutch
children's festival were transferred to the near-by Christ-
mas festival which was English as well as Dutch. It can-
not now be said when the change began or when it was
firmly established. It is known, indeed, that by the middle
of the eighteenth century St. Nicholas Day had been
dropped from the list of official holidays which, religious
and patriotic together, then numbered twenty-seven. But,
on the other hand, more than one memoir and book of
reminiscences says that as late as the middle of the nine-
teenth century some conservative old Dutch families still
celebrated the true St. Nicholas Day in their homes in
the true old fashion, then bestowing the children's annual
meed of gifts. Nor is any light thrown on the question by
certain entries in a local newspaper, Rivington's Gazetteer,
dated in December, 1773 and 1774, and referring to cele-
brations of ''the anniversary of St. Nicholas, otherwise
called Santa Claus," for they speak of social meetings
of the ''sons of that ancient saint" in which children can
hardly have participated, and they indicate days which
were neither Christmas Day nor the true St. Nicholas Day.
It is clear, however, that on Manhattan by a gradual
consolidation of the two old festivals Christmas became
pre-eminently a children's festival presided over by the
children's saint whose modern name, Santa Claus, is a
variant of the Dutch St. Niclaes or San Claas. In all
European countries Christmas still means simply the day
of Christ's nativity; for the "Old Christmas" whom we
meet in English ballads of earlier times, the "Father Christ-
34
Holiday Saints and Lords
mas" of Charles Dickens, and the ''Pere Noel" of the
French are abstractly mythical figures in no way related to
St. Nicholas. But anywhere in our America the domestic
observance of Christmas centres around Santa Claus with
his burden of gifts. The stockings that our children hang
on Christmas Eve were once the shoes that the children
of Amsterdam and New Amsterdam set in the chimney
corners on the eve of December 6; and the reindeer whose
hoofs our children hear represent the horse, descended
from Woden's horse Sleipner, upon whose back St. Nicholas
still makes his rounds in Holland. The Christmas-tree
is not Dutch but German; about the middle of the nine-
teenth century we acquired it from our German immigrants.
But even this the American child accepts at the hands of
Santa Claus, not of the Christ Child as does the little
German. "Kriss Kringle," it may be added, a name now
often mistakenly used as though it were a synonym of
Santa Claus, is a corruption of the German Christkindlein
(Christ Child).
Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer
From the History of the City of New York
St. Thomas <:^ ^^ <^ ^:^ ^;::y ^:y ^::y
A NOTHER of the Saints of the hoHday season is doubt-
^ ing Thomas, whose festival appropriately comes on
Dec. 21, just when the child mind is almost ready
to doubt the efficacy of all those letters to Santa Claus,
and has more than doubts whether conduct has been so
perfect as to warrant hope for the Christmas stocking.
St. Thomas seems to have remained a doubter to the
end, for in the cathedral of Pi ato is shown the girdle of
35
The Book of Christmas
the " Madonnadella Cintola"; her ascension into heaven
took place when Thomas was not with his brother apostles,
whose account of the miracle he refused to believe ; whereon
the indignant Madonna threw her girdle back to him from
heaven as evidence, — or so the legend reads, — with the
girdle to prove it.
His emblem as an apostle is a builder's rule or square;
possibly associated with that other legend of the king of the
Indies who ordered the saint to build him a magnificent
palace. On the return of the king and his discovery that the
money for this building had all been given to the poor,
the saint was thrown into a dungeon. Before worse befel,
the king died and four days later appeared to his heir with
an account of the splendid palace of gold and precious
stones built for him in heaven by the charities of the saint
on earth.
W. P. R.
Kriss Kringle -^^ ^^^i*- ^v> ^;^ ^Ci*- ^:^ ^o
JUST as the moon was fading
Amid her misty rings.
And every stocking was stuffed
With childhood's precious things,
Old Kriss Kringle looked round,
And saw on the elm -tree bough,
High-hung, an oriole's nest,
Silent and empty now.
** Quite like a stocking," he laughed,
" Pinned up there on the tree !
36
Holiday Saints and Lords
Little I thought the birds
Expected a present from me!"
Then old Kriss Kringle, who loves
A joke as well as the best,
Dropped a handful of flakes
In the oriole's empty nest.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
By permission of the Houghton Mifflin Company
II Santissimo Bambino ^:> ^::y -<;:> ^^ <^
'' TL SANTISSIMO BAMBINO," of the Ara Cceli in
-*- Rome, smiles placidly with the gravity of a sphinx on
all alike. Wee little folk before it clasp dimpled hands and
lispingly recite their speeches of praise. Older folk lift
up a prayer for the safe return of friends afar; sometimes,
as a concession to the faithful — at a price — it is driven
out in a bannered coach to bless the sick. If the patient
is to live, the image will turn red ; if he is to die, it will turn
pale. Should its attendant monks by chance forget to
return it to the gorgeous manger of the Franciscan church
to which it belongs, perchance it will return of its own will,
borne by no human hands, while all the bells of churches
and convents are set a-swaying by the touch of angel
hosts — or so the Roman peasants say.
In England similar images have been used in the service
which follows the midnight mass of Christmas Eve; so
soon as the Host is safely returned to its receptacle there
is disclosed to the view of the reverently adoring monks
the tiny waxen doll, elaborately swathed yet so as to leave
visible the pink, expressionless face, and half hidden hands
37
The Book of Christmas
and feet. The officiating priest lifts the image and facing
the waiting monks holds it reverently while in circling pro-
cession, one after another, each bends for a moment to kiss
the tiny figure on face or hands, crosses himself and passes
on. The ceremony is one to be seen only among the Trap-
pist monks and only at this one service of the Christmas
season.
W. P. R.
The Christ Child <>y <:^ -<;^ -^^ ^:> -^y
T^LISE Traut relates the legend that on every Christmas
■*— ' eve the Httle Christ-child wanders all over the world
bearing on its shoulders a bundle of evergreens. Through
city streets and country lanes, up and down hill, to proudest
castle and lowliest hovel, through cold and storm and sleet
and ice, this holy child travels, to be welcomed or rejected
at the doors at which he pleads for succor. Those who
would invite him and long for his coming set a lighted candle
in the window to guide him on his way hither. They also
believe that he comes to them in the guise of any alms-
craving, wandering person who knocks humbly at their
doors for sustenance, thus testing their benevolence. In
many places the aid rendered the beggar is looked upon as
hospitality shown to Christ.
The April Baby is Thankful ^;:> -^ ^i^*' ^^
T^ECEMBER 2 7th. — It is the fashion, I believe, to regard
-"-^ Christmas as a bore of rather a gross description, and
as a time when you are invited to overeat yourself, and
38
Holiday Saints and Lords
pretend to be merry without just cause. As a matter of
fact, it is one of the prettiest and most poetic institutions
possible, if observed in the proper manner, and after hav-
ing been more or less unpleasant to everybody for a whole
year, it is a blessing to be forced on that one day to be
amiable, and it is certainly delightful to be able to give
presents without being haunted by the conviction that you
are spoiling the recipient, and will suffer for it afterward.
Servants are only big children, and are made just as happy
as children by little presents and nice things to eat, and,
for days beforehand, every time the three babies go into
the garden they expect to meet the Christ Child with His
arms full of gifts. They firmly believe that it is thus their
presents are brought, and it is such a charming idea that
Christmas would be worth celebrating for its sake alone.
As great secrecy is observed, the preparations devolve
entirely on me, and it is not very easy work, with so many
people in our own house and on each of the farms, and all
the children, big and little, expecting their share of happi-
ness. The library is uninhabitable for several days before
and after, as it is there that we have the trees and presents.
All down one side are the trees, and the other three sides
are lined with tables, a separate one for each person in
the house. When the trees are lighted, and stand in their
radiance shining down on the happy faces, I forget all the
trouble it has been, and the number of times I have had to
run up and down stairs, and the various aches in head and
feet, and enjoy myself as much as anybody. First the
June baby is ushered in, then the others and ourselves
according to age, then the servants, then come the head in-
spector and his family, and other inspectors from the different
farms, the mamsells, the bookkeepers and secretaries, and
39
The Book of Christmas
then all the children, troops and troops of them — the big
ones leading the little ones by the hand and carrying the
babies in their arms, and the mothers peeping round the
door. As many as can get in stand in front of the trees, and
sing two or three carols; then they are given their presents,
and go off triumphantly, making room for the next batch.
My three babies sang lustily too, whether they happened
to know what was being sung or not. They had on white
dresses in honour of the occasion, and the June baby
was even arrayed in a low-necked and short-sleeved gar-
ment, after the manner of Teutonic infants, whatever the
state of the thermometer. Her arms are like miniature
prize-fighter's arms — I never saw such things; they are
the pride and joy of her little nurse, who had tied them
up with blue ribbons, and kept on kissing them. I shall
certainly not be able to take her to balls when she grows
up, if she goes on having arms like that.
When they came to say good-night, they were all very
pale and subdued. The April baby had an exhausted-
looking Japanese doll with her, which she said she was
taking to bed, not because she liked him, but because
she was so sorry for him, he seemed so very tired. They
kissed me absently, and went away, only the April baby
glancing at the trees as she passed and making them a
curtesy.
''Good-bye, trees," I heard her say; and then she made
the Japanese doll bow to them, which he did, in a very
languid and blase fashion. "You'll never see such trees
again," she told him, giving him a vindictive shake, "for
you'll be brokened long before next time."
She went out, but came back as though she had forgotten
something.
40
Holiday Saints and Lords
"Thank the Christkind so much, Mummy, won't you,
for all the lovely things He brought us. I suppose you're
writing to Him now, isn't you?"
From Elizabeth and her German Garden
Good King Wenceslas ^;^ ^^ ^:> -<;> '<;:^
f^OOT) King Wenceslas looked out,
^^' On the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep, and crisp, and even:
Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gath'ring winter fuel.
"Hither, page, and stand by me,
If thou know'st it, telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?"
*'Sire, he lives a good league hence.
Underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest fence.
By St. Agnes' fountain."
" Bring me flesh, and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither;
Thou and I will see him dine.
When we bear them thither."
Page and monarch forth they went,
Forth they went together;
41
The Book of Christmas
Through the rude wind's wild lament,
And the bitter weather.
" Sire, the night is darker now,
And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer."
" Mark my footsteps, good my page !
Tread thou in them boldly;
Thou shalt find the winter's rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly."
In his master's steps he trod,
Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed.
Therefore, Christian men, be sure.
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor,
Shall yourselves find blessing.
Version by John Mason Neale
Jean Valjean plays the Christmas Saint -^^^ ^^
A S for the traveller, he had deposited his cudgel and
■'^ ^ his bundle in a corner. The landlord once gone,
he threw himself into an arm-chair and remained for some
time buried in thought. Then he removed his shoes,
took one of the two candles, blew out the other, opened the
door, and quitted the room, gazing about him like a person
who is in search of something. He traversed a corridor
42
Holiday Saints and Lords
and came upon a staircase. There he heard a very faint
and gentle sound like the breathing of a child. He fol-
lowed this sound, and came to a sort of triangular recess
built under the staircase, or rather formed by the staircase
itself. This recess was nothing else than the space under
the steps. There, in the midst of all sorts of old papers
and potsherds, among dust and spiders' webs, was a bed —
if one can call by the name of bed a straw pallet so full of
holes as to display the straw, and a coverlet so tattered as
to show the pallet. No sheets. This was placed on the floor.
In this bed Cosette was sleeping.
The man approached and gazed down upon her.
Cosette was in a profound sleep; she was fully dressed.
In the winter she did not undress, in order that she might
not be so cold.
Against her breast was pressed the doll, whose large
eyes, wide open, glittered in the dark. From time to time
she gave vent to a deep sigh as though she were on the
point of waking, and she strained the doll almost convul-
sively in her arms. Beside her bed there was only one of
her wooden shoes.
A door which stood open near Cosette's pallet permitted
a view of a rather large, dark room. The stranger stepped
into it. At the further extremity, through a glass door,
he saw two small, very white beds. They belonged to
Eponine and Azelma. Behind these beds, and half hidden,
stood an uncurtained wicker cradle, in which the little boy
who had cried all the evening lay asleep.
The stranger conjectured that this chamber connected
with that of the Thenardier pair. He was on the point
of retreating when his eye fell upon the fireplace — one
of those vast tavern chimneys where there is always so
43
The Book of Christmas
little fire when there is any fire at all, and which are so
cold to look at. There was no fire in this one, there was
not even ashes; but there was something which attracted
the stranger's gaze, nevertheless. It was two tiny children's
shoes, coquettish in shape and unequal in size. The
traveller recalled the graceful and immemorial custom
in accordance with which children place their shoes in the
chimney on Christmas eve, there to await in the darkness
some sparkling gift from their good fairy. Eponine and
Azelma had taken care not to omit this, and each of them
had set one of her shoes on the hearth.
The traveller bent over them.
The fairy, that is to say, their mother, had already
paid her visit, and in each he saw a brand-new and shining
ten-sou piece.
The man straightened himself up, and was on the point
of withdrawing, when far in, in the darkest corner of the
hearth, he caught sight of another object. He looked at
it, and recognized a wooden shoe, a frightful shoe of the
coarsest description, half dilapidated and all covered with
ashes and dried mud. It was Cosette's sabot. Cosette,
with that touching trust of childhood, which can always
be deceived yet never discouraged, had placed her shoe
on the hearth-stone also.
Hope in a child who has never known anything but
despair is a sweet and touching thing.
There was nothing in this wooden shoe.
The stranger fumbled in his waistcoat, bent over and
placed a louis d'or in Cosette's shoe.
Then he regained his own chamber with the stealthy
tread of a wolf.
Victor Hugo in Les Miserables
44
Holiday Saints and Lords
Saint Brandan ^^> ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^"^^ <^
O AINT BRANDAN sails the northern main ;
"^ The brotherhoods of saints are glad.
He greets them once, he sails again;
So late! such storms! The saint is mad!
He heard, across the howling seas,
Chime convent-bells on wintry nights;
He saw, on spray-swept Hebrides,
Twinkle the monastery -lights;
But north, still north. Saint Brandan steered;
And now no bells, no convents more !
The hurtling Polar lights are neared,
The sea without a human shore.
At last (it was the Christmas-night;
Stars shone after a day of storm)
He sees float past an iceberg white,
And on it — Christ ! — a living form.
That furtive mien, that scowling eye.
Of hair that red and tufted fell,
It is — oh, where shall Brandan fly? —
The traitor Judas, out of hell !
Palsied with terror, Brandan sate;
The moon was bright, the iceberg near.
He hears a voice sigh humbly, " Wait !
By high permission I am here.
45
The Book of Christmas
" One moment wait, thou holy man !
On earth my crime, niy death, they knew;
My name is under all men's ban :
Ah ! tell them of my respite too.
" Tell them, one blessed Christmas-night
(It was the first after I came,
Breathing self-murder, frenzy, spite,
To rue my guilt in endless flame), —
*' I felt, as I in torment lay
'Mid the souls plagued by heavenly power,
An angel touch mine arm, and say, —
' Go hence, and cool thyself an hour ! '
" ' Ah ! whence this mercy, Lord ? ' I said.
*The leper recollect,' said he,
' Who asked the passers-by for aid.
In Joppa, and thy charity.'
" Then I remembered how I went,
In Joppa, through the public street.
One morn when the sirocco spent
Its storms of dust with burning heat;
" And in the street a leper sate,
Shivering with fever, naked, old;
Sand raked his sores from heel to pate,
The hot wind fevered him fivefold.
" He gazed upon me as I passed.
And murmured, 'Help me, or I dieT
46
Holiday Saints and Lords
To the poor wretch my cloak I cast,
Saw him look eased, and hurried by.
* * * *
" Once every year, when carols wake,
On earth, the Christmas-night's repose,
Arising from the sinner's lake,
I journey to these healing snows.
" I stanch with ice my burning breast,
With silence balm my whirling brain.
O Brandan ! to this hour of rest.
That Joppan leper's ease was pain."
Tears started to Saint Brandan's eyes;
He bowed his head, he breathed a prayer,
Then looked — and lo, the frosty skies !
The iceberg, and no Judas there !
, Matthew Aiinold
St. Stephen's, or Boxing Day ^^ ^^ ^:>y -^^
TN old England St. Stephen's Day is chiefly celebrated
"^ under the name of Boxing Day, — not for pugilistic
reasons, but because on that day it was the custom for
persons in the humbler walks of life to go the rounds with
a Christmas-box and solicit money from patrons and em-
ployers. Hence the phrase Christmas-box came to sig-
nify gifts made at this season to children or inferiors, even
after the boxes themselves had gone out of use. This
custom was of heathen origin and carries us back to the
Roman Paganalia when earthen boxes in which money
47
The Book of Christmas
was slipped through a hole were hung up to receive con-
tributions at these rural festivals.
Aubrey in his " Wiltshire Collections " describes a trou-
vaille of Roman relics: "Among the rest was an earthen
pot of the color of a crucible, and of the shape of a Prentice's
Christmas-box with a slit in it, containing about a quart
which was near full of money. This pot I gave to the
Repository of the Royal Society at Gresham College."
Of the Prentice's Christmas-box, a recognized institu-
tion of the seventeenth century, several specimens are
preserved, — small and wide bottles of thin clay from three
to four inches in height, surrounded by imitation stoppers
covered with a green baize. On one side is a slit for the
introduction of money; the box must be broken before
the money can be extracted.
W. P. R.
St. Basil in Trikkola ^> <^ <^ ^c^y ^^
nPRIKKOLA is very Turkish, having only been in Greek
-*- hands for eight years ; but though you see mosques and
latticed windows at every turn, there is not a Greek left;
when his rule is over the Mussulman packs his luggage;
he will not live subject to the infidel. It is very squalid
indeed, and down the bazaar ran an open drain; but never-
theless the walk by the river is pretty and towards evening
women came down to the stream to wash and fetch home
water in quaint round bottles. I think one of the most
marked distinctions between Turk and Greek is white-
wash. Greeks love whitewash; houses, churches, public
buildings are excessively clean outside, and promise what
48
Holiday Saints and Lords
the interior fails to fulfill. This is especially remarkable
at Trikkola, where the brown mud houses of Turkish days
are being rapidly converted into white Greek ones.
St. Basil's Eve — that is to say the Greek New Year's
Eve — is a very marked day in the period of the twelve days,
and one on which all make merry. The squalid streets of
Trikkola even looked bright as bands of gaily dressed chil-
dren, nay, even grown-up young men, went round singing
the Kalends songs — Greek Kalends that is to say, which
though it is twelve days later than ours came at last. And
on this the eve of the Kalends these bands paraded the
streets, each carrying a long pole to the top of which was
tied a piece of brushwood, within which was concealed a
bell, and to which were tied many scraps of colored ribbon.
At each house the singers stopped. The inhabitants came
out to greet them and offer them refreshments, — figs, nuts,
eggs and other food, — which were stowed away by one of
the band who carried a basket. Their songs to our ears
were exceedingly ugly, long chanted stories. I asked a
priest whose acquaintance I had made to copy down one
of them, of which the following is a rough translation: —
From Caesarea came the holy Basil;
Ink and paper in his hands he held.
Cried the crowd who saw him coming,
"Teach us letters, dear St. Basil."
His rod he left them for instruction —
His rod which buds with verdant leaves,
On which the partridges sit singing
And the swallows make their nests.
Jangle went the bell in the brushwood — "the thicket"
as they call it — and out came the housewife when the
singing was over, her hands full of homely gifts, in return
B 49
The Book of Christmas
for which she was presented with one of the silk ribbons
from the trophy. This she will keep for the whole of the
ensuing year, for it will bring her good luck. And after
many good wishes for the coming year the troupe moved
on to another house. ... It seems that this is the most
favorite Greek method of celebrating a festive season.
The people in no way resent these constant visitors and
claims on their hospitality; nay, rather they would be
deeply hurt if the bands of children passed them by.
J. Theodore Bent
50
Ill
CHRISTMAS CUSTOMS AND
BELIEFS
OOME sayes, that ever 'gainst that Season comes
*^ Wherein our Saviours Birth is celebrated,
The Bird of Dawning singeth all night long:
And then (they say) no Spirit can walke abroad,
The nights are wholesome, then no Planets strike.
No Faiery talkes, nor Witch hath power to Charme:
So hallowed, and so gracious is the time.
William Shakespeare
54
The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ ^^ ^::>'
A 'X THEN the world had endured five thousand and nine
* * hundred years, after Eusebius the holy saint, Octa-
vian the Emperor commanded that all the world should be
described, so that he might know how many cities, how
many towns, and how many persons he had in all the uni-
versal world. Then was so great peace in the earth that
all the world was obedient to him. And therefore our Lord
would be born in that time, that it should be known that
be brought peace from heaven. And this Emperor com-
manded that every man should go into the towns, cities
or villages from whence they were of, and should bring
with him a penny in acknowledgment that he was subject
to the Empire of Rome. And by so many pence as should
be found received, should be known the number of the
persons. Joseph, which was then of the lineage of David,
and dwelleth in Nazareth, went into the city of Bethlehem,
and led with him the Virgin Mary his wife. And when
they were come thither, because the hostelries were all
taken up, they were constrained to be without in a common
place where all people went. And there was a stable for
an ass that he brought with him, and for an ox. In that
night our Blessed Lady and Mother of God was delivered
of our Blessed Saviour upon the hay that lay in the rack.
At which nativity our Lord shewed many marvels. For
because that the world was in so great peace, the Romans
had done made a temple which was named the Temple
of Peace, in which they counselled with Apollo to know
how long it should stand and endure. Apollo answered
55
The Book of Christmas
to them, that it should stand as long till a maid had brought
forth and borne a child. And therefore they did do write
on the portal of the Temple: Lo! this is the temple of
peace that ever shall endure. For they supposed well
that a maid might never bear ne bring forth a child. This
temple that same time that our Lady was delivered and
our Lord born, overthrew and fell all down. Of which
christian men afterward made in the same place a church
of our Lady which is called Sancta Maria Rotunda, that
is to say, the Church of Saint Mary the Round. Also the
same night, as recordeth Innocent the third, which was
Pope, there sprang and sourded in Rome a well or a
fountain, and ran largely all that night and all that day unto
the river of Rome called Tiber. Also after that, recordeth
S. John Chrysostom, the three kings were in this night in
their orisons and prayers upon a mountain, when a star
appeared by them which had the form of a right fair child,
which had a cross in his forehead, which said to these three
kings that they should go to Jersualem, and there they
should find the son of the Virgin, God and Man, which
then was born. Also there appeared in the orient three
suns, which little and little assembled together, and were
all on one. As it is signified to us that these three things
are the Godhead, the soul, and the body, which been in
three natures assembled in one person. Also Octavian
the Emperor, like as Innocent recordeth, that he was much
desired of his council and of his people, that he should
do men worship him as God. For never had there been
before him so great a master and lord of the world as he
was. Then the Emperor sent for a prophetess named
Sibyl, for to demand of her if there were any so great and
like him in the earth, or if any should come after him.
56
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
Thus at the hour of mid-day she beheld the heaven, and
saw a circle of gold about the sun, and in the middle of the
circle a maid holding a child in her arms. Then she called
the Emperor and shewed it him. When Octavian saw
that he marvelled over much, whereof Sibyl said to him:
Hie puer major te est, ipsum adora. This child is greater
lord than thou art, worship him. Then when the Em-
peror understood that this child was greater lord than he
was, he would not be worshipped as God, but worshipped
this child that should be born. Wherefore the christian
men made a church of the same chamber of the Emperor,
and named it Ara coeli. After this it happed on a night
as a great master which is of great authority in Scripture,
which is named Bartholemew, recordeth that the Rod
of Engadi which is by Jerusalem, which beareth balm,
flowered this night and bare fruit, and gave liquor of balm.
After this came the angel and appeared to the shepherds
that kept their sheep, and said to them : I announce and
shew to you a great joy, for the Saviour of the world is
in this night born, in the city of Bethlehem, there may
ye find him wrapt in clouts. And anon, as the angel had
said this, a great multitude of angels appeared with him,
and began to sing: Honour, glory and health be to God
on high, and in the earth peace to men of goodwill. Then
said the shepherds, let us go to Bethlehem and see this
thing. And when they came they found like as the angel
had said. In this time Octavian made to cut and enlarge
the ways and quitted the Romans of all the debts that they
owed to him. This feast of Nativity of our Lord is one
of the greatest feasts of all the year, and for to tell all the
miracles that our Lord hath shewed, it should contain a
whole book; but at this time I shall leave and pass over
57
The Book of Christmas
save one thing that I have heard once preached of a wor-
shipful doctor, that what person being in clean life desire
on this day a boon of God, as far as it is rightful and good
for him, our Lord at the reverence of this blessed high feast
of his Nativity will grant it to him.
From The Golden Legend
Folk-Lore of Christmas Tide ^^:> ^^ '-^^^ -^^
SCOTTISH folk-lore has it that Christ was born "at the
hour of midnight on Christmas Eve," and that the mir-
acle of turning water into wine was performed by Him at the
same hour. There is a belief current in some parts of
Germany that ''between eleven and twelve the night be-
fore Christmas water turns to wine"; in other districts,
as at Bielefeld, it is on Christmas night that this change
is thought to take place.
This hour is also auspicious for many actions, and in
some sections of Germany it was thought that if one would
go to the cross-roads between eleven and twelve on Christ-
mas Day, and listen, he "would hear what most concerns
him in the coming year." Another belief is that "if one
walks into the winter-corn on Holy Christmas Eve, he will
hear all that will happen in the village that year."
Christmas Eve or Christmas is the time when the oracles
of the folk are in the best working-order, especially the
many processes by which maidens are wont to discover
the colour of their lover's hair, the beauty of his face and
form, his trade and occupation, whether they shall marry
or not, and the like.
The same season is most auspicious for certain cere-
monies and practices (transferred to it from the heathen
S8
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
antiquity) of the peasantry- of Europe in relation to
agriculture and allied industries. Among those noted by
Grimm are the following: —
On Christmas Eve thrash the garden with a flail, with
only your shirt on, and the grass will grow well next
year.
Tie wet strawbands around the orchard trees on Christ-
mas Eve and it will make them fruitful.
On Christmas Eve put a stone on every tree, and they
will bear the more.
Beat the trees on Christmas night, and they will bear
more fruit.
In Herefordshire, Devonshire, and Cornwall, in England,
the farmers and peasantry "salute the apple-trees on Christ-
mas Eve," and in Sussex they used to ''worsle," i.e. "was-
sail," the apple-trees and chant verses to them in some-
what of the primitive fashion.
Some other curious items of Christmas folk-lore are the
following, current chiefly in Germany.
If after a Christmas dinner you shake out the table-
cloth over the bare ground under the open sky, crumb-
wort will grow on the spot.
If on Christmas Day, or Christmas Eve, you hang a
wash-clout on a hedge, and then groom the horses with it,
they will grow fat.
As often as the cock crows on Christmas Eve, the quarter
of corn will be as dear.
If a dog howls the night before Christmas, it will go
mad within the year.
If the light is let go out on Christmas Eve, some one in
the house will die.
When lights are brought in on Christmas Eve, if any one's
59
The Book of Christmas
shadow has no head, he will die within a year; if half a
head, in the second half-year.
If a hoop comes off a cask on Christmas Eve, some one
in the house will die that year.
If on Christmas Eve you make a little heap of salt on the
table, and it melts over night, you will die the next year;
if, in the morning, it remain undiminished, you will live.
If you wear something sewed with thread spun on Christ-
mas Eve, no vermin will stick to you.
If a shirt be spun, woven, and sewed by a pure, chaste
maiden on Christmas Day, it will be proof against lead or
steel.
If you are born at sermon-time on Christmas morning,
you can see spirits.
If you burn elder on Christmas Eve, you will have
revealed to you all the witches and sorcerers of the neigh-
bourhood.
If you steal hay the night before Christmas, and give
the cattle some, they thrive, and you are not caught in any
future thefts.
If you steal anything at Christmas without being caught,
you can steal safely for a year.
If you eat no beans on Christmas Eve, you will become
an ass.
If you eat a raw egg, fasting, on Christmas morning,
you can carry heavy weights.
The crumbs saved up on three Christmas Eves are good
to give as physic to one who is disappointed.
It is unlucky to carry anything forth from the house on
Christmas morning until something has been brought in.
It is unlucky to give a neighbour a live coal to kindle a
fire with on Christmas morning.
60
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
If the fire burns brightly on Christmas morning, it be-
tokens prosperity during the year; if it smoulders, adver-
sity.
These, and many other practices, ceremonies, beliefs,
and superstitions, which may be read in Grimm, Gregor,
Henderson, De Gubernatis, Ortwein, Tilte, and others who
have written of Christmas, show the importance attached
in the folk-mind to the time of the birth of Christ, and how
around it as a centre have fixed themselves hundreds of
the rites and solemnities of passing heathendom, with its
recognition of the kinship of all nature, out of which grew
astrology, magic, and other pseudo-sciences.
Collected by A. F. Chamberlain
/^^HRISTMAS succeeds the Saturnalia, the same time,
^^ the same number of Holy-days; then the Master
waited upon the Servant like the Lord of Misrule.
Our Meats and our Sports, much of them, have Relation
to Church-works. The Coffin of our Christmas-Pies, in
shape long, is in Imitation of the Cratch; our choosing
Kings and Queens on Twelfth-Night, hath reference to
the three Kings. So likewise our eating of Fritters, whip-
ping of Tops, roasting of Herrings, Jack of Lents, etc.,
they were all in imitation of Church-works, Emblems of
Martyrdom. The Table-Talk of John Selden
Hunting the Wren <^ ^^ <^ ^:^ ^oy ^;^
'T*HE custom, which is called ''hunting the wren," is
-*- generally practised by the peasantry of the south of
Ireland on St. Stephen's Day. It bears a close resemblance
to the Manx proceedings described by Waldron, — as
6i
The Book of Christmas
taking place however on a different day. "On the 24th
of December," says that writer, in his account of the Isle
of Man, "towards evening the servants in general have a
holiday; they go not to bed all night, but ramble about till
the bells ring in all the churches, which is at twelve o'clock.
Prayers being over, they go to hunt the wren; and after
having found one of these poor birds, they kill her and lay
her on a bier with the utmost solemnity, bringing her to
the parish church and burying her with a whimsical kind
of solemnity, singing dirges over her in the Manx language,
which they call her knell; after which Christmas begins."
The Wren-boys in Ireland, who are also called Droleens,
go from house to house for the purpose of levying contri-
butions, carrying one or more of these birds in the midst
of a bush of holly, gaily decorated with colored ribbons;
which birds they have, like the Manx mummers, employed
their morning in killing. The following is their song;
of which they deliver themselves in most monotonous
music: —
"The wren, the wren, the king of all birds,
St. Stephen's-day was caught in the furze,
Although he is little, his family's great.
I pray you, good landlady, give us a treat,
"My box would speak, if it had but a tongue,
And two or three shillings would do it no wrong;
Sing holly, sing ivy — sing ivy, sing holly,
A drop just to drink, it would drown melancholy.
"And if you draw it of the best,
I hope, in heaven your soul will rest;
But if you draw it of the small.
It won't agree with these Wren-boys at all."
62
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
If an immediate acknowledgment, either in money or
drink, is not made in return for the civihty of their visit,
some such nonsensical verses as the following are added : —
"Last Christmas-day, I turned the spit,
I burned my fingers (I feel it yet),
A cock sparrow flew over the table,
The dish began to fight with the ladle.
"The spit got up like a naked man,
And swore he'd fight with the dripping pan;
The pan got up and cocked his tail,
And swore he'd send them all to jail."
The story told to account for the title of "king of all
birds," here given to the wren, is a curious sample of Irish
ingenuity, and is thus stated in the clever "Tales of the
Munster Festivals," by an Irish servant in answer to his
master's inquiry : —
"Saint Stephen ! why, what the mischief, I ask you again,
have I to do with Saint Stephen?"
"Nothen, sure, sir, only this being his day, when all the
boys o' the place go about that way with the wran, the king
of all birds, sir, as they say (bekays wanst when all the
birds wanted to choose a king, and they said they'd have
the bird that would fly highest, the aigle flew higher than
any of 'em, till at last when he couldn't fly an inch higher,
a little rogue of a wran that was a-hide under his wing took
a fly above him a piece, and was crowned king, of the aigle
an' all, sir), tied in the middle o' the holly that way you see,
sir, by the leg, that is. An old custom, sir."
Vainly have we endeavored to arrive at the probable
origin of hunting and killing these little birds upon this
day. The tradition commonly related is by no means
satisfactory. It is said that a Danish army would have
63
The Book of Christmas
been surprised and destroyed by some Irish troops, had
not a wren given the alarm by pecking at some crumbs
upon a drum-head, — the remains of the sleeping drum-
mer's supper; which roused him, when he instantly beat
to arms. And that from this circumstance the wren became
an object of hatred to the Irish.
T. K. Hervey
The Presepio ^^^ ^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ '^^
A FTER Christmas Day, during the remainder of De-
-^^ cember, there is a Presepio, or representation of the
manger in which our Savior was laid, to be seen in many
of the churches at Rome. That of the Ara Coeli is best
worth seeing ; which church occupies the site of the temple
of Jupiter, and is adorned with some of its beautiful pillars.
On entering we found daylight completely excluded
from the church; and until we advanced we did not per-
ceive the artificial light, which was so managed as to stream
in fluctuating rays from intervening silvery clouds, and shed
a radiance over the lovely babe and bending mother, who
in a most graceful attitude lightly holds up the drapery
which half conceals her sleeping infant from the bystanders.
He lies in richly embroidered swaddling clothes, and his
person as well as that of His virgin mother, is ornamented
with diamonds and other precious stones; for which pur-
pose we are informed the princesses and ladies of high
rank lend their jewels. Groups of cattle grazing, peasantry
engaged in different occupations, and other objects enliven
the picturesque scenery; every living creature in the group,
with eyes directed towards the Presepio, falls prostrate in
adoration. From Hone's Year Book
64
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
Hodening in Kent -<;:y ^> ^^ ^^ ^::> ^^
"X 1 THEN I was a lad, about forty -five years since, it was
* '' always the custom on Christmas Eve, with the male
farm-servants from every farm in our parish, to go round
in the evening from house to house with the hodening horse,
which consisted of the imitation of a horse's head made
of wood, hfe size, fixed on a stick about the length of a
broom handle. The lower jaw of the head was made to
open with hinges; a hole was made through the roof of
the mouth, then another through the forehead coming out
by the throat; pulled through this was passed a cord at-
tached at the lower jaw, which, when pulled by the cord at
the throat, caused it to close and open ; on the lower jaw
large headed hobnails were driven in to form the teeth.
The strongest of the lads was selected for the horse; he
stooped and made as long a back as he could, supporting
himself by the stick carrying the head; then he was cov-
ered with a horse-cloth, and one of his companions mounted
his back. The horse had a bridle and reins. Then com-
menced the kicking, rearing, jumping, etc., and the banging
together of the teeth.
There was no singing by the accompanying paraders.
They simply by ringing or knocking at the houses on their
way summoned the inmates to the doors and begged a
gratuity. I have seen some of the wooden heads carved
out quite hollow in the throat part, and two holes bored
through the forehead to form the eyes. The lad who
played the horse would hold a lighted candle in the hollow,
and you can imagine how horrible it was to any one who
opened the door to see such a thing close to his eyes.
A contributor to the Church Times, Jan. 23, 1891
E 65
The Book of Christmas
Origin of the Christmas Tree ^^:^ ^;^ ^^:^ ^>.
A SCANDINAVIAN myth of great antiquity speaks of
-^ ^ a "service tree" sprung from the blood-drenched soil
where two lovers had been killed by violence. At certain
nights in the Christmas season mysterious lights were
seen flaming in its branches, that no wind could extinguish.
One tale describes Martin Luther as attempting to ex-
plain to his wife and children the beauty of a snow-covered
forest under the glittering star besprinkled sky. Sud-
denly an idea suggested itself. He went into the garden,
cut off a little fir tree, dragged it into the nursery, put some
candles on its branches and lighted them.
"It has been explained," says another authority, " as be-
ing derived from the ancient Egyptian practice of decking
houses at the time of the winter solstice with branches of
the date palm — the symbol of life triumphant over death,
and therefore of perennial life in the renewal of each boun-
teous year." The Egyptians regarded the date palm as
the emblem not only of immortality, but also of the starlit
firmament.
Some of its traditions may have been strongly influenced
by the fact that about this time the Jews celebrated their
Feast of Chanuckah or Lights, known also as the Feast of
Dedication, of which lighted candles are a feature. In
Germany, the name for Christmas Eve is Weihnacht, the
Night of Dedication, while in Greece at about this season
the celebration is called the Feast of Lights.
As a regular institution, however, it can be traced back
only to the sixteenth century. During the Middle Ages
it suddenly appears in Strassburg; it maintained itself
along the Rhine for two hundred years, when suddenly
66
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
at the beginning of the nineteenth century the fashion
spread all over Germany, and by fifty years later had con-
quered Christendom.
W. S. Walsh in Curiosities of Popular Customs
(condensed)
Origin of the Christmas Card -^^ ^^:> ^^ ^:^
TTHE Christmas Card is the legitimate descendant of
-^ the "school pieces" or ''Christmas pieces" which
were popular from the beginning to the middle of the
nineteenth century. These were sheets of writing-paper
sometimes surrounded with those hideous and elaborate
pen flourishes forming birds, scrolls, etc., so unnaturally
dear to the hearts of writing masters, and sometimes
headed with copper-plate engravings, plain or colored.
These were used by school boys at the approach of holi-
days for carefully written letters exploiting the progress
they had made in composition and chirography. Charity
boys were large purchasers of these pieces, says one writer,
and at Christmas time used to take them round their parish
to show and at the same time solicit a trifle.
The Christmas Card proper had its tentative origin in
1846. Mr. Joseph Cundall, a London artist, claims to
have issued the first in that year. It was printed in lithog-
raphy, colored by hand, and was of the usual size of a
lady's card.
Not until 1862, however, did the custom obtain any foot-
hold. Then experiments were made with cards of the size
of an ordinary carte de visite, inscribed simply "A Merry
Christmas" and *'A Happy New Year." After that
came to be added robins and holly branches, embossed
67
The Book of Christmas
figures and landscapes. ''I have the original designs
before me now," wrote "Luke Limner" (John Leighton)
to the London Publishers' Circular, Dec. 31, 1883: "they
were produced by Goodall & Son. Seeing a growing
want and the great sale obtained abroad, this house pro-
duced (1868) a Little Red Riding Hood, a Hermit and his
Cell, and many other subjects in which snow and the robin
played a part."
W. S. Walsh in Curiosities of Popular Customs
The Yule Clog ^:> ^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^ ^^>
A MID the interior forms to be observed, on this evening,
-^^^ by those who would keep their Christmas after the
old orthodox fashion, the first to be noticed is that of the
Yule Clog. This huge block, which, in ancient times, and
consistently with the capacity of its vast receptacle, was
frequently the root of a large tree, it was the practice to
introduce into the house with great ceremony, and to the
sound of music.
In Drake's "Winter Nights" mention is made of the
Yule Clog, as " lying, in ponderous majesty, on the kitchen
floor," until "each had sung his Yule song, standing on its
centre," — ere it was consigned to the flames that
"Went roaring up the chimney wide."
This Yule Clog, according to Herrick, was to be lighted with
the brand of the last year's log, which had been carefully
laid aside for the purpose, and music was to be played
during the ceremony of lighting.
This log appears to have been considered as sanctifying
the roof-tree, and was probably deemed a protection against
68
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
those evil spirits over whom this season was in every way
a triumph. Accordingly, various superstitions mingled
with the prescribed ceremonials in respect of it. From
the authority already quoted on this subject, we learn that
its virtues were not to be extracted unless it were lighted
with clean hands — a direction, probably, including both
a useful household hint to the domestics, and, it may be,
a moral of a higher kind : —
"Wash your hands or else the fire
Will not tend to your desire;
Unwash'd hands, ye maidens, know,
Dead the fire though ye blow."
Around this fire, when duly lighted, the hospitalities of the
evening were dispensed; and as the flames played about
it and above it, with a pleasant song of their own, the song
and the tale and the jest went cheerily round.
T. K. Hervey
Come bring with a Noise ^^:^ -<::::y ^^ ^:^ ^:^
/'"^OME bring with a noise,
^^-^ My merry merry boys,
The Christmas log to the firing;
While my good dame, she
Bids ye all be free,
And drink to your heart's desiring.
With the last year's brand
Light the new block, and
For good success in his spending,
On your psaltries play,
That sweet luck may
Come while the log is a tending.
69
The Book of Christmas
Drink now the strong beer,
Cut the white loaf here,
The while the meat is a shredding,
For the rare mince-pies;
And the plums stand by,
To fill the paste that's a kneading.
Robert Herrick
Shoe or Stocking <^ <^ <::> -^i^ ^;^ --^>
TN Holland, children set their shoes,
-^ This night, outside the door;
These wooden shoes Knecht Globes sees,
And fills them from his store.
But here we hang our stockings up
On handy hook or nail;
And Santa Claus, when all is still,
Will plump them, without fail.
Speak out, you " Sober-sides," speak out,
And let us hear your views;
Between a stocking and a shoe.
What do you see to choose?
One instant pauses Sober-sides,
A little sigh to fetch —
"Well, seems to me a stocking's best.
For wooden shoes won't stretch!"
Edith M. Thomas
By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company
70
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
Jule-Nissen
^sii^ ^;:::iy ^::::>- ^^:^ -^c^ ^v::i>' -'v::^
I DO not know how the forty years I have been away
have dealt with " Jule-nissen," the Christmas elf
of my childhood in far-off Denmark. He was pretty old
then, gray and bent, and there were signs that his time
was nearly over. So it may be that they have laid him
away. I shall find out when I go over there next time.
When I was a boy we never sat down to our Christmas
Eve dinner until a bowl of rice and milk had been taken
up to the attic, where he lived with the martin and its young,
and kept an eye upon the house — saw that everything
ran smoothly. I never met him myself, but I know the
house cat must have done so. No doubt they were well
acquainted ; for when in the morning I went in for the bowl,
there it was, quite dry and licked clean, and the cat purring
in the corner. So, being there all night, she must have
seen and likely talked with him. . . .
The Nisse was of the family, as you see, — very much
of it, — and certainly not to be classed with the cattle.
Yet they were his special concern; he kept them quiet,
saw to it, when the stableman forgot, that they were prop-
erly bedded and cleaned and fed. He was very well known
to the hands about the farm, and they said that he looked
just like a little old man, all in gray and with a pointed red
night-cap and long gray beard. He was always civilly
treated, as indeed he deserved to be, but Christmas was his
great holiday, when he became part of it, indeed, and was
made much of. So, for that matter, was everything that
lived under the husbandman's roof or within reach of it.
Even the sparrows that burrowed in the straw-thatch and
did it no good were not forgotten. A sheaf of rye was set
71
The Book of Christmas
out in the snow for them on the Holy Eve, so that on that
night at least they should have shelter and warmth unchal-
lenged, and plenty to eat. At all other times we were per-
mitted to raid their nests and help ourselves to a sparrow
roast, which was by long odds the greatest treat we had.
Thirty or forty of them, dug out by the light of the stable-
lantern and stuffed into Ane's long stocking, which we
had borrowed for a game-bag, made a meal for the whole
family, each sparrow a fat mouthful. Ane was the cook,
and I am very certain that her pot roast of sparrow would
pass muster at any Fifth Avenue restaurant as the finest
dish of reed-birds that ever was. However, at Christmas
their sheaf was their sanctuary, and no one as much as
squinted at them. Only last winter, when Christmas found
me stranded in a little Michigan town, wandering dis-
consolate about the streets, I came across such a sheaf
raised on a pole in a dooryard, and I knew at once that one
of my people lived in that house and kept Yule in the old
way. So I felt as if I were not quite a stranger.
Blowing in the Yule from the grim old tower that had
stood eight hundred years against the blasts of the North
Sea was one of the customs of the old town that abide,
however it fares with the Nisse ; that I know. At sun-up,
while yet the people were at breakfast, the town band
climbed the many steep ladders to the top of the tower,
and up there, in fair weather or foul — and sometimes it
blew great guns from the wintiy sea — they played four
old hymns, one to each corner of the compass, so that no
one was forgotten. They always began with Luther's
sturdy challenge, "A Mighty Fortress is Our God," while
down below we listened devoutly. There was something
both weird and beautiful about those far-away strains in
72
THE BELLS. Blashfield.
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
the early morning light of the northern winter, something
that was not of earth and that suggested to my child's
imagination the angels' songs on far Judean hills.
Even now, after all these years, the memory of it does that.
It could not have been because the music was so rare,
for the band was made up of small store-keepers and
artisans who thus turned an honest penny on festive occa-
sions. Incongruously enough, I think the official town
mourner, who bade people to funerals, was one of them.
It was like the burghers' guard, the colonel of which —
we thought him at least a general, because of the huge
brass sword he trailed when he marched at the head of
his men — was the town tailor, a very small but very
martial man. But whether or no, it was beautiful. I have
never heard music since that so moved me. When the
last strain died away, came the big bells with their deep
voices that sang far out over field and heath, and our Yule
was fairly under way.
Jacob Riis in The Old Town
"Lame Needles" in Euboea ^^ ^^ ^> ^>y
TN the first place, it must be clearly understood that
•^ Christmas time to a Greek is by no means considered
as festive; in fact they look upon the twelve days which
intervene between Christmas and Epiphany rather with
abhorrence than otherwise; it is to them the season when
ghosts and hobgoblins are supposed to be most rampant;
it is generally cold, ungenial weather, and the Greeks of
to-day, like their ancestors, live contented only when the
warm rays of the life-giving sun scorch them. They can
get up no enthusiasm as we can about yule logs and blaz-
73
The Book of Christmas
ing fires, for they have nothing to warm themselves with
save small charcoal braziers capable of communicating
heat to not more than one limb at a time; all the festive
energies of the race are reserved for Carnival and Easter-
tide, when the warmth of spring enables them once more to
enjoy life out-of-doors — the only one tolerable when you
know what their low dirty houses are like. . . .
For a month before Christmas every pious Greek has
observed a rigid fast; consequently the ''table" which on
that day is spread in every house produces something akin
to festivity. On a small round table was placed a perfect
mountain of maccaroni and cheese — coarse sheep's- milk
cheese which stung the mouth like mustard and left a
pungent taste which tarried therein for days. There were
no plates, no forks, no spoons. What a meal it was indeed,
as if it were a contest in gastronomic activity ! I was left
far behind in the contest, and great was my relief when it
was removed and dried fruits and nuts took its place.
To drink we had resinated wine — that is to say wine
which had been stored in a keg covered with resin inside,
which gives the flavor so much relished by the Greeks,
but which is almost as unpalatable to an Englishman as
beer must be to those who drink it for the first time. The
wine, however, had the effect of loosening the tongues of
my friends, who had been too busy as yet to talk, and they
told me many interesting Christmas tales.
In the first place the conversation turned on certain
spirits called "lame needles," which every Euboean woman
of low degree will tell you visit the earth at this season of
the year; one lame needle, presumably the leader, comes
on Christmas Eve, and the rest of the tribe put in an ap-
pearance on Christmas Day. They are dreadful creatures
74
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
to look upon, and according to my friends, they live in
caves whilst on earth, near which no wise person at this
season of the year will venture.
They subsist, like the Amazons of old, on snakes and
lizards, and sometimes on women, if they are lucky enough
to entrap one.
These demons are only dangerous at night from sunset
to cockcrow. When not engaged in dancing the lame
needles wander about, and do any amount of mischief.
It is their custom to enter houses by the chimney, so every
housewife is careful at this season of the year to leave some
embers burning all night, for they dread fire and also
crosses, and it is for this reason that at Christmas time we
see so many whitewash crosses on the cottage doors in
Greece. . . . When Epiphany comes these lame needles
are forced to flee again underground; but before they go
they take a hack at the tree which supports the world,
and which one day they will cut through. In appearance
these ugly visitors are supposed to be goat-footed goblins,
far taller than any man; in fact I should imagine that
they are lineal descendants of the satyrs of old still haunting
their accustomed purlieus. ... I will give you a specimen
of one of the stories which my friends told me when I
slightly threw discredit on the above described apparitions.
It is not a very lively one, but will show the character of the
Christmas stories which are current in Greece to-day.
"A lame needle once overheard two women settling to
get up at night during the season of the twelve days to
leaven bread at the house of one of them. Accordingly
he knocked at the door of the woman who was going to
carry her dough to the other's house and pretended to be
a messenger sent to hurry her.
75
The Book of Christmas
" Fearing nothing, the silly woman set off with her dough
accompanied by the uncanny messenger. When they had
got a little distance the lame needle turned round and said,
'Stop; I wish to eat you ! Whereat the woman recognized
who he was, and mindful of the fact that lame needles are
very inquisitive, she replied, 'Just wait till I tell you a story.'
It was very long and very interesting, so the first cock
crew before it was finished. 'It is only the black one;
goon; I have yet time,' said the eager lame needle. Then
the second cock crew, and he said, 'It is only the red one;
I have nought yet to fear.' Just as the woman had reached
the most thrilling part of her story the third cock crew,
'It is the white one,' exclaimed the terrified hobgoblin;
'I must be gone.'"
I am sure this story is believed by the peasants of Euboea.
J. Theodore Bent
Who Rides behind the Bells? -^r^. ^^ -^ ^:>
/^UR shabby drawing-room was ablaze with red candles ;
^-^ and what with holly red on the walls and the snow
banking the casements and bells jingling up and down
the avenue, the sense of Christmas was very real. For
me, Christmas seems always to be just past or else on the
way; and that sixth sense of Christmas being actually
Now is thrice desirable.
On the stroke of nine we two, waiting before the fire,
heard Nichola on the basement stairs; and by the way in
which she mounted, with labor and caution, I knew that
she was bringing the punch. We had wished to have it
ready — that harmless steaming punch compounded from
my mother's recipe — v/hen our guests arrived, so that
76
Christmas Customs and Beliefs
they should first of all hear the news and drink health to
Eunice and Hobart.
Nichola was splendid in her scarlet merino and that
vast cap effect managed by a starched pillow-case and a
bit of string, and over her arm hung a huge holly wreath
for the bowl's brim. When she had deposited her fragrant
burden and laid the wreath in place she stood erect and
looked at us solemnly for a moment, and then her face
wrinkled in all directions and was lighted with her rare
puckered smile.
"Mer — ry Christmas!" she said.
"Merry Christmas, Nichola!" we cried, and I think
that in all her years with us we had never before heard the
words from her lips.
"Who goes ridin' behind the sleigh-bells to-night?" she
asked then abruptly.
^'Who rides?" I repeated, puzzled.
"Yes," Nichola said; "this is a night when all folk
stay home. The whole world sits by the fire on Christmas
night. An' yet the sleigh-bells ring like mad. It is not
holy."
Pelleas and I had never thought of that. But there may
be something in it. Who indeed, when all the world keeps
hearth-holiday, who is it that rides abroad on Christmas
night behind the bells?
"Good spirits, perhaps, Nichola," Pelleas said, smiling.
"I do not doubt it," Nichola declared gravely; "that
is not holy either — to doubt."
"No," we said, "to doubt good spirits is never holy."
Zona Gale in The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre
77
The Book of Christmas
Guests at Yule "^ ^^ ^^^ <^ ^> -^> ^;::y
TVrOEL ! Noel 1
^ ^ Thus sounds each Christmas bell
Across the winter snow.
But what are the little footprints all
That mark the path from the church -yard wall?
These are those of the children waked to-night
From sleep by the Christmas bells and light :
Ring sweetly, chimes! Soft, soft, my rhymes!
Their beds are under the snow.
Noel! Noel!
Carols each Christmas bell.
What are the wraiths of mist
That gather anear the window-pane
Where the winter frost all day has lain?
They are soulless elves, who fain would peer
Within, and laugh at our Christmas cheer:
Ring fleetly, chimes! Swift, swift, my rhymes!
They are made of the mocking mist.
Noel ! Noel !
Cease, cease, each Christmas bell !
Under the holly bough.
Where the happy children throng and shout,
What shadows seem to flit about?
Is it the mother, then, who died.
Ere the greens were sere last Christmastide ?
Hush, falling chimes! Cease, cease, my rhymes!
The guests are gathered now.
Edmund Clarence Stedman
By permission of Houghton Miffiin Company
78
IV
CHRISTMAS CAROLS
^^.
CHRISTMAS CAROLS
" I saw Three Ships "
" Lordings, listen to Our Lay "
The Cherry-Tree Carol
" In Excelsis Gloria "
" God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen "
The Golden Carol
Caput apri refero resonens laudes domino
" Villagers All, this Frosty Tide "
Holly Song
" Before the Paling of the Stars "
The Minstrels played their Christmas Tune
A Carol from the Old French
" From Far Away we come to you "
A Christmas Carol
A Christmas Carol for Children
The First Christmas Carol
TJ^EAR not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of
■^ great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you
is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is
Christ the Lord.
And this shall be a sign unto you ; ye shall find the babe
wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.
Chorus
Glory to God in the highest, and on
earth peace, goodwill toward men.
St. Luke's Gospel
82
I saw Three Ships -<;> ^:> -^ ^>' ^ ^
I SAW three ships come sailing in,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
I saw three ships come sailing in,
On Christmas day in the morning.
And what was in those ships all three,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day?
And what was in those ships all three,
On Christmas day in the morning?
The Virgin Mary and Christ were there,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
The Virgin Mary and Christ were there,
On Christmas day in the morning.
Pray, whither sailed those ships all three,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day?
Pray, whither sailed those ships all three.
On Christmas day in the morning?
O they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day,'
O they sailed into Bethlehem,
On Christmas day in the morning.
And all the bells on earth shall ring.
On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
And all the bells on earth shall ring.
On Christmas day in the morning.
83
The Book of Christmas
And all the Angels in Heaven shall sing,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
And all the Angels in Heaven shall sing,
On Christmas day in the morning.
And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
And all the souls on earth shall sing,
On Christmas day in the morning.
Then let us all rejoice amain,
On Christmas day, on Christmas day;
Then let us all rejoice amain.
On Christmas day in the morning.
Old English Carol
Lordings, listen to Our Lay ^::> ^::^ '^:> <:^
T ORDINGS, listen to our lay —
-■ — ' We have come from far away
To seek Christmas;
In this mansion we are told
He his yearly feast doth hold:
'Tis to day!
May joy come from God above,
To all those who Christmas love.
Lordings, I now tell you true,
Christmas bringeth unto you
Only mirth;
84
Christmas Carols
His house he fills with many a dish,
Of bread and meat and also fish,
To grace the day.
May joy come from God above,
To all those who Christmas love.
Lordings, through our army's band
They say — who spends with open hand
Free and fast,
And oft regales his many friends —
God gives him double what he spends,
To grace the day.
May joy come from God above,
To all those who Christmas love.
Lordings, wicked men eschew,
In them never shall you view
Aught that's good;
Cowards are the rabble rout,
Kick and beat the grumblers out,
To grace the day.
May joys come from God above.
To all those who Christmas love.
Lords, by Christmas and the host
Of this mansion hear my toast —
Drink it well —
Each must drain his cup of wine.
And I the first will toss off mine:
Thus I advise,
Here then I bid you all Wassail,
Cursed be he who will not say Drinkhail.
Earliest Existing Carol; Thirteenth Century
8s
The Book of Christmas
The Cherry-Tree Carol ^> ^^ ^^
A S Joseph was a-walking,
•^^ He heard an angel sing,
**This night shall be the birth-time
Of Christ, the heavenly King.
** He neither shall be born
In housen nor in hall,
Nor in the place of paradise.
But in an ox's stall.
" He neither shall be clothed
In purple nor in pall,
But in the fair white linen
That usen babies all.
** He neither shall be rockM
In silver nor in gold.
But in a wooden manger
That resteth on the mould."
As Joseph was a-walking.
There did an angel sing,
And Mary's child at midnight
Was born to be our King.
Then be ye glad, good people,
This night of all the year,
And light ye up your candles.
For his star it shineth clear.
Old English
%6
Christmas Carols
In Excelsis Gloria ^^^ ^:> ^s^ ^^^ ^> ^^Ci*
^"X 7'HEN Christ was born of Mary free,
^ ^ In Bethlehem, in that fair citie.
Angels sang there with mirth and glee.
In Excelsis Gloria/
Herdsmen beheld these angels bright,
To them appearing with great light.
Who said, " God's Son is born this night,"
In Excelsis Gloria/
This King is come to save mankind,
As in Scripture truths we find.
Therefore this song have we in mind,
In Excelsis Gloria/
Then, Lord, for thy great grace.
Grant us the bliss to see thy face,
Where we may sing to thy solace.
In Excelsis Gloria/
From the Harleian MSS.
God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen ^c^ ^^^ ^::^
/^~^OD rest you merry, gentlemen,
^-^ Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born upon this day;
To save us all from Satan's power,
When we were gone astray.
87
The Book of Christmas
O tidings of comfort and joy^
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
was horn on Christmas Day.
In Bethlehem in Jewry
This blessed babe was born,
And laid within a manger
Upon this blessed morn;
The which His mother Mary-
Nothing did take in scorn.
O tidings of comfort and joy, —
From God, our Heavenly Father,
A blessed Angel came.
And, unto certain shepherds,
Brought tidings of the same;
How, that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by name.
O tidings of comfort and joy, —
The Shepherds at those tidings,
Rejoiced much in mind.
And left their flocks a-feeding
In tempest, storm, and wind.
And went to Bethlehem straightway,
This blessed Babe to find.
O tidings of comfort and joy, —
But when to Bethlehem they came.
Where as this Infant lay.
They found him in a manger
Where oxen feed on hay,
Christmas Carols
His mother Mary kneeling
Unto the Lord did pray.
O tidings of comfort and joy, —
Now to the Lord sing praises
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace,
This holy tide of Christmas
All others doth deface.
O tidings of comfort and joy,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
was born on Christmas Day,
Old English
The Golden Carol ^^^ ^:> ^^^ ^^ -^^ ^;:n».
(Of Melchior, Balthazar, and Caspar, the Three Kings of Cologne)
"\ T TE saw the light shine out a-far,
^ * On Christmas in the morning,
And straight we knew Christ's Star it was,
Bright beaming in the morning.
Then did we fall on bended knee,
On Christmas in the morning,
And prais'd the Lord, who'd let us see
His glory at its dawning.
Oh ! ever thought be of His Name,
On Christmas in the morning,
Who bore for us both grief and shame.
Afflictions sharpest scorning.
89
The Book of Christmas
And may we die (when death shall come),
On Christmas in the morning,
And see in heav'n, our glorious home,
The Star of Christmas morning.
Old English
Caput apri refero resonens laudes domino ^
'T^HE boar's head in hands I bring,
-■- With garlands gay and birds singing 1
I pray you all help me to sing,
Qui estis in conviviol
The boar's head I understand,
Is chief service in all this land,
Wheresoever it may be found,
Servitur cum sinapiol
The boar's head I dare well say,
Anon after the twelfth day.
He taketh his leave and goeth away!
Exivit tunc de patriaf
From a Balliol MS. of about 1540
Villagers All, this Frosty Tide <:> ^:^ ^:i^ ^;::>
T 7ILLAGERS all, this frosty tide,
* Let your doors swing open wide,
Though wind may follow, and snow beside,
Yet draw us in by your fire to bide;
Joy shall he yours in the morning t
90
Christmas Carols
Here we stand in the cold and the sleet,
Blowing fingers and stamping feet,
Come from far away you to greet —
You by the fire and we in the street —
Bidding you joy in the morning 1
For ere one half of the night was gone,
Sudden a star has led us on,
Raining bliss and benison —
Bliss to-morrow and more anon,
Joy for every morning.
Goodman Joseph toiled through the snow —
Saw a star o'er a stable low;
Mary she might not further go —
Welcome thatch, and litter below !
Joy was hers in the morning!
And then they heard the angels tell
'Who were the first to cry Nowell?
Animals all, as it befell,
In the stable where they did dwell !
Joy shall he theirs in the morning P
Quoted in The Wind in the Willows^ by Kenneth
Grahame
By permission of Charles Scribner^s Sons
91
The Book of Christmas
Holly Song -<::> -^rv ^=^^ ^c^ ^v> ^;:^^
B'
^LOW, blow, thou winter winde,
Thou art not so unkinde,
As mans ingratitude
Thy tooth is not so keene,
Because thou art not scene,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh ho, sing heigh ho, unto the greene
Mostfrendship is fayning; most Loving, meere Jolly:
Then heigh ho, the holly,
This Life is most jolly.
Freize, freize, thou bitter skie
That dost not bight so nigh
As benefitts forgot:
Though thou the waters warpe,
Thy sting is not so sharpe,
As freind remembred not.
Heigh ho, sing heigh ho, unto the greene holly,
Most frendship is fayning; most Loving, meere folly:
Then heigh ho, the holly.
This Life is most jolly.
William Shakespeare
Before the Paling of the Stars ^^ ^c> -q> ^^
"DEFORE the paling of the stars,
"^ Before the winter morn,
Before the earliest cockcrow,
Jesus Christ was born :
92
Christmas Carols
Born in a stable,
Cradled in a manger,
In the world His hands had made
Born a stranger.
Priest and King lay fast asleep
In Jerusalem,
Young and old lay fast asleep
In crowded Bethlehem:
Saint and Angel, ox and ass.
Kept a watch together
Before the Christmas daybreak
In the winter weather.
Jesus on His Mother's breast
In the stable cold,
Spotless Lamb of God was He,
Shepherd of the fold:
Let us kneel with Mary Maid,
With Joseph bent and hoary.
With Saint and Angel, ox and ass,
To hail the King of Glory.
Christina G. Rossetti
The Minstrels played their Christmas Tune "
' I ^KE minstrels played their Christmas tune
-*- To-night beneath my cottage eaves;
While, smitten by a lofty moon,
The encircling laurels, thick with leaves,
Gave back a rich and dazzling sheen,
That overpowered their natural green.
93
The Book of Christmas
Through hill and valley every breeze
Had sunk to rest with folded wings:
Keen was the air, but could not freeze,
Nor check the music of the strings;
So stout and hardy were the band
That scraped the chords with strenuous hand.
And who but listened ? — till was paid
Respect to every inmate's claim:
The greeting given, the music played,
In honour of each household name,
Duly pronounced with lusty call.
And "merry Christmas" wished to all!
For pleasure hath not ceased to wait
On these expected annual rounds;
Whether the rich man's sumptuous gate
Call forth the unelaborate sounds.
Or they are offered at the door
That guards the lowliest of the poor.
How touching, when, at midnight, sweep
Snow-muffled winds, and all is dark,
To hear — and sink again to sleep !
Or, at an earlier call, to mark.
By blazing fire, the still suspense
Of self-complacent innocence.
The mutual nod, — the grave disguise
Of hearts with gladness brimming o'er;
And some unbidden tears that rise
For names once heard, and heard no more;
94
Christmas Carols
Tears brightened by the serenade
For infant in the cradle laid.
* H< H« * *
Hail, ancient Manners ! sure defence,
Where they survive, of wholesome laws;
Remnants of love whose modest sense
Thus into narrow room withdraws;
Hail, Usages of pristine mould,
And ye that guard them. Mountains old !
5p JJC ^ TfC r{«
Yes, they can make, who fail to find
Short leisure even in busiest days,
Moments, to cast a look behind,
And profit by those kindly rays
That through the clouds do sometimes steal.
And all the far-off past reveal.
William Wordsworth
A Carol from the Old French ^:> ^^ ^:> ^y
T HEAR along our street
"'' Pass the minstrel throngs;
Hark ! they play so sweet.
On their hautboys, Christmas songs 1
Let us by the fire
Ever higher
Sing them till the night expire 1
In December ring
Every day the chimes;
Loud the gleemen sing
Pn the street their merry rhymes.
95
The Book of Christmas
Let us hy the fire
Ever higher
Sing them till the night expire!
Shepherds at the grange,
Where the Babe was born,
Sang, with many a change,
Christmas carols until morn.
Let us hy the fire
Ever higher
Sing them till the night expire I
These good people sang
Songs devout and sweet;
While the rafters rang,
There they stood with freezing feet.
Let us hy the fire
Ever higher
Sing them till the night expire!
* * * *
Who by the fireside stands
Stamps his feet and sings;
But he who blows his hands
Not so gay a carol brings.
Let us hy the fire
Ever higher
Sing them till the night expire!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
A Paraphrase from the Old French
96
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Christmas Carols
From Far Away <;^ -^^ ^^ ^^> -q> ^;:>
F^ROM far away we come to you.
-*■ The snow in the street, and the wind on the door,
To tell of great tidings, strange and true.
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the Jioor.
From far away we come to you,
To tell of great tidings, strange and true.
For as we wandered far and wide,
The snow in the street, and the wind on the door^
What hap do you deem there should us betide?
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
Under a bent when the night was deep,
The snow in the street, and the wind on the door.
There lay three shepherds, tending their sheep.
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
"O ye shepherds, what have ye seen,
The snow in the street, and the wind on the door,
To stay your sorrow and heal your teen?"
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
"In an ox stall this night we saw.
The snow in the street, and the wind on the door,
A Babe and a maid without a flaw.
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
"There was an old man there beside;
The snow in the street, and the wind on the door,
His hair was white, and his hood was wide.
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
H 97
The Book of Christmas
" And as we gazed this thing upon,
The snow in the street, and the wind on the door.
Those twain knelt down to the little one.
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
" And a marvellous song we straight did hear,
The snow in the street, and the wind on the door.
That slew our sorrow and healed our care."
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
News of a fair and a marvellous thing,
The snow in the street, and the wind on the door,
Nowell, Nowell, Nowell, we sing.
Minstrels and maids, stand forth on the floor.
Old English Carol
A Christmas Carol <::> -^i^ ^^ ^^^ -^^ ^^^
**"\ 1 THAT means this glory round our feet,"
^^ The Magi mused, "more bright than morn?"
And voices chanted clear and sweet,
"To-day the Prince of Peace is born !"
*' What means that star," the Shepherds said,
"That brightens through the rocky glen?"
And angels, answering overhead.
Sang, "Peace on earth, good-will to men!"
'Tis eighteen hundred years and more
Since those sweet oracles were dumb;
We wait for Him, like them of yore;
Alas, He seems so slow to come !
98
Christmas Carols
But it was said, in words of gold,
No time or sorrow e'er shall dim,
That little children might be bold
In perfect trust to come to Him.
All round about our feet shall shine
A light like that the wise men saw,
If we our loving wills incline
To that sweet Life which is the Law.
So shall we learn to understand
The simple faith of shepherds then.
And, clasping kindly hand in hand,
Sing, "Peace on earth, good-will to men!"
But they who do their souls no wrong.
But keep at eve the faith of morn,
Shall daily hear the angel-song,
''To-day the Prince of Peace is born !"
James Russell Lowell
A Christmas Carol for Children ^c^ o -oy
/^~^OOD news from heaven the angels bring,
^-'^ Glad tidings to the earth they sing:
To us this day a child is given,
To crown us with the joy of heaven.
This is the Christ, our God and Lord,
Who in all need shall aid afford:
He will Himself our Saviour be.
From sin and sorrow set us free.
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The Book of Christmas
To us that blessedness He brings,
Which from the Father's bounty springs:
That in the heavenly realm we may
With Him enjoy eternal day.
All hail, Thou noble Guest, this morn,
Whose love did not the sinner scorn !
In my distress Thou cam'st to me:
What thanks shall I return to Thee?
Were earth a thoqsand times as fair,
Beset with gold and jewels rare,
She yet were far too poor to be
A narrow cradle. Lord, for Thee.
Ah, dearest Jesus, Holy Child!
Make Thee a bed, soft, undefiled,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.
Praise God upon His heavenly throne,
Who gave to us His only Son:
For this His hosts, on joyful wing,
A blest New Year of mercy sing.
Martin Luther
TOO
V
CHRISTMAS DAY
The Unbroken Song
T HEARD the bells on Christmas Day,
-^ Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good- will to men!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
104
A Scene of Mediaeval Christmas ^^ <^ <::iy
LET us imagine Christmas Day in a mediaeval town of
Northern England. The cathedral is only partly
finished. Its nave and transepts are the work of Norman
architects, but the choir has been destroyed in order to be
rebuilt by more graceful designers and more skillful hands.
The old city is full of craftsmen assembled to complete the
church. Some have come, as a religious duty, to work
off their tale of sins by bodily labor. Some are animated
by a love of art — simple men who might have rivalled
with the Greeks in ages of more cultivation. Others, again,
are well-known carvers brought for hire from distant towns
and countries beyond the sea. But to-day, and for some
days past, the sound of hammer and chisel has been silent
in the choir. Monks have bustled about the nave, dressing
it up with holly boughs and bushes of yew, and preparing
a stage for the sacred play they are going to exhibit on the
feast-day. Christmas is not like Corpus Christi, and now
the market-place stands inches deep in snow, so that the
Miracles must be enacted beneath a roof instead of in the
open air. And what place so appropriate as the cathedral,
where poor people may have warmth and shelter while they
see the show? Besides, the gloomy old church, with its
windows darkened by the falling snow, lends itself to
candle-light effects that will enhance the splendor of the
scene. Everything is ready. The incense of morning
mass yet lingers round the altar. The voice of the friar,
who told the people from the pulpit the story of Christ's
birth, has hardly ceased to echo. Time has just been
given for a mid-day dinner, and for the shepherds and
The Book of Christmas
farm lads to troop in from the countryside. The monks
are ready at the wooden stage to draw its curtain, and all
the nave is full of eager faces. There you may see the
smith and carpenter, the butcher's wife, the country priest,
and the gray-cowled friar. Scores of workmen, whose
home the cathedral for the time is made, are also here,
and you may know the artists by their thoughtful foreheads
and keen eyes. That young monk carved Madonna and
her Son above the southern porch. Beside him stands
the master-mason, whose strong arms have hewn gigantic
images of prophets and apostles for the pinnacles outside
the choir; and the little man with cunning eyes between
the two is he who cuts such quaint hobgoblins for the gar-
goyles. He has a vein of satire in him, and his humor
overflows into the stone. Many and many a grim beast
and hideous head has he hidden among vine-leaves and
trellis-work upon the porches. Those who know him
well are loath to anger him, for fear their sons and sons'
sons should laugh at them forever caricatured in solid
stone.
Hark! there sounds the bell. The curtain is drawn,
and the candles blaze brightly round the wooden stage.
What is this first scene? We have God in Heaven, dressed
like a pope with triple crown, and attended by his court of
angels. They sing and toss up censers till he lifts his
hand and speaks. In a long Latin speech he unfolds the
order of creation and his will concerning man. At the
end of it up leaps an ugly buffoon, in goatskin, with rams'
horns upon his head. Some children begin to cry; but
the older people laugh, for this is the Devil, the clown and
comic character, who talks their common tongue, and has
no reverence before the very throne of Heaven. He asks
1 06
Christmas Day
leave to plague men, and receives it; then, with many a
curious caper, he goes down to Hell, beneath the stage.
The angels sing and toss their censers as before, and the
first scene closes to a sound of organs. The next is more
conventional, in spite of some grotesque incidents. It
represents the Fall; the monks hurry over it quickly, as
a tedious but necessary prelude to the birth of Christ.
That is the true Christmas part of the ceremony, and it is
understood that the best actors and most beautiful dresses
are to be reserved for it. The builders of the choir in
particular are interested in the coming scenes, since one
of their number has been chosen, for his handsome face
and tenor voice, to sing the angel's part. He is a young
fellow of nineteen, but his beard is not yet grown, and long
hair hangs down upon his shoulders. A chorister of the
cathedral, his younger brother, will act the Virgin Mary.
At last the curtain is drawn.
We see a cottage room, dimly lighted by a lamp, and
Mary spinning near her bedside. She sings a country
air, and goes on working, till a rustling noise is heard,
more light is thrown upon the stage, and a glorious creature,
in white raiment, with broad golden wings, appears. He
bears a lily, and cries, "Ave Maria, Gratia Plena!" She
does not answer, but stands confused, with down-dropped
eyes and timid mien. Gabriel rises from the ground and
comforts her, and sings aloud his message of glad tidings.
Then Mary gathers courage, and, kneeling in her turn,
thanks God; and when the angel and his radiance dis-
appears, she sings the song of the Magnificat, clearly and
simply, in the darkened room. Very soft and silver sounds
this hymn. through the great church. The women kneel,
and children are hushed as by a lullaby. But some of
107
The Book of Christmas
the hinds and 'prentice-lads begin to think it rather dull.
They are not sorry when the next scene opens with a sheep-
fold and a little camp-fire. Unmistakable bleatings issue
from the fold, and five or six common fellows are sitting
round the blazing wood. One might fancy they had
stepped straight from the church floor to the stage, so
natural do they look. Besides, they call themselves by
common names — Colin and Tom Lie-a-bed and Nimble
Dick. Many a round laugh wakes echoes in the church
when these shepherds stand up, and hold debate about a
stolen sheep. Tom Lie-a-bed has nothing to remark but
that he is very sleepy, and does not want to go in search of
it to-night; Colin cuts jokes, and throws out shrewd sus-
picions that Dick knows something of the matter; but Dick
is sly, and keeps them off the scent, although a few of his
asides reveal to the audience that he is the real thief.
While they are thus talking, silence falls upon the shep-
herds. Soft music from the church organ breathes, and
they appear to fall asleep.
The stage is now quite dark, and for a few moments the
aisles echo only to the dying melody. When, behold, a
ray of light is seen, and splendor grows around the stage
from hidden candles, and in the glory Gabriel appears upon
a higher platform made to look like clouds. The shep-
herds wake in confusion, striving to shelter their eyes from
this unwonted brilliancy. But Gabriel waves his lily,
spreads his great gold wings, and bids good cheer with
clarion voice. The shepherds fall to worship, and suddenly
round Gabriel there gathers a choir of angels, and a song
of "Gloria in Excelsis" to the sound of a deep organ is
heard far off. From distant aisles it swells, and seems to
come from heaven. Through a long resonant fugue the
io8
Christmas Day
glory flies, and as it ceases with complex conclusion, the
lights die out, the angels disappear, and Gabriel fades into
the darkness. Still the shepherds kneel, rustically chanting
a carol half in Latin, half in English, which begins "In
dulci Jubilo." The people know it well, and when the
chorus rises with "Ubi sunt gaudia?" its wild melody is
caught by voices up and down the nave. This scene makes
deep impression upon many hearts; for the beauty of
Gabriel is rare, and few who see him in his angel's dress
would know him for the lad who daily carves his lilies and
broad water-flags about the pillars of the choir. To that
simple audience he interprets Heaven, and little children
will see him in their dreams. Dark winter nights and
awful forests will be trodden by his feet, made musical by
his melodious voice, and parted by the rustling of his wings.
The youth himself may return to-morrow to the workman's
blouse and chisel, but his memory lives in many minds and
may form a part of Christmas for the fancy of men as yet
unborn.
The next drawing of the curtain shows us the stable of
Bethlehem crowned by its star. There kneels Mary, and
Joseph leans upon his staff. The ox and the ass are close
at hand, and Jesus lies in jeweled robes on straw within
the manger. To right and left bow the shepherds, wor-
shiping in dumb show, while voices from behind chant a
solemn hymn. In the midst of the melody is heard the
flourish of trumpets, and heralds step upon the stage, fol-
lowed by the three crowned kings. They have come from
the far East, led by the star. The song ceases, while drums
and fifes and trumpets play a stately march. The kings
pass by, and do obeisance one by one. Each gives some
costly gift; each doffs his crown and leaves it at the
109
The Book of Christmas
Saviour's feet. Then they retire to a distance and worship
in silence like the shepherds. Again the angels' song is
heard, and while it dies away the curtain closes and the
lights are put out.
The play is over, and the evening has come. The people
must go from the warm church into the frozen snow, and
crunch their homeward way beneath the moon. But in
their minds they carry a sense of light and music and un-
earthly loveliness. Not a scene of this day's pageant will
be lost. It grows within them and creates the poetry of
Christmas. Nor must we forget the sculptors who listen
to the play. We spoke of them minutely, because these
mysteries sank deep into their souls and found a way into
their carvings on the cathedral walls. The monk who made
Madonna by the southern porch will remember Gabriel
and place him bending low in lordly salutation by her side.
The painted glass of the chapter-house will glow with fiery
choirs of angels learned by heart that night. And who
does not know the mocking devils and quaint satyrs that
the humorous sculptor carved among his fruits and
flowers ? Some of the misereres of the stalls still bear por-
traits of the shepherd thief, and of the ox and ass who
blinked so blindly when the kings, by torchlight, brought
their dazzling gifts. Truly these old miracle-plays and
the carved work of cunning hands that they inspired are
worth to us more than all the delicate creations of Italian
pencils. Our homely Northern churches still retain, for
the child who reads their bosses and their sculptured fronts,
more Christmas poetry than we can find in Fra Angelico's
devoutness or the liveliness of Giotto. Not that Southern
artists have done nothing for our Christmas. Cimabue's
gigantic angels at Assisi, and the radiant seraphs of Raphael
no
Christmas Day
or of Signorelli, were seen by Milton in his Italian journey.
He gazed in Romish churches on graceful Nativities, into
which Angelico and Credi threw their simple souls. How
much they tinged his fancy we cannot say. But what we
know of heavenly hierarchies we later men have learned
from Milton ; and what he saw he spoke, and what he spoke
in sounding verse lives for us now and sways our reason,
and controls our fancy, and makes fine art of high theology.
John Addington Symonds
Christmas in Dreamthorp ^y ^;:> ^ .^^ ^:::y
nPHIS, then, is Christmas. Everything is silent in Dream-
■^ thorp. The smith's hammer reposes beside the anvil.
The weaver's flying shuttle is at rest. Through the clear,
wintry sunshine the bells this morning rang from the gray
church tower amid the leafless elms, and up the walk the
villagers trooped in their best dresses and their best faces
— the latter a little reddened by the sharp wind: mere red-
ness in the middle aged; in the maids wonderful bloom
to the eyes of their lovers — and took their places decently
in the ancient pews. The clerk read the beautiful prayers
of our Church, which seem so much more beautiful at
Christmas than at any other period. For that very feel-
ing which breaks down at this time the barriers which
custom, birth, or wealth have erected between man and
man, strikes down the barrier of time which intervenes
between the worshipper of to-day and the great body of
worshippers w^ho are at rest in their graves. On such a
day as this, hearing these prayers, we feel a kinship with
the devout generations who heard them long ago. The
III
The Book of Christmas
devout lips of the Christian dead murmured the responses
which we now murmur; along this road of prayer did
their thoughts of our innumerable dead, our brothers and
sisters in faith and hope, approach the Maker, even as
ours at present approach Him.
Prayers over, the clergyman — who is no Boanerges, or
Chrysostom, golden-mouthed, but a loving, genial-hearted
pious man, the whole extent of his life, from boyhood un-
til now, full of charity and kindly deeds, as autumn fields
with heavy, wheaten ears; the clergyman, I say — for the
sentence is becoming unwieldy on my hands and one must
double back to secure connection — read out in that silvery
voice of his, which is sweeter than any music to my ear,
those chapters of the New Testament that deal with the
birth of the Saviour. And the red-faced rustic congrega-
tion hung on the good man's voice as he spoke of the In-
fant brought forth in a manger, of the shining angels that
appeared in the mid-air to the shepherds, of the miracu-
lous star that took its station in the sky, and of the wise
men who came from afar and laid their gifts of the frank-
incense and myrrh at the feet of the child. With the
story every one was familiar, but on that day, and backed
by the persuasive melody of the reader's voice it seemed
to all quite new — at least they listened attentively as if it
were. The discourse that followed possessed no remark-
able thoughts; it dealt simply with the goodness of the
Maker of heaven and earth, and the shortness of time,
with the duties of thankfulness and charity to the poor;
and I am persuaded that every one who heard returned to
his house in a better frame of mind. And so the service
remitted us all to our own homes, to what roast-beef and
plum-pudding slender means permitted, to gatherings
112
Christmas Day
around cheerful fires, to half-pleasant, half-sad remem-
brances of the dead and absent.
Alexander Smith
By the Christmas Fire -^^ ^^^ "^r^ ^::^ ^c^
■\ T THEN the fire has reached a degree of intensity and
^ * magnitude which Rosalind thinks adequate to the
occasion, I take down a well-worn volume which opens of
itself at a well-worn page. It is a book which I have read
and reread many times, and always with a kindling sym-
pathy and affection for the man who wrote it; in what-
ever mood I take it up, there is something in it which
touches me with a sense of kinship. It is not a great
book, but it is a book of the heart, and books of the heart
have passed beyond the outer court of criticism before we
bestow upon them that phrase of supreme regard. There
are other books of the heart around me, but on Christmas
Eve it is Alexander Smith's " Dreamthorp " which always
seems to lie at my hand, and when I take up the well-
worn volume it falls open at the essay on " Christmas." It
is a good many years since Rosalind and I began to read
together on Christmas Eve this beautiful meditation on the
season, and now it has gathered about itself such a host of
memories that it has become part of our common past.
It is indeed a veritable palimpsest, overlaid with tender
and gracious recollections out of which the original
thought gains a new and subtle sweetness. As I read it
aloud I know that she sees once more the familiar land-
scape about Dreamthorp, with the low dark hill in the
background, and over it " the tender radiance that pre-
cedes the moon," the village windows are all lighted and
I 113
The Book of Christmas
the " whole place shines like a congregation of glow-
worms." There are the skaters still " leaning against the
frosty wind"; there is "the gray church tower amid the
leafless elms," around which the echoes of the morning
peal of Christmas bells still hover; the village folk have
gathered, "in their best dresses and their best faces"; the
beautiful service of the church has been read and answered
with heartfelt responses, the familiar story has been told
again simply and urgently, with applications for every
thankful soul, and then the congregation has gone to its
homes and its festivities — all these things, I am sure, lie
within Rosalind's vision although she seems to see nothing
but the ruddy blaze of the fire; all these things I see as I
have seen them these many Christmas Eves agone; but
with this familiar landscape there are mingled all the
sweet and sorrowful memories of our common life, recalled
at this hour that the light of the highest truth may inter-
pret them anew in the divine language of hope. I read
on until I come to the quotation from the " Hymn to the
Nativity " and then I close the book, and take up a copy
of Milton close at hand.
Hamilton W. Mabie in My Study Fire
By permission of Dodd, Mead 6r= Co.
Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity ^^
' I ^HIS is the month, and this the happy morn
-^ Wherein the Son of Heaven's Eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring;
For so the holy sages once did sing
114
Christmas Day
That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.
That glorious Form, that Light unsufferable,
And that far-beaming blaze of Majesty
Wherewith He, wont at Heaven's high council-table
To sit the midst of Trinal Unity,
He laid aside; and, here with us to be,
Forsook the courts of everlasting day.
And chose with us a darksome house of mortal clay.
Say, heavenly Muse, shall not thy sacred vein
AfiFord a present to the Infant God ?
Hast thou no verse, no hymn, or solemn strain
To welcome Him to this His new abode
Now while the heaven, by the sun's team untrod,
Hath took no print of the approaching light.
And all the spangled host keep watch in squadrons bright?
See how from far, upon the eastern road.
The star-led wizards haste with odours sweet:
O run, prevent them with thy humble ode
And lay it lowly at His blessed feet;
Have thou the honour first thy Lord to greet,
And join thy voice unto the Angel quire
From out His secret altar touched with hallow'd fire.
The Hymn
It was the winter wild
While the heaven-born Child
All meanly wrapt in the rude manger lies;
Nature in awe to Him
115
The Book of Christmas
Had doff' d her gaudy trim,
With her great Master so to sympathize:
It was no season then for her
To wanton with the sun, her lusty paramour.
Only with speeches fair
She woos the gentle air
To hide her guilty front with innocent snow;
And on her naked shame,
Pollute with sinful blame.
The saintly veil of maiden white to throw;
Confounded, that her Maker's eyes
Should look so near upon her foul deformities.
But He, her fears to cease.
Sent down the meek-eyed Peace;
She, crown'd with olive green, came softly sliding
Down through the turning sphere,
His ready harbinger.
With turtle wing the amorous clouds dividing;
And waving wide her myrtle wand,
She strikes a universal peace through sea and land.
No war, or battle's sound
Was heard the world around:
The idle spear and shield were high uphung;
The hooked chariot stood
Unstain'd with hostile blood;
The trumpet spake not to the armed throng;
And kings sat still with awful eye.
As if they surely knew their sovran Lord was by.
But peaceful was the night
Wherein the Prince of Light
ii6
Christmas Day
His reign of peace upon the earth began;
The winds, with wonder whist,
Smoothly, the waters kist.
Whispering new joys to the mild ocean —
Who now hath quite forgot to rave,
While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave,
The stars, with deep amaze,
Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze.
Bending one way their precious influence;
And will not take their flight
For all the morning light,
Or Lucifer that often warn'd them thence;
But in their glimmering orbs did glow
Until their Lord Himself bespake, and bid them go.
And though the shady gloom
Had given day her room.
The sun himself withheld his wonted speed,
And hid his head for shame,
As his inferior flame
The new-enlightened world no more should need ;
He saw a greater Sun appear
Than his bright throne, or burning axletree could bean
The shepherds on the lawn
Or ere the point of dawn
Sate simply chatting in a rustic row;
Full little thought they than
That the mighty Pan
Was kindly come to live with them below;
Perhaps their loves, or else their sheep
Was all that did their silly thoughts so busy keep : —
117
The Book of Christmas
When such music sweet
Their hearts and ears did greet
As never was by mortal finger strook —
Divinely-warbled voice
Answering the stringed noise,
As all their souls in blissful rapture took:
The air, such pleasure loth to lose.
With thousand echoes still prolongs each heavenly close,
5fc jjj ^ •fi ^ jf* Si*
Such music (as 'tis said)
Before was never made
But when of old the Sons of Morning sung,
While the Creator great
His constellations set
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung;
And cast the dark foundations deep,
And bid the weltering waves their oozy channel keep.
Ring out, ye crystal spheres !
Once bless our human ears.
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the bass of heaven's deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.
For if such holy song
Enwrap our fancy long,
Time will run back, and fetch the age of gold;
And speckled Vanity
Will sicken soon and die,
ii8
Christmas Day
And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;
And Hell itself will pass away,
And leave her dolorous mansions to the peering day.
Yea, Truth and Justice then
Will down return to men,
Orb'd in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing,
Mercy will sit between
Throned in celestial sheen.
With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering;
And Heaven, as at some festival,
Will open wide the gates of her high palace-hall.
But see ! the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest;
Time is, our tedious song should here have ending:
Heaven's youngest-teemed star
Hath fix'd her polish'd car,
Her sleeping Lord with hand-maid lamp attending:
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed Angels sit in order serviceable.
John Milton
Christmas Church ^^^y ^cr^y ^c^ ^^ ^^r^y '«;^
A^T'HEN I awoke on Christmas morning, while I lay
* * musing on my pillow, I heard the sound of little feet
pattering outside of the door, and a whispering consulta-
tion. Presently a choir of small voices chanted forth an old
Christmas carol, the burden of which was,
Rejoice, our Saviour he was born
On Christmas Day in the morning.
119
The Book of Christmas
I rose softly, slipped on my clothes, opened the door sud-
denly, and beheld one of the most beautiful little fairy
groups that a painter could imagine. It consisted of a
boy and two girls, the eldest not more than six, and lovely
as seraphs. They were going the rounds of the house, and
singing at every chamber-door; but my sudden appearance
frightened them into mute bashfulness. They remained
for a moment playing on their lips with their fingers, and
now and then stealing a shy glance from under their eye-
brows, until, as if by one impulse, they scampered away,
and as they turned an angle of the gallery, I heard them
laughing in triumph at their escape.
Everything conspired to produce kind and happy feel-
ings in this stronghold of old-fashioned hospitality. The
window of my chamber looked out upon what in summer
would have been a beautiful landscape. There was a
sloping lawn, a fine stream winding at the foot of it, and
a tract of park beyond, with noble clumps of trees, and
herds of deer. At a distance was a neat hamlet, with the
smoke from the cottage chimneys hanging over it; and a
church with its dark spire in strong relief against the
clear cold sky. The house was surrounded with ever-
greens, according to the English custom, which would
have given almost an appearance of summer; but the
morning was extremely frosty; the light vapour of the pre-
ceding evening had been precipitated by the cold, and cov-
ered all the trees and every blade of grass with its fine
crystallizations. The rays of a bright morning sun had
a dazzling effect among the glittering foliage. A robin,
perched upon the top of a mountain-ash that hung its
clusters of red berries just before my window, was basking
himself in the sunshine, and piping a few querulous notes;
I20
THE VIRGIN ADORING THE INFANT CHILD. Correggio.
Christmas Day
and a peacock was displaying all the glories of his train,
and strutting with the pride and gravity of a Spanish
grandee on the terrace-walk below.
I had scarcely dressed myself, when a servant appeared
to invite me to family prayers. I afterwards understood
that early morning service was read on every Sunday
and saint's day throughout the year, either by Mr. Brace-
bridge or by some member of the family. It was once
almost universally the case at the seats of the nobility and
gentry of England, and it is much to be regretted that the
custom is fallen into neglect; for the dullest observer must
be sensible of the order and serenity prevalent in those
households, where the occasional exercise of a beautiful
form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the key-
note to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to
harmony.
**If you are disposed to go to church," said Frank Brace-
bridge, "I can promise you a specimen of my cousin Simon's
musical achievements. As the church is destitute of an
organ, he has formed a band from the village amateurs,
and established a musical club for their improvement; he
has also sorted a choir, as he sorted my father's pack of
hounds, according to the directions of Jervaise Markham,
in his Country Contentments; for the bass he has sought
out all the 'deep solemn mouths,' and for the tenor the
Moud ringing mouths,' among the country bumpkins; and
for 'sweet mouths,' he has culled with curious taste among
the prettiest lasses in the neighbourhood; though these last,
he affirms, are the most difficult to keep in tune; your
pretty female singer being exceedingly wayward and ca-
pricious, and very liable to accident."
As the morning, though frosty, was remarkably fine
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The Book of Christmas
and clear, the most of the family walked to the church,
which was a very old building of gray stone, and stood near
a village, about half-a-mile from the park gate. Adjoining
it was a low snug parsonage, which seemed coeval with
the church. The front of it was perfectly matted with a
yew-tree that had been trained against its walls, through
the dense foliage of which apertures had been formed to
admit light into the small antique lattices. As we passed
this sheltered nest, the parson issued forth and preceded
us.
The usual services of the choir were managed tolerably
well, the vocal parts generally lagging a little behind the
instrumental, and some loitering fiddler now and then
making up for lost time by travelling over a passage with
prodigious celerity, and clearing more bars than the keen-
est fox-hunter to be in at the death. But the great trial
was an anthem that had been prepared and arranged by
Master Simon, and on which he had founded great expec-
tation. Unluckily there was a blunder at the very outset;
the musicians became flurried; Master Simon was in a
fever, everything went on lamely and irregularly until
they came to a chorus beginning ''Now let us sing with
one accord," which seemed to be a signal for parting com-
pany: all became discord and confusion ; each shifted for
himself, and got to the end as well, or rather as soon, as
he could, excepting one old chorister in a pair of horn spec-
tacles bestriding and pinching a long sonorous nose; who,
happening to stand a little apart, and being wrapped up
in his own melody, kept on a quavering course, wriggling
his head, ogling his book, and winding all up by a nasal
solo of at least three bars' duration.
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Christmas Day
The parson gave us a most erudite sermon on the rites
and ceremonies of Christmas, and the propriety of observ-
ing it not merely as a day of thanksgiving, but of rejoicing;
supporting the correctness of his opinions by the earliest
usages of the Church, and enforcing them by the authori-
ties of Theophilus of Cesarea, St. Cyprian, St. Chrysostom,
St. Augustine and a cloud more of Saints and Fathers,
from whom he made copious quotations. I was a little
at a loss to perceive the necessity of such a mighty array
of forces to maintain a point which no one present seemed
inclined to dispute; but I soon found that the good man
had a legion of ideal adversaries to contend with ; having,
in the course of his researches on the subject of Christmas,
got completely embroiled in the sectarian controversies
of the Revolution, when the Puritans made such a fierce
assault upon the ceremonies of the Church, and poor old
Christmas was driven out of the land by proclamation of
parliament. The worthy parson lived but with times past,
and knew but a little of the present.
Shut up among worm-eaten tomes in the retirement of
his antiquated little study, the pages of old times were to
him as the gazettes of the day; while the era of the Revo-
lution was mere modern history. He forgot that nearly
two centuries had elapsed since the fiery persecution of
poor mince-pie throughout the land; when plum-porridge
was denounced as "mere popery," and roast beef as anti-
christian; and that Christmas has been brought in again
triumphantly with the merry court of King Charles at the
Restoration. He kindled into warmth with the ardour
of his contest, and the host of imaginary foes with whom
he had to combat; had a stubborn conflict with old Prynne
and two or three other forgotten champions of the Round
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The Book of Christmas
heads, on the subject of Christmas festivity; and concluded
by urging his hearers, in the most solemn and affecting
manner, to stand to the traditionary customs of their fathers,
and feast and make merry on this joyful anniversary of
the Church.
I have seldom know^n a sermon attended apparently
with more immediate effects; for on leaving the church
the congregation seemed one and all possessed v^ith the
gaiety of spirit so earnestly enjoined by their pastor. The
elder folks gathered in knots in the churchyard, greeting
and shaking hands; and the children ran about crying
Ule! Ule! and repeating some uncouth rhymes, which
the parson, who had joined us, informed me had been
handed down from days of yore. The villagers doffed
their hats to the Squire as he passed, giving him the good
wishes of the season with every appearance of heartfelt
sincerity, and were invited by him to the Hall, to take some-
thing to keep out the cold of the weather; and I heard
blessings uttered by several of the poor, which convinced
me that, in the midst of his enjoyments, the worthy old
cavalier had not forgotten the true Christmas virtue of
charity.
Washington Irving
Dolly urges Silas Marner to go to Church on
Christmas Day ^=:> -<^^ ^::> ^:> ^^^ ^^^
" ' I ""HERE'S the bakehus if you could make up your mind
-*■ to spend a twopence on the oven now and then, —
not every week, in course — I shouldn't like to do that
myself, — you might carry your bit o' dinner there, for it's
nothing but right to have a bit o' summat hot of a Sunday,
124
Christmas Day
and not to make it as you can't know your dinner from
Saturday. But now, upo' Christmas-day, this blessed
Christmas as is ever coming, if you was to take your dinner
to the bakehus, and go to church, and see the holly and the
yew, and hear the anthim, and then take the sacramen',
you'd be a deal the better, and you'd know which end you
stood on, and you could put your trust i' Them as knows
better nor we do, seein' you'd ha' done what it lies on us all
to do."
Dolly's exhortation, which was an unusually long effort
of speech for her, was uttered in the soothing persuasive
tone with which she would have tried to prevail on a sick
man to take his medicine, or a basin of gruel for which he
had no appetite.
But now, little Aaron, having become used to the weaver's
awful presence, had advanced to his mother's side, and
Silas, seeming to notice him for the first time, tried to return
Dolly's signs of good-will by offering the lad a bit of lard-
cake. Aaron shrank back a little, and rubbed his head
against his mother's shoulder, but still thought the piece
of cake worth the risk of putting his hand out for it.
" Oh, for shame, Aaron," said his mother, taking him on
her lap, however; ''why, you don't want cake again yet
awhile. He's wonderful hearty," she went on, with a little
sigh — "that he is, God knows. He's my youngest, and we
spoil him sadly, for either me or the father must allays hev
him in our sight — that we must."
She stroked Aaron's brown head, and thought it must do
Master Marner good to see such a "pictur of a child.'
But Marner, on the other side of the hearth, saw the neat
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The Book of Christmas
featured rosy face as a mere dim round, with two dark
spots in it.
"And he's got a voice Hke a bird — you wouldn't think,"
Dolly went on; "he can sing a Christmas carril as his
father's taught him; and I take it for a token as he'll come
to good, as he can learn the good tunes so quick. Come,
Aaron, stan' up and sing the carril to Master Marner,
come.'*
Aaron replied by rubbing his forehead against his
mother's shoulder. "Oh, that's naughty," said Dolly,
gently. "Stan' up, when mother tells you, and let me hold
the cake till you've done."
Aaron was not indisposed to display his talents, even to an
ogre, under protecting circumstances ; and after a few more
signs of coyness, consisting chiefly in rubbing the backs of
his hands over his eyes, and then peeping between them at
Master Marner, to see if he looked anxious for the "carril,"
he at length allowed his head to be duly adjusted, and
standing behind the table, which let him appear above it
only as far as his broad frill, so that he looked like a cherubic
head untroubled with a body, he began with a clear chirp,
and in a melody that had the rhythm of an industrious
hammer, —
"God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas-Day."
Dolly listened with a devout look, glancing at Marner in
some confidence that this strain would help to allure him to
church.
"That's Christmas music," she said, when Aaron had
ended, and had secured his piece of cake again. "There's
126
Christmas Day
no other music equil to the Christmas music — 'Hark the
erol angils sing.' And you may judge what it is at church,
Master Marner, with the bassoon and the voices, as you
can't help thinking you've got to a better place a'ready —
for I wouldn't speak ill o' this world, seeing as Them put
us in it as knows best; but what wi' the drink, and the
quarrelling, and the bad illnesses, and the hard dying, as
I've seen times and times, one's thankful to hear of a better.
The boy sings pretty, don't he, Master Marner?"
"Yes," said Silas, absently, ''very pretty,"
The Christmas carol, with its hammer-like rhythm, had
fallen on his ears as strange music, quite unlike a hymn, and
could have none of the effect Dolly contemplated. But he
wanted to show her that he was grateful, and the only mode
that occurred to him was to offer Aaron a bit more cake.
George Eliot
Yule in the Old Town ^;> ^^ ^^ <::^ ^:y
A WHOLE fortnight we kept it. Real Christmas was
-^^*- from Little Christmas Eve, which was the night before
the Holy Eve proper, till New Year's. Then there was a week
of supplementary festivities before things slipped back into
their wonted groove. That was the time of parties and
balls. The great ball of the year was on the day after
Christmas, — Second Christmas Day we called it, — when
all the quality attended at the club-house, where the amt-
man and the burgomaster, the bishop and the rector of the
Latin School, did the honors and received the people.
That was the grandest of the town functions. The school
ball, late in autumn, was the jolliest, for then the boys
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The Book of Christmas
invited each the girl he Hked best, and the older people were
guests and outsiders, so to speak. The Latin School —
the Cathedral School, as it was still called — was the oldest
institution there next to the church and the bishop, and
when it took the stage it was easily first while it lasted.
The Yule ball, though it was a rather more formal affair,
for all that was neither stiff nor tiresome. Nothing was, in
the Old Town ; there was too much genuine kindness for that.
And then it was the recognized occasion when matches
were made by enterprising mammas, or by the young
themselves, and when engagements were declared and dis-
cussed as the great news of the day. We heard all of those
things afterward and thought a great fuss was being made
over nothing much. For when a young couple were de-
clared engaged, that meant that there was no more fun to
be got out of them. They were given, after that, to moon-
ing about by themselves and to chasing us children away
when we ran across them; until they happily returned to
their senses, got married, and became reasonable human
beings once more.
When we had been sent to bed, father and mother used
to go away in their Sunday very best, and we knew they
would not return until two o'clock in the morning, a fact
which alone invested the occasion with unwonted gravity,
for the Old Town kept early hours. At ten o'clock, when
the watchman droned his sleepy lay, absurdly warning the
people to
"Be quick and bright,
Watch fire and light,
Our clock it has struck ten,"
it was ordinarily tucked in and asleep. But that night we
lay awake a long time listening to the muffled sound of
128
Christmas Day
heavy wheels in the snow, rolling unceasingly past, and
trying to picture to ourselves the grandeur they conveyed.
Every carriage in the town was then in use and doing over-
time. I think there were as many as four.
When we were not dancing or playing games, we literally
ate our way through the two holiday weeks. Pastry by the
mile did we eat, and general indigestion brooded over the
town when it emerged into the white light of the new year.
At any rate, it ought to have done so. It is a prime article
of faith with the Danes to this day that for any one to go out
of a friend's house, or of anybody's house, in the Christmas
season without partaking of its cheer, is to ''bear away their
Yule," which no one must do on any account. Every
house was a bakery from the middle of December until
Christmas Eve, and, oh! the quantities of cakes we ate,
and such cakes ! We were sixteen normally in our home,
and mother mixed the dough for her cakes in a veritable
horse trough kept for that exclusive purpose. As much as a
sack of flour went in, I guess, and gallons of molasses, and
whatever else went to the mixing. For weeks there had been
long and anxious speculations as to "what father would do,"
and gloomy conferences between him and mother over the
state of the family pocketbook, which was never plethoric;
but at last the joyful message ran through the house from
attic to kitchen that the appropriation had been made,
"even for citron," which meant throwing all care to the
winds. The thrill of it, when we children stood by and saw
the generous avalanche going into the trough ! What
would not come out of it ! The whole family turned to and
helped make the cakes and cut the "pepper nuts," which
were little squares of cake dough we played cards for and
stuffed our pockets with, gnashing them incessantly. Talk
K 129
The Book of Christmas
about eating between meals: ours was a continuous per-
formance for two solid weeks.
The pepper nuts were the real staple of Christmas to us
children. We rolled the dough in long strings like slender
eels and then cut it a little on the bias. They were good,
those nuts, when baked brown. I wish I had some now.
Christmas Eve was, of course, the great and blessed
time. That was the one night in the year when in the gray
old Domkirke services were held by candle-light.
A myriad wax candles twinkled in the gloom, but did not
dispel it. It lingered under the great arches where the
voice of the venerable minister, the responses of the congre-
gation, and above it all the boyish treble of the choir,
billowed and strove, now dreamingly with the memories of
ages past, now sharply, tossed from angle to corner in the
stone walls, and again in long thunderous echoes sweeping
all before it on the triumphant strains of the organ, like a
victorious army with banners crowding through the halls of
time. So it sounded to me as sleep gently tugged at my
eyelids. The air grew heavy with the smell of evergreens
and of burning wax, and as the thunder of war drew farther
and farther away, in the shadow of the great pillars stirred
the phantoms of mailed knights whose names were hewn
in the gravestones there. We youngsters clung to the
skirts of mother as we went out and the great doors fell
to behind us. And yet those Christmas eves, with mother's
gentle eyes forever inseparable from them, and with the
glad cries of ''Merry Christmas!" ringing all about, have
left a touch of sweet peace in my heart which all the years
have not effaced, nor ever will. . . .
When Ansgarius preached the White Christ to the vikings
of the North, so runs the legend of the Christmas-tree, the
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Christmas Day-
Lord sent his three messengers, Faith, Hope, and Love, to
help light the first tree. Seeking one that should be high as
hope, wide as love, and that bore the sign of the cross on
every bough, they chose the balsam fir, which best of all the
trees in the forest met the requirements. . . . Wax candles
are the only real thing for a Christmas-tree, candles of wax
that mingle their perfume with that of the burning fir,
not the by-product of some coal-oil or other abomination.
What if the boughs do catch fire ? They can be watched,
and too many candles are tawdry, anyhow. Also, red
apples, oranges, and old-fashioned cornucopias made of
colored paper, and made at home, look a hundred times
better and fitter in the green; and so do drums and toy
trumpets and wald-horns, and a rocking-horse reined up
in front that need not have cost forty dollars, or anything
Hke it.
I am thinking of one, or rather two, a little piebald team
with a wooden seat between, for which mother certainly did
not give over seventy-five cents at the store, that as "Belcher
and Mamie" — the name was bestowed on the beasts at
sight by Kate, aged three, who bossed the play-room — gave
a generation of romping children more happiness than all the
expensive railroads and trolley-cars and steam engines that
are considered indispensable to keeping Christmas nowa-
days. And the Noah's Ark with Noah and his wife and all
the animals that went two. by two — ah, well, I haven't set
out to preach a sermon on extravagance that makes no one
happier, but I wish — The legend makes me think of the
holly that grew in our Danish woods. We called it ''Christ-
thorn," for to us it was of that the crown of thorns was made
with which the cruel soldiers mocked our Saviour, and the
red berries were the drops of blood that fell from his
131
The Book of Christmas
anguished brow. Therefore the holly was a sacred tree,
and to this day the woods in which I find it seem to me like
the forest where the Christmas roses bloomed in the night
when the Lord was born, different from all other woods,
and better.
Jacob Riis in The Old Town
The Mahogany Tree ^> ^^ ^^ ^;^ -^::y <:^
r^HRISTMAS is here;
^^ Winds whistle shrill,
Icy and chill,
Little care we:
Little we fear
Weather without,
Sheltered about
The mahogany tree.
Once on the bougies,
Birds of rare plume
Sang, in its bloom;
Night-birds are we:
Here we carouse
Singing, like them.
Perched round the stem
Of the jolly old tree.
Here let us sport,
Boys, as we sit;
Laughter and wit
Flashing so free.
Life is but short —
When we are gone,
132
Christmas Day
Let them sing on,
Round the old tree.
Evenings we knew,
Happy as this;
Faces we miss.
Pleasant to see.
Kind hearts and true,
Gentle and just,
Peace to your dust !
We sing round the tree=
Care, like a dun,
Lurks at the gate:
Let the dog wait:
Happy we'll be !
Drink every one;
Pile up the coals.
Fill the red bowls,
Round the old tree !
Drain we the cup. —
Friend, art afraid ?
Spirits are laid
In the Red Sea.
Mantle it up;
Empty it yet;
Let us forget,
Round the old tree.
Sorrows, begone!
Life and its ills,
Duns and their bills,
Bid we to flee.
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The Book of Christmas
Come with the dawn,
Blue-devil sprite,
Leave us to-night,
Round the old tree.
William Makepeace Thackeray
The Holly and the Ivy ^^ <::^ -o^y -
HTHE Holly and the Ivy,
-■- Now both are full well grown;
Of all the trees that spring in wood,
The Holly bears the crown.
The Holly bears a blossom.
As white as lily flow'r;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
To be our sweet Saviour,
To be our sweet Saviour,
The Holly bears a berry.
As red as any blood;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
To do poor sinners good.
The Holly bears a prickle.
As sharp as any thorn;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
On Christmas day in the morn,
On Christmas day in the morn.
The Holly bears a bark.
As bitter as any gall;
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ,
For to redeem us all.
134
Christmas Day
The Holly and the Ivy,
Now both are full well grown;
Of all the trees that spring in wood,
The Holly bears the crown,
The Holly hears the crown.
Old English Song
Ballade of Christmas Ghosts ^^ -^::> ^:y ^>
"DETWEEN the moonlight and the fire,
■*-^ In winter twilights long ago,
What ghosts we raised for your desire,
To make your merry blood run slow;
How old, how grave, how wise we grow,
No Christmas ghost can make us chill.
Save those that troop in mournful row.
The ghosts we all can raise at will I
The beasts can talk in barn and byre,
On Christmas Eve, old legends know,
As year by year the years retire;
We men fall silent then, I trow;
Such sights hath memory to show.
Such voices from the silence thrill,
Such shapes return with Christmas snow —
The ghosts we all can raise at will.
Oh, children of the village choir,
Your carols on the midnight throw;
Oh, bright across the mist and mire,
Ye ruddy hearths of Christmas, glow I
Beat back the dread, beat down the woe,
Let's cheerily descend the hill;
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The Book of Christmas
Be welcome all, to come or go,
The ghosts we all can raise at will !
Envoy
Friend, sursum corda, soon and slow
We part like guests, who've joyed their fill;
Forget them not, nor mourn them so,
The ghosts we all can raise at will.
Andrew Lang
By permission of Longmans, Green, &^ Co., London, and
Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.
Christmas Treasures ^^:y ^^^ ^^::y •^^ ^^^ ^^
T COUNT my treasures o'er with care, —>
^ The little toy my darling knew,
A little sock of faded hue,
A little lock of golden hair.
Long years ago this holy time.
My little one — my all to me —
Sat robed in white upon my knee
And heard the merry Christmas chime.
"Tell me, my little golden -head.
If Santa Claus should come to-night,
What shall he bring my baby bright, —
What treasure for my boy?" I said.
And then he named this little toy,
While in his round and mournful eyes
There came a look of sweet surprise,
That spake his quiet, trustful joy.
136
Christmas Day
And as he lisped his evening prayer
He asked the boon with childish grace,
Then, toddling to the chimney place,
He hung this little stocking there.
That night, while lengthening shadows crept,
I saw the white-winged angels come
With singing to our lowly home
And kiss my darling as he slept.
They must have heard his little prayer,
For in the morn, with rapturous face,
He toddled to the chimney-place.
And found this little treasure there.
They came again one Christmas-tide, —
That angel host, so fair and white !
And singing all that glorious night.
They lured my darling from my side.
A little sock, a little toy,
A little lock of golden hair.
The Christmas music on the air,
A watching for my baby boy!
But if again that angel train
And golden-head come back for me,
To bear me to Eternity,
My watching will not be in vain !
From A Little Book of Western Verse; copyright, 1889, by
Eugene Field; published by Charles Scribner's Sons
137
The Book of Christmas
Wassailer's Song ^:^ o ^;^ -^^ ^Ci^ ^^
"X^TASSAIL! wassail! all over the town,
* ^ Our toast it is white, and our ale it is brown ;
Our bowl is made of a maplin tree;
We be good fellows all ; — I drink to thee.
Here's to our horse, and to his right ear,
God send master a happy new year;
A happy new year as e'er he did see, —
With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.
Here's to our mare, and to her right eye,
God send our mistress a good Christmas pie;
A good Christmas pie as e'er I did see, —
With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.
Here's to our cow, and to her long tail,
God send our master us never may fail
Of a cup of good beer : I pray you draw near,
And our jolly wassail it's then you shall hear.
Be here any maids? I suppose here be some;
Sure they will not let young men stand on the cold stone !
Sing hey O, maids ! come trole back the pin.
And the fairest maid in the house let us all in.
Come, butler, come, bring us a bowl of the best;
I hope your sould in heaven will rest;
But if you do bring us a bowl of the small.
Then down fall butler, and bowl and all.
Robert Southwell
138
VI
CHRISTMAS HYMNS
TTARK ! the herald angels sing,
-*--'■" Glory to the new-born King !
Peace on earth, and mercy mild ;
God and sinners reconciled."
Charles Wesley
142
A Hymn on the Nativity ^:y ^;> ^:y ^^ ^
T SING the birth was born to-night,
^ The author both of life and Hght;
The angels so did sound it.
And like the ravished shepherds said,
Who saw the light, and were afraid.
Yet searched, and true they found it.
The Son of God, th' Eternal King,
That did us all salvation bring.
And freed the soul from danger;
He whom the whole world could not take.
The Word, which heaven and earth did make,
Was now laid in a manger.
The Father's wisdom willed it so.
The Son's obedience knew no No,
Both wills were in one stature;
And as that wisdom had decreed,
The Word was now made Flesh indeed,
And took on Him our nature.
What comfort by Him do we win.
Who made Himself the price of sin,
To make us heirs of Glory!
To see this babe, all innocence,
A martyr born in our defence:
Can man forget this story?
Ben Jonson
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The Book of Christmas
While Shepherds Watched ^^ '<^:> ^:::^ ^^
'X 1 THILE shepherds watch' d their flocks by night,
^ ^ All seated on the ground,
The Angel of the Lord came down.
And glory shone around.
"Fear not," said he (for mighty dread
Had seized their troubled mind) ;
" Glad tidings of great joy I bring
To you and all mankind.
" To you in David's town this day
Is born of David's line
The Saviour, who is Christ the Lord;
And this shall be the sign:
"The heavenly Babe you there shall find
To human view display'd.
All meanly wrapt in swathing-bands,
And in a manger laid."
Thus spake the seraph; and forthwith
Appear'd a shining throng
Of angels praising God, and thus
Address'd their joyful song:
"All glory be to God on high.
And to the earth be peace;
Good-will henceforth from heaven to men
Begin, and never cease!"
Nahum Tate
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Christmas Hymns
O, Little Town of Bethlehem -^ -;^ ^;:> ^:^
O, LITTLE town of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie !
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting light;
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee to-night.
For Christ is born of Mary;
And gathered all above,
While mortals sleep, the angels keep
Their watch of wondering love !
O, morning stars, together
Proclaim the holy birth !
And praises sing to God the King,
And peace to men on earth.
How silently, how silently.
The wondrous gift is given !
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
No ear may hear His coming.
But in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive Him still,
The dear Christ enters in.
O, holy Child of Bethlehem!
Descend to us, we pray!
Cast out our sin, and enter in,
Be born to us to-day.
L 145
The Book of Christmas
We hear the Christmas angels
The great, glad tidings tell;
O, come to us, abide with us,
Our Lord Emmanuel.
Phillips Brooks
The First, Best Christmas Night ^:> ^^^
T IKE small curled feathers, white and soft,
■*~^ The Httle clouds went by,
Across the moon, and past the stars,
And down the western sky:
In upland pastures, where the grass
With frosted dew was white,
Like snowy clouds the young sheep lay,
That first, best Christmas night.
The shepherds slept; and, glimmering faint,
With twist of thin, blue smoke,
Only their fire's cracking flames
The tender silence broke —
Save when a young lamb raised his head,
Or, when the night wind blew,
A nesting bird would softly stir.
Where dusky olives grew —
With finger on her solemn lip.
Night hushed the shadowy earth.
And only stars and angels saw
The Httle Saviour's birth;
Then came such flash of silver light
Across the bending skies,
146
L
Christmas Hymns
The wondering shepherds woke, and hid
Their frightened, dazzled eyes !
And all their gentle sleepy flock
Looked up, then slept again.
Nor knew the light that dimmed the stars
Brought endless peace to men —
Nor even heard the gracious words
That down the ages ring —
"The Christ is born ! the Lord has come,
Good-will on earth to bring!"
Then o'er the moonlit, misty fields,
Dumb with the world's great joy,
The shepherds sought the white -walled town,
Where lay the baby boy —
And oh, the gladness of the world.
The glory of the skies.
Because the longed-for Christ looked up
In Mary's happy eyes !
Margaret D eland in The Old Garden and Other Verses
By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company
It Came upon the Midnight Clear -^^ ^^ ^^r^y
TT came upon the midnight clear,
■^ That glorious song of old.
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold :
Peace to the earth, good-will to men,
From heaven's all gracious King.
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The Book of Christmas
The world in solemn stillness lay-
To hear the angels sing.
Still through the cloven skies they come,
With peaceful wings unfurled;
And still their heavenly music floats
O'er all the weary world:
Above its sad and lowly plains
They bend on hovering wing,
And ever o'er its Babel-sounds
The blessed angels sing.
Yet with the woes of sin and strife
The world has suffered long.
Beneath the angel-strain have rolled
Two thousand years of wrong;
And man at war with man hears not
The love-song that they bring;
Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing.
O ye beneath life's crushing load,
Whose forms are bending low,
Who toil along the climbing way,
With painful steps and slow.
Look now ! for glad and golden hours
Come swiftly on the wing:
Oh, rest beside the weary road,
And hear the angels sing.
For lo ! the days are hastening on,
By prophet bards foretold,
148
Christmas Hymns
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold ;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendours fling,
And the whole world send back the song
Which now the angels sing.
Edmund Hamilton Sears
A Christmas Hymn ^^^ -<c^ ^:> ^^y ^^
OING, Christmas bells!
^ Say to the earth this is the morn
Whereon our Saviour-King is born ;
Sing to all men, — the bond, the free,
The rich, the poor, the high, the low,
The little child that sports in glee,
The aged folk that tottering go, —
Proclaim the morn
That Christ is born.
That saveth them and saveth me!
Sing, angel host !
Sing of the star that God has placed
Above the manger in the east;
Sing of the glories of the night.
The Virgin's sweet humility,
The Babe with kingly robes bedight, —
Sing to all men where'er they be
This Christmas morn;
For Christ is born.
That saveth them and saveth me.
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The Book of Christmas
Sing, sons of earth !
O ransomed seed of Adam, sing !
God liveth, and we have a king !
The curse is gone, the bond are free, —
By Bethlehem's star that brightly beamed,
By all the heavenly signs that be,
We know that Israel is redeemed;
That on this morn
The Christ is born
That saveth you and saveth me !
Sing, O my heart !
Sing thou in rapture this dear morn
Whereon the blessed Prince is born !
And as thy songs shall be of love,
So let my deeds be charity, —
By the dear Lord that reigns above,
By Him that died upon the tree,
By this fair morn
Whereon is born
The Christ that saveth all and me !
From A Little Book of Western Verse; copyright, 1889, by
Eugene Field ; published by Charles Scribner's Sons
The Song of the Shepherds <>y <:^ ^>y ^^
TT was near the first cock-crowing,
■^ And Orion's wheel was going,
When an angel stood before us and our hearts were sore
afraid.
Lo ! his face was like the lightning,
150
Christmas Hymns
When the walls of heaven are whitening,
And he brought us wondrous tidings of a joy that should
not fade.
Then a Splendor shone around us,
In a still field where he found us,
A-watch upon the Shepherd Tower and waiting for the
light;
There where David, as a stripling,
Saw the ewes and lambs go rippling
Down the little hills and hollows at the falling of the night.
Oh, what tender, sudden faces
Filled the old familiar places.
The barley -fields, where Ruth of old went gleaning with the
birds.
Down the skies the host came swirling,
, Like sea-waters white and whirling.
And our hearts were strangely shaken by the wonder of
their words.
Haste, O people : all are bidden —
Haste from places high or hidden :
In Mary's Child the Kingdom comes, the heaven in beauty
bends !
He has made all life completer,
He has made the Plain Way sweeter.
For the stall is His first shelter, and the cattle His first
friends.
He has come! the skies are telling:
He has quit the glorious dwelling;
And first the tidings came to us, the humble shepherd folk.
The Book of Christmas
He has come to field and manger,
And no more is God a Stranger:
He comes as Common Man at home with cart and crooked
yoke.
As the shadow of a cedar
To a traveler in gray Kedar
Will be the kingdom of His love, the kingdom without end.
Tongue and ages may disclaim Him,
Yet the Heaven of heavens will name Him
Lord of prophets. Light of nations, elder Brother, tender
Friend.
Edwin Markham in Lincoln and Other Poems
By permission
A Christmas Hymn ^^^ ^^ ^c^ <::^ ^^ <::y
' I ^ELL me what is this innumerable throng
-*- Singing in the heavens a loud angelic song?
These are they who come with swift and shining feet
From round about the throne of God the Lord of Light to
greet.
O, who are these that hasten beneath the starry sky,
As if with joyful tidings that through the world shall fly?
The faithful shepherds these, who greatly were af eared
When, as they watched their flocks by night, the heavenly
host appeared.
Who are these that follow across the hills of night
A star that westward hurries along the fields of light?
152
THE MADONNA. Murillo.
Christmas Hymns
Three wise men from the east who myrrh and treasure bring
To lay them at the feet of him, their Lord and Christ and
King.
What babe new-born is this that in a manger cries?
Near on her bed of pain his happy mother lies.
O, see ! the air is shaken with white and heavenly wings —
This is the Lord of all the earth, this is the King of kings.
Tell me, how may I join in this holy feast
With all the kneeling world, and I of all the least?
Fear not, O faithful heart, but bring what most is meet;
Bring love alone, true love alone, and lay it at his feet.
Richard Watson Gilder
By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company
A Christmas Hymn for Children ^^ ^:^ <::y
/^UR bells ring to all the earth,
^-^ In excelsis gloria!
But none for Thee made chimes of mirth
On that great morning of Thy birth.
Our coats they lack not silk nor fur,
In excelsis gloria!
Not such Thy Blessed Mother's were;
Full simple garments covered Her.
Our churches rise up goodly high,
In excelsis gloria!
Low in a stall Thyself did lie.
With horned oxen standing by.
153
The Book of Christmas
Incense we breathe and scent of wine,
In excelsis gloria/
Around Thee rose the breath of kine,
Thy only drink Her breast Divine.
We take us to a happy tree,
In excelsis gloria/
The seed was sown that day for Thee
That blossomed out of Calvary.
Teach us to feed Thy poor with meat,
In excelsis gloria/
Who turnest not when we entreat, .
Who givest us Thy Bread to eat.
Amen.
From the volume of Poems by Josephine Daskam Bacon
B}' permission of Charles Scribner^s Sons
Slumber-Songs of the Madonna ^^^ -c^ ^;::>
Prelude
TAANTE saw the great white Rose
-*-^ Half unclose;
Dante saw the golden bees
Gathering from its heart of gold
Sweets untold,
Love's most honeyed harmonies.
Dante saw the threefold bow
Strangely glow,
Saw the Rainbow Vision rise,
154
Christmas Hymns
And the Flame that wore the crown
Bending down
O'er the flowers of Paradise.
Something yet remained, it seems;
In his dreams
Dante missed — as angels may
In their white and burning bliss —
Some small kiss
Mortals meet with every day.
Italy in splendour faints
'Neath her saints!
O, her great Madonnas, too,
Faces calm as any moon
Glows in June,
Hooded with the night's deep blue !
What remains? I pass and hear
Everywhere,
Ay, or see in silent eyes
Just the song she still would sing.
Thus — a-swing
O'er the cradle where He Hes.
Sleep, little baby, I love thee;
Sleep, little king, I am bending above thee I
How should I know what to sing
Here in my arms as I swing thee to sleep?
Hushaby low,
Rockaby so,
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The Book of Christmas
Kings may have wonderful jewels to bring,
Mother has only a kiss for her king !
Why should my singing so make me to weep ?
Only I know that I love thee, I love thee,
Love thee, my little one, sleep.
II
Is it a dream? Ah, yet it seems
Not the same as other dreams!
I can but think that angels sang.
When thou wast born, in the starry sky,
And that their golden harps out-rang
While the silver clouds went by !
The morning sun shuts out the stars.
Which are much loftier than the sun;
But, could we burst our prison -bars
And find the Light whence light begun,
The dreams that heralded thy birth
Were truer than the truths of earth;
And, by that far immortal Gleam,
Soul of my soul, I still would dream !
A ring of light was round thy head,
The great-eyed oxen nigh thy bed
Their cold and innocent noses bowed.
Their sweet breath rose like an incense cloud
In the blurred and mystic lanthorn light!
About the middle of the night
The black door blazed like some great star
With a glory from afar,
156
Christmas Hymns
Or like some mighty chrysolite
Wherein an angel stood with white
Blinding arrowy bladed wings
Before the throne of the King of kings;
And, through it, I could dimly see
A great steed tethered to a tree.
Then, with crimson gems aflame
Through the door the three kings came,
And the black Ethiop unrolled
The richly broidered cloth of gold.
And poured forth before thee there
Gold and frankincense and myrrh!
Ill
See, what a wonderful smile ! Does it mean
That my little one knows of my love?
Was it meant for an angel that passed unseen,
And smiled at us both from above?
Does it mean that he knows of the birds and the flowers
That are waiting to sweeten his childhood's hours,
And the tales I shall tell and the games he will play,
And the songs we shall sing and the prayers we shall pray
In his boyhood's May,
He and I, one day?
IV
All in the warm blue summer weather
We shall laugh and love together:
I shall watch my baby growing,
I shall guide his feet,
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The Book of Christmas
When the orange trees are blowing,
And the winds are heavy and sweet!
When the orange orchards whiten
I shall see his great eyes brighten
To watch the long-legged camels going
Up the twisted street,
When the orange trees are blowing,
And the winds are sweet.
What does it mean? Indeed, it seems
A dream! Yet not like other dreams I
We shall walk in pleasant vales.
Listening to the shepherd's song,
I shall tell him lovely tales
All day long:
He shall laugh while mother sings
Tales of fishermen and kings.
He shall see them come and go
O'er the wistful sea,
Where rosy oleanders blow
Round blue Lake Galilee,
Kings with fishers' ragged coats
And silver nets across their boats
Dipping through the starry glow,
With crowns for him and me!
Ah, no;
Crowns for him, not me !
Rockaby so! Indeed, it seems
A dream! Yet not like other dreams/
158
Christmas Hymns
Ah, see what a wonderful smile again !
Shall I hide it away in my heart,
To remember one day in a world of pain
When the years have torn us apart,
Little babe,
When the years have torn us apart?
Sleep, my little one, sleep.
Child with the wonderful eyes,
Wild miraculous eyes.
Deep as the skies are deep !
What star-bright glory of tears
Waits in you now for the years -
That shall bid you waken and weep?
Ah, in that day, could I kiss you to sleep
Then, little lips, little eyes.
Little lips that are lovely and wise.
Little lips that are dreadful and wise!
VI
Clenched little hands like crumpled roses,
Dimpled and dear.
Feet like flowers that the dawn uncloses,
What do I fear?
Little hands, will you ever be clenched in anguish?
White little limbs, will you droop and languish?
Nay, what do I hear?
I hear a shouting, far away.
You shall ride on a kingly palm-strewn way
Some day!
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The Book of Christmas
But when you are crowned with a golden crown
And throned on a golden throne,
You'll forget the manger of Bethlehem town
And your mother that sits alone
Wondering whether the mighty king
Remembers a song she used to sing,
Long ago,—
"Rockaby sOj
Kings may have wonderful jewels to brings
Mother has only a kiss for her king/" . . .
Ah, see what a wonderful smile, once more!
He opens his great dark eyes !
Little child, little king, nay, hush, it is o'er,
My fear of those deep twin skies, —
Little child.
You are all too dreadful and wise!
VII
But now you are mine, all mine.
And your feet can lie in my hand so small,
And your tiny hands in my heart can twine.
And you cannot walk, so you never shall fall.
Or be pierced by the thorns beside the door.
Or the nails that lie upon Joseph's floor;
Through sun and rain, through shadow and shine,
You are mine, all mine !
Alfred Noyes in The Golden Hynde
Copyrighted by Messrs Blackwood in Forty Singing
Seamen
1 60
VII
CHRISTMAS REVELS
"h/TAKE me merry hoik more and less,
For now is the time of Christy mas/
Let no man come into this hall,
Groom, page, not yet marshall,
But that some sport he bring withal !
For now is the time of Christmas!
If that he say, he cannot sing,
Some other sport then let him bring!
That it may please at this feasting !
For now is the time of Christmas I
If he say he can naught do,
Then for my love ask him no mo !
But to the stocks then let him go !
For now is the time of Christmas!
From a Balliol MS. of about 1340
164
The Feast of Saint Stephen in Venice ^^ •^::y
'T^HE Doge's banquets especially took the importance
-*- of public spectacles, and were always five in number,
given at the feasts of Saint Mark, the Ascension, Saint
Vitus, Saint Jerome, and Saint Stephen, after the last of
which the distribution of the 'oselle' took place, represent-
ing the ducks of earlier days, as the reader will remember.
At these great dinners there were generally a hundred guests ;
the Doge's counsellors, the Heads of the Ten, the Avo-
gadors and the heads of all the other magistracies had a
right to be invited, but the rest of the guests were chosen
among the functionaries at the Doge's pleasure.
In the banquet-hall there were a number of side-boards
on which was exhibited the silver, part of which belonged
to the Doge and part to the State, and this was shown
twenty -four hours before the feast. It was under the keep-
ing of a special official. The glass service used on the
table for flowers and for dessert was of the finest made in
Murano. Each service, though this is hard to believe, is
said to have been used in public only once, and was de-
signed to recall some important event of contemporary
history by trophies, victories, emblems, and allegories.
I find this stated by Giustina Renier Michiel, who was a
contemporary, was noble, and must have often seen these
banquets.
The public was admitted to view the magnificent spec-
tacle during the whole of the first course, and the ladies of
the aristocracy went in great numbers. It was their cus-
165
The Book of Christmas
torn to walk round the tables, talking with those of their
friends who sat among the guests, and accepting the fruits
and sweetmeats which the Doge and the rest offered them,
rising from their seats to do so. The Doge himself rose
from his throne to salute those noble ladies whom he
wished to distinguish especially. Sovereigns passing
through Venice at such times did not disdain to appear
as mere spectators at the banquets, which had acquired
the importance of national anniversaries.
Between the first and second courses, a majestic cham-
berlain shook a huge bunch of keys while he walked round
the hall, and at this hint all visitors disappeared. The
feast sometimes lasted several hours, after which the Doge's
squires presented each of the guests with a great basket
filled with sweetmeats, fruits, comfits, and the like, and
adorned with the ducal arms. Every one rose to thank
the Doge for these presents, and he took advantage of the
general move to go back to his private apartments. The
guests accompanied him to the threshold, where his Se-
renity bowed to them without speaking, and every one
returned his salute in silence. He disappeared within,
and all went home.
During this ceremony of leave-taking, the gondoliers of
the guests entered the hall of the banquet and each carried
the basket received by his master to some lady indicated
by the latter. "One may imagine," cries the good Dame
Michiel, "what curiosity there was about the destination
of the baskets, but the faithful gondoliers regarded mystery
as a point of honour, though the basket was of such dimen-
sions that it was impossible to take it anywhere unobserved ;
happy were they who received these evidences of a regard
which at once touched their feeings and flattered their
i66
Christmas Revels
legitimate pride! The greatest misfortune was to have
to share the prize with another.'*
F. Marion Crawford in Salve Venetial
The Feast of Fools <:> ^c^ ^> ^^ ^:> ^:^
"DELETUS, who Hved in 1182, mentions the Feast of
-'-^ Fools, as celebrated in some places on New Year's
day, in others on Twelfth Night and in still others the week
following. It seems at any rate to have been one of the
recognized revels of the Christmas season. In France,
at different cathedral churches there was a Bishop or an
Archbishop of Fools elected, and in the churches immedi-
ately dependent upon the papal see a Pope of Fools.
These mock pontiffs had usually a proper suite of ec-
clesiastics, and one of their ridiculous ceremonies was to
shave the Precentor of Fools upon a stage erected before
the church in the presence of the jeering ''vulgar populace."
They were mostly attired in the ridiculous dresses of
pantomime players and buffoons, and so habited entered
the church, and performed the ceremony accompanied by
crowds of followers representing monsters or so disguised
as to excite fear or laughter. During this mockery of a
divine service they sang indecent songs in the choir, ate
rich puddings on the corner of the altar, played at dice
upon it during the celebration of a mass, incensed it with
smoke from old burnt shoes, and ran leaping all over the
church. The Bishop or Pope of Fools performed the ser-
vice and gave benediction, dressed in pontificial robes.
When it was concluded he was seated in an open carriage
and drawn about the town followed by his train, who in
167
The Book of Christmas
place of carnival confetti threw filth from a cart upon the
people who crowded to see the procession.
These "December liberties," as they were called, were
always held at Christmas time or near it, but were not con-
fined to one particular day, and seem to have lasted through
the chief part of January. When the ceremony took place
upon St. Stephen's Day, they said as part of the mass a
burlesque composition, called the Fool's Prose, and upon
the festival of St. John the Evangelist, they had another
arrangement of ludicrous songs, called the Prose of the Ox.
William Hone in Ancient Mysteries
The Feast of the Ass ^:y -^ ^^^ ^:y ^:>
A S this was anciently celebrated in France, it almost
"^ ^ entirely consisted of dramatic show. It was insti-
tuted in honor of Balaam's ass, and at one of them the
clergy walked on Christmas Day in procession, habited to
represent the prophets and others.
Moses appeared in an alb and cope with a long beard
and a rod. David had a green vestment. Balaam, with
an immense pair of spurs, rode on a wooden ass which
enclosed a speaker. There were also six Jews and six
Gentiles. Among other characters, the poet Virgil was
introduced singing monkish rhymes, as a Gentile prophet,
and a translator of the sibylline oracles. They thus moved
in a procession through the body of the church chanting
versicles, and conversing in character on the nativity and
kingdom of Christ till they came into the choir.
This service, as performed in the cathedral at Rouen,
commenced with a procession in which the clergy repre-
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Christmas Revels
sented the prophets of the Old Testament who foretold the
birth of Christ; then followed Balaam mounted on his
ass, Zacharias, Elizabeth, John the Baptist, the sibyl,
Erythree, Simeon, Virgil, Nebuchadnezzar, and the three
children in the furnace. After the procession entered the
cathedral, several groups of persons performed the parts
of Jews and Gentiles, to whom the choristers addressed
speeches; afterwards they called on the prophets one by
one, who came forward successively and delivered a pas-
sage relative to the Messiah. The other characters ad-
vanced to occupy their proper situations, and reply in
certain verses to the questions of the choristers. They
performed the miracle of the furnace; Nebuchadnezzar
spoke, the sibyl appeared at the last, and then an anthem
was sung, which concluded the ceremony.
The Missal of an Archbishop of Sens indicates that
during such a service, the animal itself, clad with precious
priestly ornaments, was solemnly conducted to the middle
of the choir, during which procession a hymn in praise of
the ass was sung — ending with —
Amen ! bray, most honour' d Ass,
Sated now with grain and grass:
Amen repeat, Amen reply,
And disregard antiquity.
Hez va! hez val hez vaJ hez!
The service lasted the whole of a night and part of the
next day, and formed altogether the strangest, most ridicu-
lous medley of whatever was usually sung at church fes-
tivals. When the choristers were thirsty wine was dis-
tributed; in the evening, on a platform before the church,
lit by an enormous lantern, the grand chanter of Sens led
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The Book of Christmas
a jolly band in performing broadly indecorous interludes
At respective divisions of the service the ass was supplied
with drink and provender. In the middle of it, at the signal
of a certain anthem, the ass being conducted into the nave
of the church, the people mixed with the clergy danced
around him, imitating his braying.
William Hone in Ancient Mysteries
The Revel of Sir Hugonin de Guisay ^^ ^^^
A /TEMORABLE as an illustration of the manners of
-'-'-'■ the French Court was a catastrophe that occurred in
Paris in 1393. Riot and disorder had run wild all through
the Christmas festivities. But the Court was not yet
satisfied. Then Sir Hugonin de Guisay, most reckless
among all the reckless spirits of the period, suggested that
as an excuse for prolonging the merriment a marriage
should be arranged between two of the court attendants.
This was eagerly agreed upon. Sir Hugonin assumed the
leadership, for which he was well fitted. He was loved
and admired by the disorderly as much as he was hated
and feared by the orderly. Among other pleasant traits,
he was fond of exercising his wit upon tradesmen and
mechanics, whom he would accost in the street, prick with
his spurs, and compel to creep on all fours and bark like
curs before he released them. Such traits endeared him
to the courtiers of the young Most Gracious Majesty and
Christian King of France. The marriage passed off in a
blaze of glory and accompaniments of Gargantuan pleas-
antry. At the height of the ceremonies Sir Hugonin
quietly withdrew with the king and four other wild ones,
170
Christmas Revels
scions of the noblest houses in France. With a pot of tar
and a quantity of tow the six conspirators were speedily
changed into a very fair imitation of the dancing bears
then very common in mountebanks' booths. A mask
completed the transformation. Five were then bound
together with a silken rope. The sixth, the king himself,
led them into the hall.
Their appearance created a general stir. "Who are
they?" was the cry. Nobody knew. At this moment
entered the wildest of all the wild Dukes of Orleans.
''Who are they?" he echoed between hiccoughs. "Well,
we'll soon find out." Seizing a brand from one of the
torch bearers ranged around the wall, he staggered for-
ward. Some gentlemen essayed to stay him. But he was
obstinate and quarrelesome. Main force could not be
thought of against a prince of the blood. He was given
his way. He thrust his torch under the chin of the near-
est of the maskers. The tow caught fire. In a moment
the whole group was in flames. The young Duchess of
Berri seized the king and enveloped him in her ample
quilted robe. Thus he was saved. Another masker, the
Lord of Nanthouillet, noted for strength and agility, rent
the silken rope with a wrench of his strong teeth, pitched
himself like a flaming comet through the first window, and
dived into a cistern in the court, whence he emerged black
and smoking, but almost unhurt. As for the other four,
they whirled hither and thither through the horrified mob,
struggling with one another, fighting with the flames,
cursing, shrieking with pain. Women fainted by scores.
Men who had never faltered in a hundred fights sickened
at the hideous spectacle. All Paris was roused by the
uproar, and gathered, an excited mob, about the palace.
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The Book of Christmas
At last the flames burnt out. The four maskers lay in a
black and writhing heap upon the floor. One was a mere
cinder. A second survived until daybreak. A third died
at noon the next day. The fourth — none other than Sir
Hugonin himself — survived for three days, while all Paris
rejoiced over his agonies. "Bark, dog, bark," was the
cry with which the citizens saluted his charred and mangled
corpse, when it was at last borne to the grave.
W. S. Walsh in Curiosities of Popular Customs
Revels of the Inner Temple — Inns of Court ^:^
ON St. Stephen's Day, after the first course was served
in, the constable marshal was wont to enter the hall
(and we think he had much better have come in, and said
all he had to say beforehand) bravely arrayed with "a
fair rich compleat barneys, white and bright and gilt, with
a nest of fethers, of all colours, upon his crest or helm, and
a gilt pole ax in his hand," and, no doubt, thinking himself
a prodigiously fine fellow. He was accompanied by the
lieutenant of the Tower, "armed with a fair white armour,"
also wearing "fethers," and "with a pole ax in his hand,"
and of course also thinking himself a very fine fellow.
With them came sixteen trumpeters, preceded by four
drums and fifes, and attended by four men clad in white
"barneys," from the middle upwards, having halberds in
their hands, and bearing on their shoulders a model of the
Tower, and each and every one of these latter personages,
in his degree, having a consciousness that he, too, was a
fine fellow. Then all these fine fellows, with the drums
and music, and with all their "fethers" and finery, went
three times round the fire, whereas, considering that the
172
Christmas Revels
boar's head was cooling all the time, we think once might
have sufficed. Then the constable marshal, after three
courtesies, knelt down before the Lord C'lancellor, with
the lieutenant doing the same behind him, and then and
there deliberately proceeded to deliver himself of an " ora-
tion of a quarter of an hour's length," the purport of which
was to tender his services to the Lord Chancellor, which,
we think, at such a time, he might have contrived to do in
fewer words. To this the Chancellor was unwise enough
to reply that he would "take farther advice therein," when
it would have been much better for him to settle the matter
at once, and proceed to eat his dinner. However, this
part of the ceremony ended at last by the constable mar-
shal and the lieutenant obtaining seats at the Chancellor's
table, upon the former giving up his sword; and then
enter, for a similar purpose, the master of the game, ap-
parelled in green velvet, and the ranger of the forest, in a
green suit of "satten," bearing in his hand a green bow,
and 'divers" arrows, "with either of them a hunting-horn
about their necks, blowing together three blasts of venery."
These worthies, also, thought it necessary to parade their
finery three times around the fire; and having then made
similar obeisances, and offered up a similar petition in a
similar posture, they were finally inducted into a similar
privilege.
But though seated at the Chancellor's table, and no
doubt sufficiently roused by the steam of its good things,
they were far enough as yet from getting anything to eat,
as a consequence; and the next ceremony is one which
strikingly marks the rudeness of the times. "A huntsman
Cometh into the hall, with a fox, and a purse-net with a cat,
both bound at the end of a staff, and with them nine or
173
The Book of Christmas
ten couple of hounds, with the blowing of hunting-horns.
And the fox and the cat are set upon by the hounds,
and killed beneath the fire." "What this 'merry disport'
signified (if practised) before the Reformation," says a
writer in Mr. Hone's Year Book, "I know not. In 'Ane
compendious boke of godly and spiritual songs, Edin-
burgh, 162 1, printed from an old copy,' are the following
lines, seemingly referring to some pageant : —
* The hunter is Christ that hunts in haist,
The hunds are Peter and Pawle,
The paip is the fox, Rome is the Rox
That rubbis us on the gall.' "
After these ceremonies, the welcome permission to be-
take themselves to the far more interesting one of an attack
upon the good things of the feast appears to have been at
length given; but at the close of the second course the
subject of receiving the officers who had tendered their
Christmas service was renewed. Whether the gentlemen
of the law were burlesquing their own profession inten-
tionally or whether it was an awkward hit, like that which
befell their brethren of Gray's Inn, does not appear.
However the common serjeant made what is called "a
plausible speech," insisting on the necessity of these offi-
cers "for the better reputation of the Commonwealth;"
and he was followed, to the same effect, by the King's
serjeant-at-law till the Lord Chancellor silenced them by
desiring a respite of further advice, which it is greatly to
be marvelled he had not done sooner.
And thereupon he called upon the "ancientest of the
masters of the revels" for a song, — a. proceeding to which
we give our unqualified approbation.
T. K. Hervey
174
Christmas Revels
King Witlaf's Drinking-Horn ^^^
T 1 riTLAF, a king of the Saxons,
' * Ere yet his last he breathed,
To the merry monks of Croyland
His drinking-horn bequeathed, —
That, whenever they sat at their revels.
And drank from the golden bowl.
They might remember the donor,
And breathe a prayer for his soul.
So sat they once at Christmas,
And bade the goblet pass;
In their beards the red wine glistened
Like dew-drops in the grass.
They drank to the soul of Witlaf,
They drank to Christ the Lord,
And to each of the Twelve Apostles,
Who had preached His holy word.
They drank to the Saints and Martyrs
Of the dismal days of yore,
And as soon as the horn was empty
They remembered one Saint more.
And the reader droned from the pulpit,
Like the murmur of many bees,
The legend of good Saint Guthlac,
And Saint Basil's homilies;
Till the great bells of the convent.
From their prison in the tower,
175
The Book of Christmas
Guthlac and Bartholomaeus,
Proclaimed the midnight hour.
And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney
And the Abbot bowed his head,
And the flamelets flapped and flickered
But the Abbot was stark and dead.
Yet stiU in his pallid fingers
He clutched the golden bowl,
In which, like a pearl dissolving,
Had sunk and dissolved his soul.
But not for this their revels
The jovial monks forbore.
For they cried, " FiH high the goblet !
We must drink to one Saint more."
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Old Christmastide ^:> ^^ ^:> ^;> ^^ -v^
TTEAP on more wood ! — the wind is chill;
^ ^ But let it whistle as it will,
We'H keep our Christmas merry still.
Each age has deemed the new-born year
The fittest time for festal cheer.
Even heathen yet, the savage Dane
At lol more deep the mead did drain ;
High on the beach his galley drew.
And feasted all his pirate crew;
Then in his low and pine-built hall.
Where shields and axes decked the wall,
176
Christmas Revels
They gorged upon the half -dressed steer;
Caroused in seas of sable beer;
While round, in brutal jest, were thrown
The half-gnawed rib and marrow-bone.
Or listened all, in grim delight.
While scalds yelled out the joy of fight,
Then forth in frenzy would they hie.
While wildly loose their red locks fly;
And, dancing round the blazing pile.
They make such barbarous mirth the while,
As best might to the mind recall
The boisterous joys of Odin's hall.
And well our Christian sires of old
Loved when the year its course had rolled,
And brought blithe Christmas back again,
With all his hospitable train.
Domestic and religious rite
Gave honour to the holy night:
On Christmas eve the bells were rung;
On Christmas eve the mass was sung;
That only night, in all the year,
Saw the stoled priest the chalice rear.
The damsel donned her kirtle sheen;
The hall was dressed with holly green ;
Forth to the wood did merry men go,
To gather in the mistletoe;
Then opened wide the baron's hall
To vassal, tenant, serf, and all;
Power laid his rod of rule aside.
And ceremony doffed his pride.
The heir, with roses in his shoes,
That night might village partner choose;
N 177
The Book of Christmas
The lord, underogating, share
The vulgar game of '' post and pair."
All hailed, with uncontrolled delight,
And general voice, the happy night
That to the cottage, as the crown.
Brought tidings of salvation down.
The fire, with well-dried logs supplied,
Went roaring up the chimney wide;
The huge hall-table's oaken face.
Scrubbed till it shone, the day to grace,
Bore then upon its massive board
No mark to part the squire and lord.
Then was brought in the lusty brawn
By old blue-coated serving man;
Then the grim boar's head frowned on high,
Crested with bays and rosemary.
Well can the green -garbed ranger tell,
How, when, and where, the monster fell;
What dogs before his death he tore,
And all the baiting of the boar.
The Wassail round, in good brown bowls,
Garnished with ribbons, blithely trowls.
There the huge sirloin reeked; hard by
Plum-porridge stood, and Christmas pie;
Nor failed old Scotland to produce.
At such high tide, her savoury goose.
Then came the merry masquers in.
And carols roared with blithesome din;
If unmelodious was the song.
It was a hearty note, and strong.
Who lists may in their mumming see
Traces of ancient mystery;
178
Christmas Revels
White shirts supplied the masquerade,
And smutted cheeks the vizors made:
But, O ! what masquers, richly dight,
Can boast of bosoms half so light !
England was merry England, when
Old Christmas brought his sports again.
'Twas Christmas broached the mightiest ale;
'Twas Christmas told the merriest tale;
A Christmas gambol oft could cheer
The poor man's heart through half the year.
Sir Walter Scott
Christmas Games in ''Old Wardle's" Kitchen ^^
[According to annual custom, on Christmas eve, observed
by old Wardle's forefathers from time immemorial.]
"PROM the centre of the ceiling of this kitchen, old
-*■ Wardle had just suspended with his own hands a
huge branch of mistletoe, and this same branch of mistletoe
instantaneously gave rise to a scene of general and most
delightful struggling of confusion; in the midst of which
Mr. Pickwick, with a gallantry which would have done
honour to . a descendant of Lady Tollimglower herself,
took the old lady by the hand, led her beneath the mystic
branch, and saluted her in all courtesy and decorum.
The old lady submitted to this piece of practical politeness
with all the dignity which befitted so important and serious
a solemnity, but the younger ladies, not being so thoroughly
imbued with a superstitious veneration of the custom, or
imagining that the value of a salute is very much enhanced
if it cost a little trouble to obtain it, screamed and struggled,
and ran into corners, and threatened and remonstrated,
179
The Book of Christmas
and did everything but leave the room, until some of the
less adventurous gentlemen were on the point of desisting,
when they all at once found it useless to resist any longer,
and submitted to be kissed with a good grace. Mr.
Winkle kissed the young lady with the black eyes, and
Mr. Snodgrass kissed Emily; and Mr. Weller, not being
particular about the form of being under the mistletoe,
kissed Emma and the other female servants, just as he
caught them. As to the poor relations, they kissed every-
body, not even excepting the plainer portion of the young-
lady visitors, who, in their excessive confusion, ran right
under the mistletoe, directly it was hung up, without
knowing it ! Wardle stood with his back to the fire,
surveying the whole scene with the utmost satisfaction;
and the fat boy took the opportunity of appropriating
to his own use, and summarily devouring, a particularly
fine mince-pie, that had been carefully put by for some-
body else.
Now the screaming had subsided, and faces were in a
glow and curls in a tangle, and Mr. Pickwick, after kissing
the old lady as before-mentioned, was standing under the
mistletoe, looking with a very pleased countenance on all
that was passing around him, when the young lady with
the black eyes, after a little whispering with the other young
ladies, made a sudden dart forward, and, putting her arm
round Mr. Pickwick's neck, saluted him affectionately on
the left cheek ; and before Mr. Pickwick distinctly knew
what was the matter, he was surrounded by the whole
body, and kissed by every one of them.
It was a pleasant thing to see Mr. Pickwick in the centre
of the group, now pulled this way, and then that, and first
kissed on the chin and then on the nose, and then on the
1 80
Christmas Revels
spectacles, and to hear the peals of laughter which were
raised on every side; but it was a still more pleasant thing
to see Mr. Pickwick, blinded shortly afterwards with a
silk-handkerchief, falling up against the wall, and scram-
bling into corners, and gjing through all the mysteries of
bhnd-man's buff, with the utmost relish for the game,
until at last he caught one of the poor relations ; and then
had to evade the blind-man himself, which he did with a
nimbleness and agility that elicited the admiration and
applause of all beholders. The poor relations caught
just the people whom they thought would like it; and
when the game flagged, got caught themselves. When
they were all tired of blind-man's buff, there was a great
game at snap-dragon, and when fingers enough were
burned with that, and all the raisins gone, they sat down
by the huge fire of blazing logs to a substantial supper,
and a mighty bowl of wassail, something smaller than an
ordinary wash-house copper, in which the hot apples
were hissing and bubbling with a rich look, and a jolly
sound, that were perfectly irresistible.
**This," said Mr. Pickwick, looking round him, ''this
is, indeed, comfort."
''Our invariable custom," replied Mr. Wardle. "Every-
body sits down with us on Christmas eve, as you see them
now — servants and all; and here we wait till the clock
strikes twelve, to usher Christmas in, and wile away the
time with forfeits and old stories. Trundle, my boy,
rake up the fire."
Up flew the bright sparks in myriads as the logs were
stirred, and the deep red blaze sent forth a rich glow, that
penetrated into the furthest corner of the room, and cast
its cheerful tint on every face.
i8i
The Book of Christmas
"Come," said Wardle, "a, song — a Christmas song.
I'll give you one, in default of a better."
"Bravo," said Mr. Pickwick.
"Fill up," cried Wardle. "It will be two hours good
before you see the bottom of the bowl through the deep
rich colour of the wassail; fill up all round, and now for
the song."
Thus saying, the merry old gentleman, in a good, round,
sturdy voice, commenced without more ado —
A Christmas Carol
I care not for Spring; on his fickle wing
Let the blossoms and buds be borne:
He woos them amain with his treacherous rain,
And he scatters them ere the morn.
An inconstant elf, he knows not himself,
Or his own changing mind an hour,
He'U smile in your face, and with wry grimace,
He'll wither your youngest flower.
Let the Summer sun to his bright home run.
He shall never be sought by me;
When he's dimmed by a cloud I can laugh aloud,
And care not how sulky he be;
For his darling child is the madness wild
That sports in fierce fever's train;
And when love is too strong, it don't last long,
As many have found to their pain.
A mild harvest night, by the tranquil light
Of the modest and gentle moon,
Has a far sweeter sheen for me, I ween,
Than the broad and unblushing noon.
But every leaf awakens my grief,
As it lies beneath the tree;
So let Autumn air be never so fair,
It by no means agrees with me.
182
Christmas Revels
But my song I troll out, for Christmas stout,
The hearty, the true, and the bold;
A bumper I drain, and with might and main
Give three cheers for this Christmas old.
We'll usher him in with a merry din
That shall gladden his joyous heart.
And we'll keep him up while there's bite or sup,
And in fellowship good, we'll part.
In his fine honest pride, he scorns to hide
One jot of his hard- weather scars;
They're no disgrace, for there's much the same trace
On the cheeks of our bravest tars.
Then again I sing 'till the roof doth ring,
And it echoes from wall to wall —
To the stout old wight, fair welcome to-night,
As the King of the Seasons all !
This song was tumultuously applauded, for friends and
dependents make a capital audience; and the poor rela-
tions especially were in perfect ecstasies of rapture. Again
was the fire replenished, and again went the wassail round.
Charles Dickens
A ''Mystery" as performed in Mexico ^::v <:>
A GAINST the wing-wall of the Hacienda del Mayo,
-^^ which occupied one end of the plaza, was raised a
platform, on which stood a table covered with scarlet cloth.
A rude bower of cane-leaves, on one end of the plat-
form, represented the manger of Bethlehem; while a
cord, stretched from its top across the plaza to a hole
in the front of the church, bore a large tinsel star, sus-
pended by a hole in its centre. There was quite a
crowd in the plaza, and very soon a procession ap-
183
The Book of Christmas
peared, coming up from the lower part of the village.
The three kings took the lead; the Virgin, mounted
on an ass that gloried in a gilded saddle and rose-be-
sprinkled mane and tail, followed them, led by the angel;
and several women, with curious masks of paper, brought
up the rear. Two characters, of the harlequin sort — one
with a dog's head on his shoulders, and the other a bald-
headed friar, with a huge hat hanging on his back — played
all sorts of antics for the diversion of the crowd. After mak-
ing the circuit of the plaza, the Virgin was taken to the
platform, and entered the manger. King Herod took his
seat at the scarlet table, with an attendant in blue coat and
red sash, whom I took to be his Prime Minister. The three
kings remained on their horses in front of the church;
but between them and the platform, under the string on
which the star was to slide, walked two men in long white
robes and blue hoods, with parchment folios in their hands.
These were the Wise Men of the East, as one might readily
know from their solemn air, and the mysterious glances
which they cast towards all quarters of the heavens.
In a little while, a company of women on the platform,
concealed behind a curtain, sang an angelic chorus to the
tune of ' Opescator dell' onda.' At the proper moment, the
Magi turned towards the platform, followed by the star, to
which a string was conveniently attached, that it might be
slid along the line. The three kings followed the star till it
reached the manger, when they dismounted, and inquired
for the sovereign, whom it had led them to visit. They
were invited upon the platform, and introduced to Herod,
as the only king; this did not seem to satisfy them, and,
after some conversation, they retired. By this time the
star had receded to the other end of the line, and commenced
184
HT
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H.
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Nfel
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i
Wt
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X
X
J^Hlll^
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-—-^
\ - ■
Christmas Revels
moving forward again, they following. The angel called
them into the manger, where, upon their knees, they were
shown a small wooden box, supposed to contain the sacred
infant; they then retired, and the star brought them back no
more. After this departure. King Herod declared himself
greatly confused by what he had witnessed, and was very
much afraid this newly found king would weaken his power.
Upon consultation with his Prime Minister, the Massacre
of the Innocents was decided upon, as the only means of
security.
The angel, on hearing this, gave warning to the Virgin,
who quickly got down from the platform, mounted her
bespangled donkey, and hurried off. Herod's Prime
Minister directed all the children to be handed up for
execution. A boy, in a ragged sarape, was caught and
thrust forward; the Minister took him by the heels in spite
of his kicking, and held his head on the table. The little
brother and sister of the boy, thinking he was really to be
decapitated, yelled at the top of their voices, in an agony
of terror, which threw the crowd into a roar of laughter.
King Herod brought down his sword with a whack on the
table, and the Prime Minister, dipping his brush into a pot
of white paint which stood before him, made a flaring cross
on the boy's face. Several other boys were caught and
served likewise; and, finally, the two harlequins, whose
kicks and struggles nearly shook down the platform. The
procession then went off up the hill, followed by the whole
population of the village. All the evening there were
fandangoes in the meson, bonfires and rockets on the plaza,
ringing of bells, and high mass in the church, with the ac-
companiment of two guitars, tinkling to lively polkas.
Bayard Taylor in Eldorado
185
VIII
WHEN ALL THE WORLD IS KIN
Christmas
Christmas Night of '62
Merry Christmas in the Tenements
Christmas at Sea
The First Christmas Tree in the Legation
Compound, at Tokyo, Japan
Christmas in India
A Belgian Christmas Eve Procession
Christmas at the Cape
The " Good Night" in Spain
Christmas in Rome
Christmas in Burgundy
Christmas in Germany
Christmas Dinner in a Clipper's Fo'c'sle
Christmas in Jail
Colonel Carter's Christmas Tree
T)UT Christmas is not only the mile-mark of another
*~^ year, moving us to thoughts of self-examination, — it
is a season, from all its associations, whether domestic or
religious, suggesting thoughts of joy. A man dissatisfied
with his endeavors is a man tempted to sadness. And in
the midst of winter, when his life runs lowest and he is
reminded of the empty chairs of his beloved, it is well
that he should be condemned to this fashion of the smil-
ing face.
Robert Louis Stevenson
190
Christmas Night oi '62 <::> ^^ ^^^ ^:> ^;>y
nPHE wintry blast goes wailing by,
-*- The snow is falling overhead;
I hear the lonely sentry's tread,
And distant watch-fires light the sky.
Dim forms go flitting through the gloom;
The soldiers cluster round the blaze
To talk of other Christmas days,
And softly speak of home and home.
My sabre swinging overhead,
Gleams in the watch-fire's fitful glow.
While fiercely drives the blinding snow,
And memory leads me to the dead.
My thoughts go wandering to and fro,
Vibrating 'twixt the Now and Then;
I see the low-browed home agen.
The old hall wreathed with mistletoe.
And sweetly from the far off years
Comes borne the laughter faint and low,
The voices of the Long Ago !
My eyes are wet with tender tears.
I feel agen the mother kiss,
I see agen the glad surprise
That lighted up the tranquil eyes
And brimmed them o'er with tears of bliss,
191
The Book of Christmas
As, rushing from the old hall-door,
She fondly clasped her wayward boy —
Her face all radiant with the joy
She felt to see him home once more.
My sabre swinging on the bough
Gleams in the watch-fire's fitful glow,
While fiercely drives the blinding snow
Aslant upon my saddened brow.
Those cherished faces all are gone!
Asleep within the quiet graves
Where lies the snow in drifting waves, —
And I am sitting here alone.
There's not a comrade here to-night
But knows that loved ones far away
On bended knees this night will pray:
" God bring our darling from the fight."
But there are none to wish me back,
For me no yearning prayers arise.
The lips are mute and closed the eyes —
My home is in the bivouac.
In the Army of Northern Virginia.
William G. McCabe
Quoted from W. P. Trent's Southern Writers
Merry Christmas in the Tenements ^^::> <::> ^:^
TT was just a sprig of holly, with scarlet berries showing
■^ against the green, stuck in, by one of the office boys prob-
ably, behind the sign that pointed the way up to the editorial
192
When All the World is Kin
rooms. There was no reason why it should have made me
start when I came suddenly upon it at the turn of the stairs ;
but it did. Perhaps it was because that dingy hall, given
over to dust and draughts all the days of the year, was the
last place in which I expected to meet with any sign of
Christmas; perhaps it was because I myself had nearly
forgotten the holiday. Whatever the cause, it gave me
quite a turn.
I stood, and stared at it. It looked dry, almost withered.
Probably it had come a long way. Not much holly grows
about Printing-House Square, except in the colored supple-
ments, and that is scarcely of a kind to stir tender memories.
Withered and dry, this did. I thought, with a twinge of
conscience, of secret little conclaves of my children, of
private views of things hidden from mamma at the bottom
of drawers, of wild flights when papa appeared unbidden in
the door, which I had allowed for once to pass unheeded.
Absorbed in the business of the office, I had hardly thought
of Christmas coming on, until now it was here. And this
sprig of holly on the wall that had come to remind me, —
come nobody knew how far, — did it grow yet in the beech-
wood clearings, as it did when I gathered it as a boy,
tracking through the snow ? " Christ-thorn " we called it in
our Danish tongue. The red berries, to our simple faith,
were the drops of blood that fell from the Saviour's brow as
it dropped under its cruel crown upon the cross. . . .
The lights of the Bowery glow like a myriad twinkling
stars upon the ceaseless flood of humanity that surges
ever through the great highway of the homeless. They
shine upon long rows of lodging-houses, in which hundreds
of young men, cast helpless upon the reef of the strange
o 193
The Book of Christmas
city, are learning their first lessons of utter loneliness;
for what desolation is there like that of the careless crowd
when all the world rejoices ? They shine upon the tempter
setting his snares there, and upon the missionary and the
Salvation Army lass, disputing his catch with him; upon
the police detective going his rounds with coldly observant
eye intent upon the outcome of the contest ; upon the wreck
that is past hope, and upon the youth pausing on the verge
of the pit in which the other has long ceased to struggle.
Sights and sounds of Christmas there are in plenty in the
Bowery. Balsam and hemlock and fir stand in groves along
the busy thoroughfare, and garlands of green embower
mission and dive impartially. Once a year the old street
recalls its youth with an effort. It is true that it is largely
a commercial effort; that the evergreen, with an instinct
that is not of its native hills, haunts saloon -corners by pref-
erence; but the smell of the pine woods is in the air, and
— Christmas is not too critical — one is grateful for the effort.
It varies with the opportunity. At "Beefsteak John's" it is
content with artistically embalming crullers and mince-pies
in green cabbage under the window lamp. Over yonder,
where the mile-post of the old lane still stands, — in its
unhonored old age become the vehicle of publishing the
latest ''sure cure" to the world, — a florist, whose unde-
nominational zeal for the holiday and trade outstrips alike
distinction of creed and property, has transformed the side-
walk and the ugly railroad structure into a veritable bower,
spanning it with a canopy of green, under which dwell with
him, in neighborly good-will, the Young Men's Christian
Association and the Jewish tailor next door. . . .
Down at the foot of the Bowery is the "panhandlers'
beat," where the saloons elbow one another at every step,
194
When All the World Is Kin
crowding out all other business than that of keeping lodgers
to support them. Within call of it, across the square,
stands a church which, in the memory of men yet living,
was built to shelter the fashionable Baptist audiences of a
day when Madison Square was out in the fields, and Harlem
had a foreign sound. The fashionable audiences are gone
long since. To-day the church, fallen into premature decay,
but still handsome in its strong and noble lines, stands as a
missionary outpost in the land of the enemy, its builders
would have said, doing a greater work than they planned.
To-night is the Christmas festival of its English-speaking
Sunday-school, and the pews are filled. The banners of
United Italy, of modern Hellas, of France and Germany and
England, hang side by side with the Chinese dragon and the
starry flag-signs of the cosmopolitan character of the con-
gregation. Greek and Roman Catholics, Jews and joss-
worshippers, go there; few Protestants, and no Baptists.
It is easy to pick out the children in their seats by nationality,
and as easy to read the story of poverty and suffering that
stands written in more than one mother's haggard face, now
beaming with pleasure at the little ones' glee. A gayly
decorated Christmas tree has taken the place of the pulpit.
At its foot is stacked a mountain of bundles, Santa Claus's
gifts to the school. A self-conscious young man with soap-
locks had just been allowed to retire, amid tumultuous ap-
plause, after blowing "Nearer, my God, to Thee" on his
horn until his cheeks swelled almost to bursting. A trumpet
ever takes the Fourth Ward by storm. A class of little
girls is climbing upon the platform. Each wears a capital
letter on her breast, and together they spell its lesson. There
is momentary consternation: one is missing. As the dis-
covery is made, a child pushes past the doorkeeper, hot and
195
The Book of Christmas
breathless. ''I am in 'Boundless Love,' " she says, and
makes for the platform, where her arrival restores confi-
dence and the language.
In the audience the befrocked visitor from up-town sits
cheek by jov^l vi^ith the pigtailed Chinaman and the dark-
browed Italian. Up in the gallery, farthest from the
preacher's desk and the tree, sits a Jewish mother with three
boys, almost in rags. A dingy and threadbare shawl partly
hides her poor calico wrap and patched apron. The
woman shrinks in the pew, fearful of being seen ; her boys
stand upon the benches, and applaud with the rest. She
endeavors vainly to restrain them. ''Tick, tick !" goes the
old clock over the door through which wealth and fashion
went out long years ago, and poverty came in. . . .
Within hail of the Sullivan Street school camps a scattered
little band, the Christmas customs of which I had been
trying for years to surprise. They are Indians, a handful
of Mohawks and Iroquois, whom some ill wind has blown
down from their Canadian reservation, and left in these
West Side tenements to eke out such a living as they can,
weaving mats and baskets, and threading glass pearls on
slippers and pin-cushions, until one after another they have
died off and gone to happier hunting-grounds than Thomp-
son Street. There were as many families as one could
count on the fingers of both hands when I first came upon
them, at the death of old Tamenund, the basket maker.
Last Christmas there were seven. I had about made up my
mind that the only real Americans in New York did not keep
the holiday at all, when one Christmas eve they showed me
how. Just as dark was setting in, old Mrs. Benoit came
from her Hudson Street attic — where she was known
among the neighbors, as old and poor as she, as Mrs.
196
When All the World is Kin
Ben Wah, and was believed to be the relict of a warrior of
the name of Benjamin Wah — to the office of the Charity
Organization Society, with a bundle for a friend who had
helped her over a rough spot — the rent, I suppose. The
bundle was done up elaborately in blue cheese-cloth, and
contained a lot of little garments which she had made out of
the remnants of blankets and cloth of her own from a
younger and better day. "For those," she said, in her
French patois, ''who are poorer than myself;" and hobbled
away. I found out, a few days later, when I took her pic-
ture weaving mats in the attic room, that she had scarcely
food in the house that Christmas day and not the car fare
to take her to church ! Walking was bad, and her old
limbs were stiff. She sat by the window through the winter
evening and watched the sun go down behind the west-
ern hills, comforted by her pipe. Mrs. Ben Wah, to give
her her local name, is not really an Indian; but her hus-
band was one, and she lived all her life with the tribe till
she came here. She is a philosopher in her own quaint
way. "It is no disgrace to be poor," said she to me, re-
garding her empty tobacco-pouch ; "but it is sometimes a
great inconvenience." Not even the recollection of the vote
of censure that was passed upon me once by the ladies of
the Charitable Ten for surreptitiously supplying an aged
couple, the special object of their charity, with army plug,
could have deterred me from taking the hint. . . .
In a hundred places all over the city, when Christmas
comes, as many open-air fairs spring suddenly into life. A
kind of Gentile Feast of Tabernacles possesses the tenement
districts especially. Green-embowered booths stand in
rows at the curb, and the voice of the tin trumpet is heard
in the land. The common source of all the show is down
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The Book of Christmas
by the North River, in the district known as "the Farm."
Down there Santa Claus estabhshes headquarters early in
December and until past New Year. The broad quay
looks then more like a clearing in a pine forest than a busy
section of the metropolis. The steamers discharge their
loads of fir trees at the piers until they stand stacked
mountain high, with foot-hills of holly and ground-ivy trail-
ing off toward the land side. An army train of wagons is en-
gaged in carting them away from early morning till late at
night ; but the green forest grows, in spite of it all, until in
places it shuts the shipping out of sight altogether. The
air is redolent with the smell of balsam and pine. After
nightfall, when the lights are burning in the busy market,
and the homeward-bound crowds with baskets and heavy
burdens of Christmas greens jostle one another with good-
natured banter, — nobody is ever cross down here in the
holiday season, — it is good to take a stroll through the
Farm, if one has a spot in his heart faithful yet to the hills
and the woods in spite of the latter-day city. But it is when
the moonlight is upon the water and upon the dark phantom
forest, when the heavy breathing of some pass'ng steamer is
the only sound that breaks the stillness of the night, and the
watchman smokes his only pipe on the bulwark, that the Farm
has a mood and an atmosphere all its own, full of poetry
which some day a painter's brush will catch and hold. . . .
Farthest down town, where the island narrows toward
the Battery, and warehouses crowd the few remaining
tenements, the sombre-hued colony of Syrians is astir
with preparation for the holiday. How comes it that in
the only settlement of the real Christmas people in New
York the corner saloon appropriates to itself all the outward
signs of it ? Even the floral cross that is nailed over the door
io8
When All the World is Kin
of the Orthodox church is long withered and dead; it has
been there since Easter, and it is yet twelve days to Christ-
mas by the belated reckoning of the Greek Church. But
if the houses show no sign of the holiday, within there is
nothing lacking. The whole colony is gone a-visiting.
There are enough of the unorthodox to set the fashion, and
the rest follow the custom of the country. The men go
from house to house, laugh, shake hands, and kiss one an-
other on both cheeks, with the salutation, "Kol am va
antom Salimoon." "Every year and you are safe," the
Syrian guide renders it into English ; and a non-professional
interpreter amends it: "May you grow happier year by
year." Arrack made from grapes and flavored with anise-
seed, and candy baked in little white balls like marbles, are
served with the indispensable cigarette; for long callers,
the pipe. . . .
The bells in old Trinity chime the midnight hour. From
dark hallways men and women pour forth and hasten to the
Maronite church. In the loft of the dingy old warehouse
wax candles burn before an altar of brass. The priest, in a
white robe with a huge gold cross worked on the back,
chants the ritual. The people respond. The women
kneel in the aisles, shrouding their heads in their shawls ; a
surpliced acolyte swings his censer; the heavy perfume of
burning incense fills the hall.
The band at the anarchists' ball is tuning up for the last
dance. Young and old float to the happy strains, forget-
ting injustice, oppression, hatred. Children slide upon the
waxed floor, weaving fearlessly in and out between couples
— between fierce, bearded men and short-haired women
with crimson-bordered kerchiefs. A Punch-and- Judy show
in the corner evokes shouts of laughter.
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The Book of Christmas
Outside the snow is falling. It sifts silently into each
nook and corner, softens all the hard and ugly lines, and
throws the spotless mantle of charity over the blemishes, the
shortcomings. Christmas morning will dawn pure and
white.
Jacob Riis in Children of the Tenements (abridged)
Christmas at Sea -<;^ ^c^ ^^^ ^oy ^^ -^^
'T^HE sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked
-*- hand ;
The decks were like a slide, where a seaman scarce could
stand;
The wind was a nor'wester, blowing squally off the sea.
And the cliffs and spouting breakers were the only thing
a-lee.
We heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day,
But 'twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck, instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops'l, and stood by to go about.
All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and
the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets and got no further forth ;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread.
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.
We gave the South a wider berth, for there the tide-race
roared ;
But every tack we made we brought the North Head close
aboard :
200
When All the World is Kin
So's we saw the cliffs and houses, and the breakers running
high,
And the coast-guard in his garden, with his glass against his
eye.
The frost was on the village roofs as white as ocean foam ;
The good red fires were burning bright in every 'longshore
home;
The windows sparkled clear, and the chimneys volleyed out,
And I vow we sniffed the victuals as the vessel went about.
The bells upon the church were rung with a mighty jovial
cheer,
For it's just that I should tell you how (of all days in the
year)
This day of our adversity was blessed Christmas morn,
And the house above the coast-guard's was the house where
I was born.
O well I saw the pleasant room, the pleasant faces there,
My mother's silver spectacles, my father's silver hair;
And well I saw the firelight, like a flight of homely elves,
Go dancing round the china-plates that stand upon the
shelves.
And well I know the talk they had, the talk that was of
me.
Of the shadow on the household and the son that went to
sea;
And O a wicked fool I seemed, in every kind of way.
To be here and hauling frozen ropes on blessed Christmas
day!
20I
The Book of Christmas
They lit the high sea-light, and the dark began to fall.
" All hands to loose top-gallant sails," I heard the captain
call.
" By the Lord, she'll never stand it," our first mate, Jack-
son, cried.
"It's the one way or the other, Mr. Jackson," he replied.
She staggered to her bearings, but the sails were new and
good,
And the ship smelt up to windward just as though she
understood.
As the winter's day was ending, in the entry of the
night.
We cleared the weary headland and passed below the light.
And they heaved a mighty breath, every soul on board but
me.
As they saw her nose again pointing handsome out to sea;
But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was just that I was leaving home and my folks were grow-
ing old.
Robert Louis Stevenson
By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons
The First Christmas Tree in the Legation Com-
pound at Tokyo, Japan ^^^ ^:> ^c^y ^^
A HUGE Christmas tree, the first that had ever grown in
*■ our compound, for the children of our servants and
writers and employes, who make up the number of our
Legation population to close on two hundred, beginning
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When All the World is Kin
with H , and ending with the last jinriksha coolie's
youngest baby. I could not have the tree on Christmas
Day, owing to various engagements; so it was fixed for
January 3d, and was quite the most successful entertain-
ment I ever gave !
When I undertook it, I confess that I had no idea how
many little ones belonged to the compound. I sent our
good Ogita round to invite them all solemnly to come to
Ichiban (Number One) on the 3d at five o'clock. Ogita
threw himself into the business with delighted goodwill,
having five little people of his own to include in the invita-
tion ; but all the servants were eager to help as soon as they
knew we were preparing a treat for the children. That is
work which would always appeal to Japanese of any age or
class. No trouble is too great, if it brings pleasure to the
"treasure flowers," as the babies are called. I am still too
ignorant of their special tastes to trust my own judgment in
the matter of presents; so Mr. G left the dictionary and
the Chancery for two or three afternoons, and helped me to
collect an appropriate harvest for the little hands to glean.
Some of them were not little, and these were more difficult to
buy for; but after many cold hours passed in the different
bazaars, it seemed to me that there must be something for
everybody, although we had really spent very little money.
The wares were so quaint and pretty that it was a pleasure
to sort and handle them. There were work boxes in beauti-
ful polished woods, with drawers fitting so perfectly that
when you closed one the compressed air at once shot out
another. There were mirrors enclosed in charming em-
broidered cases; for where mirrors are mostly made of
metal, people learn not to let them get scratched. There
were dollies of every size, and dolls' houses and furniture,
203
The Book of Christmas
kitchens, farmyards, rice-pounding machines — all made
in the tiniest proportions, such as it seemed no human
fingers could really have handled. For the elder boys we
bought books, school-boxes with every school requisite
contained in a square the size of one's hand, and pen-
knives and scissors, which are greatly prized as being of
foreign manufacture. Foi decorations we had an abun-
dant choice of materials. I got forests of willow branches
decorated with artificial fruits; pink and white balls made
of rice paste, which are threaded on the twigs; surprise
shells of the same paste, two lightly stuck together in the
form of a double scallop shell, and full of miniature toys;
kanzashi, or ornamental hairpins for the girls, made
flowers of gold and silver among my dark pine branches;
and I wasted precious minutes in opening and shutting
these dainty roses — buds until you press a spring, when
they open suddenly into a full-blown rose. But the most
beautiful things on my tree were the icicles, which hung in
scores from its sombre foliage, catching rosy gleams of
light from our lamps as we worked late into the night.
These were — chopsticks, long glass chopsticks, which I
discovered in the bazaar; and I am sure Santa Klaus him-
self could not have told them from icicles. Of course every
present must be labelled with a child's name, and here my
troubles began. Ogita was told to make out a correct list
of names and ages, with some reference to the calling of the
parents; for even here rank and precedence must be ob-
served, or terrible heart-burnings might follow. The list
came at last ; and if it were not so long, I would send it to
you complete, for it was a curiosity. Imagine such com-
plicated titles as these: "Minister's second cook's girl.
Ume, age 2; Minister's servant's cousin's boy. Age 11";
204
When All the World is Kin
''Student interpreter's teacher's girl"; "Vice-Consul's
jinriksha-man's boy." And so it went on, till there were
fifty-eight of them of all ages, from one year up to nineteen.
Some of them, indeed, were less than a year old; and I was
^amused on the evening of the 2d at having the list brought
back to me with this note (Ogita's English is still highly
individual !) : "Marked X is decHned to the invitation," On
looking down the column, I found that ominous-looking
cross only against one name, that of Yasu, daughter of Ito
Kanejiro, Mr. G 's cook. This recalcitrant little person
turned out to be six weeks old — an early age for parties
even nowadays. Miss Yasu, having been born in Novem-
ber, was'put down in the following January as two years old,
after the puzzling Japanese fashion. Then I found that
they would write boys as girls, girls as boys, grown-ups as
babies, and so on. Even at the last moment a doll had to be
turned into a sword, a toy tea-set into a workbox, a history
of Europe into a rattle; but people who grow Christmas
trees' are prepared for such small contingencies, and no one
knew anything about it when on Friday afternoon the
great tree slowly glowed into a pyramid of light, and a long
procession of little Japs was marshalled in, with great
solemnity and many bows, till they stood, a delighted,
wide-eyed crowd, round the beautiful shining thing, the
first Christmas tree any one of them had ever seen. It was
worth all the trouble, to see the gasp of surprise and delight,
the evident fear that the whole thing might be unreal and
suddenly fade away. One little man of two fell flat on his
back with amazement, tried to rise and have another look,
and in so doing rolled over on his nose, where he lay quite
silent till his relatives rescued him. Behind the children
stood the mothers, quite as pleased as they, and with them
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The Book of Christmas
one very old lady with a little child on her back. She
turned out to be the Vice-Consul's jinriksha-man's grand-
mother; the wife of that functionary was dead, and the old
lady had to take her place in carrying about the poor little
V. C. J. R. S. M.'s boy baby.
The children stood, the little ones in front and the taller
ones behind, in a semicircle, and the many lights showed
their bright faces and gorgeous costumes, for no one would
be outdone by another in smartness — I fancy the poorer
women had borrowed from richer neighbours — and the
result was picturesque in the extreme. The older girls had
their heads beautifully dressed, with flowers and pins and
rolls of scarlet crape knotted in between the coils; their
dresses were pale green or blue, with bright linings and stiff
silk obis; but the little ones were a blaze of scarlet, green,
geranium pink, and orange, their long sleeves sweeping the
ground, and the huge flower patterns of their garments
making them look like live flowers as they moved about on
the dark velvet carpet. When they had gazed their fill,
they were called up to me one by one, Ogita addressing
them all as "San" (Miss or Mr.), even if they could only
toddle, and I gave them their serious presents with their
names, written in Japanese and English, tied on with red
ribbon — an attention which, as I was afterwards told, they
appreciated greatly. It seemed to me that they never would
end ; their size varied from a wee mite who could not carry
its own toys to a tall handsome student of sixteen, or a
gorgeous young lady in green and mauve crape and a head
that must have taken the best part of a day to dress.
In one thing they were all alike: their manners were
perfect. There was no pushing or grasping, no glances of
envy at what other children received, no false shyness in
206
When All the World is Kin
their sweet happy way of expressing their thanks. I had
for my helpers two somewhat antagonistic volunteers —
Sir Edwin Arnold, basking in Buddhistic calms, and Bishop
Bickersteth, intensely Anglican, severe-looking, ascetic.
There had already been some polite theological encounters
at our table, and I did not feel sure that the combination
would prove a happy one. But each man is a wonder of
kind-heartedness in his own way; and my doubts were re-
placed by sunshiny certainties, when I saw how they both
began by beaming at the children, and ended by beaming
on one another. I was puzzled by one thing about the
children : although we kept giving them sweets and oranges
off the tree, every time I looked round the big circle all
were empty-handed again, and it really seemed as if they
must have swallowed the gifts, gold paper and ribbon and
all. But at last I noticed that their square hanging sleeves
began to have a strange lumpy appearance, like a conjurer's
waistcoat just before he produces twenty-four bowls of live
goldfish from his internal economy ; and then I understood
that the plunder was at once dropped into these great
sleeves so as to leave hands free for anything else that
Okusama might think good to bestow. One little lady,
O'Haru San, aged three, got so overloaded with goodies and
toys that they kept rolling out of her sleeves, to the great
delight of the Brown Ambassador Dachshund, Tip, who
pounced on them like lightning, and was also convicted of
nibbling at cakes on the lower branches of the tree.
The bigger children would not take second editions of
presents, and answered, "Honourable thanks, I have!" if
offered more than they thought their share; but babies are
babies all the world over! When the distribution was
finished at last, I got a Japanese gentleman to tell them
207
The Book of Christmas
the story of Christmas, the children's feast; and then they
came up one by one to say "Sayonara" ("Since it must be,"
the Japanese farewell), and ''Arigato gozaimasu" ("The
honourable thanks").
"Come back next year," I said; and then the last pres-
ents were given out — beautiful lanterns, red, lighted, and
hung on what Ogita calls bumboos, to light the guests
home with. One tiny maiden refused to go, and flung
herself on the floor in a passion of weeping, saying that
Okusama's house was too beautiful to leave, and she would
stay with me always — yes, she would ! Only the sight of
the lighted lantern, bobbing on a stick twice as long as her-
self, persuaded her to return to her own home in the servants'
quarters. I stood on the step, the same step where I had set
the fireflies free one warm night last summer, and watched
the little people scatter over the lawns, and disappear into
the dark shrubberies, their round red lights dancing and
shifting as they went, just as if my fireflies had come back,
on red wings this time, to light my little friends to bed.
Mary Crawford Fraser
Christmas in India ^^> ^^ ^;:> ^^ ^^^^
"pviM dawn behind the tamarisks — the sky is saffron-
-*-^ yellow —
As the women in the village grind the corn,
And the parrots seek the river-side, each calling to his
fellow
That the Day, the staring Eastern Day is born.
Oh the white dust on the highway ! Oh the stenches in the
byway!
208
When All the World is Kin
Oh the clammy fog that hovers over earth !
And at Home they're making merry 'neath the white and
scarlet berry —
What part have India's exiles in their mirth?
Full day behind the tamarisks — the sky is blue and star-
ing—
As the cattle crawl afield beneath the yoke,
And they bear One o'er the field-path, who is past all hope
or caring
To the ghat below the curling wreaths of smoke.
Call on Rama, going slowly, as ye bear a brother lowly —
Call on Rama — he may hear, perhaps, your voice !
With our hymn-books and our Psalters we appeal to other
altars
And to-day we bid "good Christian men rejoice!"
High noon behind the tamarisks — the sun is hot above
us —
As at Home the Christmas Day is breaking wan.
They will drink our healths at dinner — those who tell us
how they love us.
And forget us till another year be gone !
Oh the toil that needs no breaking! Oh the Heimweh,
ceaseless, aching!
Oh the black dividing Sea and alien Plain !
Youth was cheap — wherefore we sold it. Gold was good
— we hoped to hold it,
And to-day we know the fulness of our gain.
Gray dusk behind the tamarisks — the parrots fly to-
gether —
As the sun is sinking slowly over Home;
p 209
The Book of Christmas
And his last ray seems to mock us shackled in a lifelong
tether
That drags us back howe'er so far we roam.
Hard her service, poor her payment — she in ancient,
tattered raiment —
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.
If the year of life be lent her, if her temple's shrine we
enter,
The door is shut — we may not look behind.
Black night behind the tamarisks — the owls begin their
chorus —
As the conches from the temples cream and bray.
With the fruitless years behind us, and the hopeless years
before us.
Let us honor, O my brothers, Christmas Day!
Call a truce, then, to our labors — let us feast with friends
and neighbors,
And be merry as the custom of our caste;
For if ** faint and forced the laughter," and if sadness
follow after.
We are richer by one mocking Christmas past.
RuDYARD Kipling
By permission of the author and Messrs. Methuen 6^ Co.
A Belgian Christmas Eve Procession ^^^^ -^^
A CERTAIN stir and bustle in the street evidently por-
tended some important event. Spectators, market-
women ; workmen and bloused peasants, homeward bound
with baskets emptied of eggs, chickens and shapeless lumps
of butter, began to congregate, mingling with some score
2IO
When All the World is Kin
or so of that minor bourgeoisie that lives frugally on its
modest income and having overmuch leisure is greedy
for a sight of any street spectacle. There were idle
troopers too belonging to the cavalry, whose trumpets
rang out shrilly ever and anon from the barracks hard by;
while a milk-woman on her rounds, with ghttering brass
cans in the little green cart that her sturdy mastiff with
his brass-studded harness and red worsted tassels drew
so easily, forgot her customers as she secured for herself a
place in the foremost rank. Then children suddenly ap-
peared, basket-laden, strewing the street with flowers and
cut fragments of colored paper until the rough paving-
stones all but disappeared beneath an irregular mosaic of
red and green and blue. The bells of neighboring churches
sent forth with common accord a joyous peal which was
echoed by those of a monastery on the farther side of my
hotel, and through the gate of which I had often seen the
poor — such beggars as Sterne depicted — going in for
their daily dole of bread and soup. From afar came the
boom and clang of music, blended with the deep rich notes
of chanting, as the head of a procession came in sight.
It was difficult to believe that the town could have
contained so many girls — young, well dressed and pretty,
as had been, by ecclesiastical influence, or by social con-
siderations, induced to walk in that procession. They
were of all ages, from the lisping child ill at ease in her
starched frock and white shoes, to the tall maiden, carry-
ing a heavy flag with the air of a Joan of Arc ; but there they
were — squadrons of girls in white ; bevies of girls in blue;
companies of girls in pink or lilac or maize color; all
either actually bearing some emblem or badge, or feigning
to assist the progress of some shrine or reliquary, or colossal
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The Book of Christmas
crucifix, or group of images, by grasping the end of one of
the hundreds of bright ribbons that were attached to these
the central features and rallying points of the show. On,
on they streamed, walking demurely to the musical bas-
soon and serpent cornet and drum, of clashing cymbal and
piping clarionet, while the musicians, collected from many
a parish of city and suburbs, beat and blew their best.
Anon the music was hushed, and nothing broke the silence
save the deep voices of the chanting priests, and then arose
the shrill singing of many children as school after school,
well drilled and officered by nuns or friars, as the case
might be, — marched on to swell the apparently inter-
minable array.
A marvellous effect was there of color and grouping,
and a rare display too of treasures ecclesiastic that seldom
see the light of day. There is nothing now in the market,
were an empress the bidder, to equal that old point lace
just drawn forth from the oaken chest in which it usually
reposes, and which was the pious work of supple fingers
that crumbled to dust two centuries ago. Where can you
find such goldsmith's work as yonder casket, that in bygone
ages was consecrated as the receptacle of some wonder-
working relic; or see such a triumph of art as that
jewelled chalice, the repousse work of which was surely
wrought by fairy hammers, so light and delicate is the
tracery?
... On, and onwards still, as if the whole feminine
population of the kingdom — between the ages of seven,
say, and seven-and-twenty — had been pressed into the
service, swept the procession. Fresh bands of music, new
companies of chanting priests, of deep-voiced deacons
whose scarlet robes were all but hidden by costly lace,
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When All the World is Kin
awakened the echoes of the quiet streets. Chariots with
bleeding hearts conspicuously borne aloft; chariots with
gigantic crucifixes; chariots resplendent as the sun, with
lavish display of cloth of gold, and tenanted by venerated
images, went lumbering by.
And still the children sang and the diapason of the
chanting rolled out like solemn thunder on the air, while
at every instant some novel feature of the ever varying
spectacle claimed its meed of praise. Prettiest, perhaps,
of all the sights there was a little — a very little — child, a
beautiful boy with golden curls, fantastically clad in rai-
ment of camel's hair, who carried a tiny cross and led
by a blue ribbon a white lamb, highly trained, no doubt,
since it followed with perfect docility and exemplary meek-
ness. A more charming model of innocent infancy than
this youthful representative of John the Baptist, as with
filleted head, small limbs seemingly bare, and blue eyes
that never wandered to the right or left, he slowly stepped
on, none of the great Italian masters ever drew. . . .
The spectators, I noticed, behaved very variously.
There were esprit forts clearly among the bourgeoisie
looking on, who seemed coldly indifferent to what they
saw, if not actually hostile, and who declined to doff their
hats as the holiest images and the most hallowed em-
blems were borne by. But the peasants one and all bared
their heads in reverence; and the milk-woman, with her
cart and her cans, had pulled her rosary, with its dark
beads and brass medals, out of her capacious pocket
and was telling her beads as devoutly as her own great-
grandmother could have done.
Some rivalry there may possibly have been between the
different parishes which had sent forth their boys and girls,
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The Book of Christmas
their bands and flags, and the jealously guarded treasures
from crypt and chancel and sacristy to swell the pomp —
Saint Josse, with its famed old church, to which pilgrims
resort even from the banks of Loire and Rhine, could not
permit itself to be outshone by fashionable Saint Jacques,
where it is easy for a bland abbe, who knows the world
of the salons, to collect subscriptions that are less missed
by the givers than a lost bet on the races, or a luckless
stake at baccarat. And Saint Ursula, grim patroness of
a network of ancient streets, where aristocratic mansions
of the mediaeval type are elbowed by mean shops and
hucksters' stalls, yet tries to avoid the disgrace of being
overcrowded by moneyed, pushing parvenu All Saints,
where tall new houses, radiant with terra cotta and plate
glass, shelter the rich proprietors of the still taller brick
chimneys that dominate a mass of workmen's dwellings
on the outskirts of the parish. But such a spirit of emu-
lation only serves to enhance the glitter of the show.
And now the clashing cymbals, and the boom and bray
of the brass instruments lately at their loudest, are hushed,
that the rich thunder of the chanting may be the better
heard, and the spectators press forward, or stand on tiptoe,
to peer over the shoulders of those in the foremost rank.
Something was plainly to be looked for that was regarded
as the central pivot, or kernel, of the show. And here it
comes, — surrounded by chanting priests, and preceded by
scarlet capped and white robed acolytes swinging weighty
censers, under his canopy of state borne over his head by
four stronger men, some dignitary of the Church goes by.
He wears no mitre — not even that of a bishop in partihus
infidelium — and therefore I conjecture him to be a dean.
He is at any rate splendid as jewels, and gold embroider-
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When All the World is Kin
ies, and antique lace can make him; and he walks be-
neath his gorgeous baldaquin of gold and purple, chanting
too, but in a thin reedy voice, for he is old, and his hair,
silver white, contrasts somewhat plaintively with the mag-
nificence that environs him as amidst clouds of steaming
incense he totters on. The bystanders begin to disperse,
for it is getting late and cold, and the shadows are begin-
ning to creep from darkling nooks and corners, and the
spectacle is over. The procession is out of sight, and
fainter grow the sounds of the music and of the chanting.
The last spectator to depart was a young monk, with a
pale face and dreamy eyes, clad in the brown robes of his
order, who during all this time had knelt on the cold stones
at the monastery gate, his lips moving as his lean fingers
grasped his rosary, and an expression of rapt devotion on
his wan countenance, that would have done credit to some
hermit saint of a thousand years ago when the crown of
martyrdom was easy to find.
From All the Year Round
Christmas at the Cape ^;^ ^;^ ^r^y ^> ^c::y
\/'OUR Christmas comes with holly leaves
-*- And snow about your doors and eaves;
Our lighted windows, open wide,
Let in our summer Christmas tide;
And where the drifting moths may go —
Behold our tiny flakes of snow ;
But carol, carol in the cold;
And carol, carol as ye may, —
We sing the merry songs of old
As merrily on Christmas Day.
215
The Book of Christmas
Your hills are wrapped in rainy cloud,
Your sea in anger roars aloud;
But here our hills are veiled with haze
In harmonies of blues and grays;
The waters of two oceans meet
With friendly murmurs by our feet;
But carol, carol, Christmas Waits,
And carol, carol, as ye may, —
The Crickets by our doors and gates
Sing in the gr^ce of Christmas Day.
The rain and sunshine of the Cape
Lie folded in the ripening grape.
And Stellenbosch and Drakenstein,
With bounteous orchard, field of vine.
And every spot that we pass by —
Lie burnished 'neath our Christmas sky ;
So carol, carol in your snow
And carol, carol as ye may, —
We carol 'mid our blooms ablow.
The grace of Summer's Christmas Day.
John Rxjncie
The ''Good Night" in Spain -^ ^^ -^^^ -s^
^ T TRO is he that has seen a Nativity and has not felt it ?
^ * Who has not found himself in his own home, in hi:
own domain, there in that fantastic world of cork and
gummed paper, with its shadowy caves, where a saintly
anchorite prays before a crucifix — sweet and simple an-
achronism, like that of the hunter who in a thicket of rose-
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When All the World is Kin
mary shrubs aims his gun at a partridge large as a stork
perched on the tower of a hermitage, or that of the smug-
gler with his Spanish cloak and slouch hat, who with a load
of tobacco hides behind a paper rock to give free passage to
the three kings journeying in all their glory along the lofty
summits of those cork Alps? Who does not feel an inex-
plicable pleasure at seeing that little donkey, laden with fire-
wood, passing over a proud bridge of paper stone ? And
that meadow of milled green baize in which feed so tran-
quilly those little white lambs ! Does not that hoar frost so
well imitated with steel filings turn you cold? Do you not
take comfort in the heat of that ruddy bonfire which the
shepherds are kindling to warm the Holy Child? Who
is not startled to discover, under the strips of glass which
represent so well a frozen river, the fish, the tortoises, the
crabs, reposing with all ease upon a bed of golden sand and
swollen to dimensions unknown to naturalists? Here is a
crab under whose claws can pass an eel, his, neighbor, as
under the arch of a bridge. Here is a colossal rat regard-
ing with a bullying air a diminutive and peaceful kitten.
Over yonder a donkey is disputing with a rabbit about the
respective magnificence of their ears, which are, in fact,
of the same size, and a bull is holding a similar discussion,
on the subject of horns, with a snail, while a stout duck
refuses to yield the honors to a rickety swan. And these
birds of all colors, gladdening that profound forest of
little evergreens which forms the background of this en-
chanting scene, would you not think that they had gathered
here from the four quarters of the earth? Does it not
make you happy to see the shepherds dance ? And, above
all, do you not adore with tender reverence the Divine
Mystery contained in that humble porch with its thatch of
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The Book of Christmas
straw and, in its depths, a halo or glory of light? I say
it frankly, — on that holy and merry Christmas Eve, all
these things seem to me to live and feel ; these little figures
of clay, shaped by clumsy hands, placed there with such
faith and such devotion, seem to me to receive breath and
being from the joy and enthusiasrn that reign. The star
which guides the Magi, tinsel and glass though it is, seems
to me to shine and shoot forth rays. The aureole sur-
rounding the manger where the Holy Child is lying seems
to glow not as a transparency with candles placed behind
it, but with a reflection of celestial light. The tambour-
ines and drums and songs give out melodies as simple and
as pleasing as if they were echoes of those heard by the
shepherds on that first blest Christmas Eve.
Could there be a festival more joyous, more natural,
more tender in appeal and at the same time more exalted
in significance — the birth of the Child in the rude stable,
with only shepherds to wish him joy; innocence, poverty,
simplicity, the very foundations of the magnificent struc-
ture of Christianity? Well may children and the poor
keep a merry Christmas. They bring to God the gifts
which please him best, — purity, faith and love. O,
night, well called in Spain ''The Good Night," blither
than the carnival and holy as Holy Week itself !
From Holy Night, by Fernan Caballero. Translated
by Katharine Lee Bates
Christmas in Rome ^^> ^;^ ^::^ ^:::y ^:iy ^^^
"Xl^ THAT is the meaning of our English Christmas?
^ * What makes it seem so truly Northern, national,
and homely, that we do not like to keep the feast upon
218
When All the World is Kin
a foreign shore? These questions grew upon me as I
stood one Advent afternoon beneath the Dome of Flor-
ence. . . .
The same thought pursued me as I drove to Rome by
Siena, still and brown, uplifted mid her russet hills and
wilderness of rolling plain; by Chiusi, with its sepulchral
city of a dead and unknown people; through the chest-
nut forests of the Apennines; by Orvieto's rock, Viterbo's
fountains, and the oak-grown solitudes of the Ciminian
heights, from which one looks across the broad Lake of
Bolsena and the Roman plain. Brilliant sunlight, like
that of a day in late September, shone upon the landscape,
and I thought — Can this be Christmas? Are they bring-
ing mistletoe and holly on the country carts into the towns
in far-off England? Is it clear and frosty there, with the
tramp of heels upon the flag, or snowing silently, or foggy,
with a round red sun and cries of warning at the corners of
the streets?
I reached Rome on Christmas-eve in time to hear mid-
night services in the Sistine Chapel and St. John Lateran,
to breathe the dust of decayed shrines, to wonder at dot-
ing cardinals begrimed with snuff, and to resent the open-
mouthed bad taste of my countrymen, who made a mockery
of these palsy-stricken ceremonies. Nine cardinals going
to sleep, nine train-bearers talking scandal, twenty huge,
handsome Switzers in the dress devised by Michael Angelo,
some ushers, a choir caged off by gilded railings, the in-
solence and eagerness of polyglot tourists, plenty of wax
candles dripping on people's heads, and a continual nasal
drone proceeding from the gilded cage, out of which were
caught at intervals these words, and these only — "Saecula
Saeculorum, amen." Such was the celebrated Sistine
219
The Book of Christmas
service. The chapel blazed with light, and very strange
did Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, his Sibyls, and his
Prophets appear upon the roof and wall above this motley
and unmeaning crowd.
Next morning I put on my dress-clothes and white tie
and repaired, with groups of Englishmen similarly at-
tired, and of Englishwomen in black crape (the regulation
costume), to St. Peter's. It was a glorious and cloudless
morning; sunbeams streamed in columns from the south-
ern windows, falling on the vast space full of soldiers and
a mingled mass of every kind of people. Up the nave
stood double files of the pontifical guard. Monks and
nuns mixed with the Swiss cuirassiers and halberds.
Contadini crowded round the sacred images, and especially
round the toe of St. Peter. I saw many mothers lift their
swaddled babies up to kiss it. Valets of cardinals, with
the invariable red umbrellas, hung about side chapels and
sacristies. Purple-mantled monsignori, like emperor but-
terflies, floated down the aisles from sunlight into shadow.
Movement, color, and the stir of expectation made the
church alive. We showed our dress-clothes to the guard,
were admitted within their ranks, and solemnly walked
up towards the dome. There, under its broad canopy,
stood the altar, glittering with gold and candles. The
choir was carpeted and hung with scarlet. Two magnifi-
cent thrones rose ready for the Pope. Guards of honor,
soldiers, attaches, and the elite of the residents and visitors
in Rome were scattered in groups, picturesquely varied by
ecclesiastics of all orders and degrees. At ten a stirring
took place near the great west door. It opened, and we
saw a procession of the Pope and his cardinals. Before
him marched the singers and the blowers of the silver
220
When All the World is Kin
trumpets, making the most liquid melody. Then came
his Cap of Maintenance and three tiaras; then a company
of mitred priests; next the cardinals in scarlet; and last,
aloft beneath a canopy upon the shoulders of men, and
flanked by the mystic fans, advanced the Pope himself,
swaying to and fro like a Lama or an Aztec king. Still the
trumpets blew most silverly, and still the people knelt ; and
as he came, we knelt and had his blessing. Then he took
his state and received homage. After this the choir began
to sing a mass of Palestrina's, and the deacons robed the
Pope. Marvellous putting on and taking off of robes and
tiaras and mitres ensued, during which there was much
bowing and praying and burning of incense. At last,
when he had reached the highest stage of sacrificial sanc-
tity, he proceeded to the altar, waited on by cardinals and
bishops. Having censed it carefully, he took a higher
throne and divested himself of part of his robes. Then
the mass went on in earnest till the moment of consecra-
tion, when it paused, the Pope descended from his throne,
passed down the choir, and reached the altar. Every one
knelt; the shrill bell tinkled; the silver trumpets blew;
the air became sick and heavy with incense, so that sun
and candle-light swooned in an atmosphere of odorous
cloud-wreaths. The whole church trembled, hearing the
strange subtle music vibrate in the dome, and seeing
the Pope with his own hands lift Christ's body from the
altar and present it to the people. An old parish priest,
pilgrim from some valley of the Apennines, who knelt beside
me, cried and quivered with excess of adoration. The
great tombs around, the sculptured saints and angels, the
dome, the volumes of light and incense and unfamiliar
melody, the hierarchy ministrant, the white and central
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The Book of Christmas
figure of the Pope, the multitude, made up an overpower-
ing scene.
John Addington Symonds
Christmas in Burgundy -^^ ^::b^ ^y ^:> -<:>
"Tj^VERY year at the approach of Advent, people re-
-'— ' fresh their memories, clear their throats, and begin
preluding, in the long evenings by the fireside, those carols
whose invariable and eternal theme is the coming of the
Messiah. They take from old closets pamphlets, little
collections begrimed with dust and smoke, to which the
press, and sometimes the pen, has consigned these songs;
and as soon as the first Sunday of Advent sounds, they
gossip, they gad about, they sit together by the fireside,
sometimes at one house, sometimes at another, taking turns
in paying for the chestnuts and white wine, but singing with
one common voice the grotesque praises of the Little Jesus.
There are very few villages even, which, during all the
evenings of Advent, do not hear some of these curious
canticles shouted in their streets, to the nasal drone of
bagpipes. In this case the minstrel comes as a reinforce-
ment to the singers at the fireside ; he brings and adds his
dose of joy (spontaneous or mercenary, it matters little
which) to the joy which breathes around the hearth-stone;
and when the voices vibrate and resound, one voice more is
always welcome. There, it is not the purity of the notes
which makes the concert, but the quantity, — non qualitas,
sed quantitas; then (to finish at once with the minstrel)
when the Saviour has at length been born in the manger,
and the beautiful Christmas Eve is passed, the rustic piper
makes his round among the houses, where every one compli-
222
When All the World is Kin
ments and thanks him, and, moreover, gives him in small
coin the price of the shrill notes with which he has enlivened
the evening entertainments.
More or less until Christmas Eve, all goes on in this
way among our devout singers, with the difference of some
gallons of wine or some hundreds of chestnuts. But this
famous eve once come, the scale is pitched upon a higher
key; the closing evening must be a memorable one. The
toilet is begun at nightfall ; then comes the hour of supper,
admonishing divers appetites; and groups, as numerous
as possible, are formed to take together this comfortable
evening repast. The supper finished, a circle gathers
around the hearth, which is arranged and set in order this
evening after a particular fashion, and which at a later hour
of the night is to become the object of special interest to the
children. On the burning brands an enormous log has been
placed. This lo^ assuredly does not change its nature, but
it changes its name during this evening: it is called the
Suche (the Yule-log). ''Look you," say they to the children,
" if you are good this evening, Noel " (for with children one
must always personify) "will rain down sugar-plums in the
night." And the children sit demurely, keeping as quiet
as their turbulent little natures will permit. The groups of
older persons, not always as orderly as the children, seize
this good opportunity to surrender themselves with merry
hearts and boisterous voices to the chanted worship of the
miraculous Noel. For this final solemnity, they have kept
the most powerful, the most enthusiastic, the most electrify-
ing carols. Noel ! Noel ! Noel ! this magic word resounds
on all sides; it seasons every sauce, it is served up with
every course. Of the thousands of canticles which are
heard on this famous eve, ninety-nine in a hundred begin
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The Book of Christmas
and end with this word ; which is, one may say, their Alpha
and Omega, their crown and footstool. This last evening,
the merry-making is prolonged. Instead of retiring at ten
or eleven o'clock, as is generally done on all the preceding
evenings, they wait for the stroke of midnight: this word
sufficiently proclaims to what ceremony they are going to
repair. For ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, the bells
have been calling the faithful with a triple-bobmajor;
and each one, furnished with a little taper streaked with
various colors (the Christmas Candle) goes through the
crowded streets, where the lanterns are dancing like
Will-o'-the-Wisps, at the impatient summons of the multi-
tudinous chimes. It is the Midnight Mass. Once inside
the church, they hear with more or less piety the Mass, em-
blematic of the coming of the Messiah. Then in tumult and
great haste they return homeward, always in numerous
groups; they salute the Yule-log ; they pay homage to the
hearth; they sit down at table; and, amid songs which
reverberate louder than ever, make this meal of after-
Christmas, so long looked for, so cherished, so joyous, so
noisy, and which it has been thought fit to call, we hardly
know why, Rossignon. The supper eaten at nightfall is no
impediment, as you may imagine, to the appetite's return-
ing', above all, if the going to and from church has made the
devout eaters feel some little shafts of the sharp and biting
north-wind. Rossignon then goes on merrily, — sometimes
far into the morning hours; but, nevertheless, gradually
throats grow hoarse, stomachs are filled, the Yule-log burns
out, and at last the hour arrives when each one, as best he
may, regains his domicile and his bed, and puts with himself
between the sheets the material for a good sore-throat, or a
good indigestion, for the morrow. Previous to this, care
224
When All the World is Kin
has been taken to place in the slippers, or wooden shoes of
the children, the sugar-plums, which shall be for them, on
their waking, the welcome fruits of the Christmas log.
In the Glossary, the Suche, or Yule-log, is thus defined : —
"This is a huge log, which is placed on the fire on
Christmas Eve, and which in Burgundy is called, on this
account, lai Suche de Noel. Then the father of the family,
particularly among the middle classes, sings solemnly
Christmas carols with his wife and children, the smallest
of whom he sends into the corner to pray that the Yule-log
may bear him some sugar-plums. Meanwhile, little parcels
of them are placed under each end of the log, and the
children come and pick them up, believing, in good faith,
that the great log has borne them."
M. Fertiault. Translated by Henry W. Longfellow
Christmas in Germany <^ ^^ ^;:^ ^r^y ^;>
Berlin, December 25, 1871
npO-DAY is Christmas day, and I have thought much of
-*" you all at home, and have wondered if you've been
having an apathetic time as usual. I think we often spend
Christmas in a most shocking fashion in America, and I
mean to revolutionize all that when I get back. So long
a time in Germany has taught me better. Here it is a
season of universal joy, and everybody enters into it. Last
night we had a Christmas tree at the S.'s, as we always do.
We went there at half past six, and it was the prettiest thing
to see in every house, nearly, a tree just lighted, or in
process of being so. As a separate family lives on each
floor, often in one house would be three trees, one above the
Q 225
The Book of Christmas
other, in the front rooms. The curtains are always drawn
up, to give the passers-by the benefit of it. They don't
make a fearful undertaking of having a Christmas tree here,
as we do in America, and so they are attainable by every-
body. The tree is small, to begin with, and nothing is put
on it except the tapers and bonbons. It is fixed on a small
stand in the centre of a large square table covered with a
white cloth, and each person's presents are arranged in a
separate pile around it. The tree is only lighted for the
sake of beauty, and for the air of festivity it throws over the
thing. — After a crisp walk in the moonlight (which I
performed in the style of " Johnny-look-up-in-the-air," for
I was engaged in staring into house-windows, so far as it
was practicable), we sat down to enjoy a cup of tea and a
piece of cake. I had just begun my second cup, when,
Presto! the parlour doors flew open, and there stood the
little green tree, blossoming out into lights, and throwing
its gleams over the well-laden table. There was a general
scramble and a search for one's own pile, succeeded by deep
silence and suspense while we opened the papers. Such a
hand shaking and embracing and thanking as followed!
concluding with the satisfactory conviction that we each
had "just what we wanted." Germans do not despise the
utilitarian in their Christmas gifts, as we do, but, between
these and their birthday offerings, expect to be set up for the
rest of the year in the necessaries of life as well as in its
superfluities. Presents of stockings, underclothes, dresses,
handkerchiefs, soaps — nothing comes amiss. And every
one must give to every one else. That is LAW.
Amy Fay in Music-Study in Germany.
226
When All the World is Kin
Christmas Dinner in a Clipper's Fo'c'sle ^^ ^^:^
r^HRISTMAS DAY we were running before a fine
^^ westerly gale for the mouth of the channel. We had
been hove to for forty-eight hours; for, though we had
sighted Fayal in the Azores, the Scotchman was afraid to
run because the sun was obscured and he couldn't get an
observation. So he lay under lower main topsail and
fore topmast staysail, and let the fine fair wind blow away
while he waited for the sun to come out so he could find out
where he was. Not much like Captain Hurlburt in the
old Tanjore. Early Christmas morning, a little topsail
schooner — one of the fleet of clippers known as "Western
Island Fruiters" — came flying along before the wind
like a little butterfly, and, seeing the big ship hove to, I sup-
pose they thought there must be something the matter with
her; so they kindly ran under our stern and hailed. After
finding out where we were from, and where bound, the
skipper asked us what was the matter.
"Nothing," said Russell.
"Well," said the schooner skipper, "what are ye hove to
for?"
Russell told him he wanted to get a "sight" to find his
position.
"FoUer me, you blahsted fool," said the skipper, and
putting up his helm he left us. It must have been the sight
of that little schooner running so confidently that shamed
him, for he squared away and made sail at once. The cook
had killed the pig the day before, so we were to have fresh
meat, that is, baked pork and plum duff, with sauce, for our
Christmas dinner. Although I could not eat much of any-
227
The Book of Christmas
thing, I looked forward with great anticipations to the
fresh meat which I was anxious to taste. When the watch
was called at half -past eleven, she was running dead before,
and rolling both rails under; for iron ships are proverbially
wet. Some call them "diving bells." Three men went
to the galley: one for the duff, one for the pork, and the
other for the duff sauce.
Thsy got their grub and started forward. Just as they
got nicely clear of the deck-house, where there was nothing
to protect them, she gave a heavy roll to port, scooping up
several tons of water over the rail ; then she rolled as far to
starboard, doing the same trick again. And now the decks
being full of water level with both rails, a big sea raised her
stern high in air. The fellow who had the pork yelled for
somebody to open the door, and somebody did, with the
result that as her stern went up the three men with the grub
and a tidal wave of salt water all came into the fore-
castle together.
Oh, what a merry Christmas that was ! The whole
watch were sitting on their chests waiting for their dinner,
or perhaps some were not entirely dressed when that green
sea came in. It washed all the men and chests up into the
eyes of her, and drowned out all the lower bunks. The pork
and duff went somewhere. The sauce, of course, disap-
peared entirely. Every man was soaked, and so was every
rag of clothing belonging to the whole watch, except the
bedding in the upper bunks, and that was pretty well wet
from the splashing. Fortunately, I had the upper bunk
next the door, so that it all went by me, and I expected
the splashing caused by the sudden stoppage of the water
by the bows. After the flood had subsided, there came
a jawing match.
228
When All the World is Kin
"Who hollered to open that door?" "No." "But
what bloody fool opened it?"
So and so. ^
"You're a liar!"
I thought there would be a general row, but they were too
wet and too cold and disheartened to fight about anything.
They pulled their chests out from under each other, satisfied
themselves that they didn't own a dry stitch for a change, and
then, fishing out the pork and duff from under the bunks,
threw the latter overboard, and made a sorry Christmas
dinner on semi-saturated fresh pork and hardtack.
Herbert Elliott Hamblen in On Many Seas
Christmas in Jail ^^ <:::^ ^^ ^:;^ ^::> ^::^
" "p ICHARD MARSTON, I charge you with unlawfully
■*"^ taking, steahng, and carrying away, in company with
others, one thousand head of mixed cattle, more or less, the
property of one Walter Hood, of Outer Back, Momberah,
in or about the month of June last."
"All right ; why don't you make it a few more while you're
about it?"
"That'll do," he said, nodding his head; "you decline to
say anything. Well, I can't exactly wish you a merry Christ-
mas— fancy this being Christmas Eve, by Jove ! — but you'll
be cool enough this deuced hot weather till the sessions in
February, which is more than some of us can say. Good-
night." He went out and locked the door. I sat down on
my blanket on the floor and hid my head in my hands.
I wonder it didn't burst with what I felt then. Strange
that I shouldn't have felt half as bad when the judge, the
229
The Book of Christmas
other day, sentenced me to be a dead man in a couple of
months. But I was young then.
^ ^ «]C rf« 9|C ^ 'I*
Christmas Day ! Christmas Day ! So this is how I was
to spend it after all, I thought, as I woke up at dawn, and
saw the gray light just beginning to get through the bars of
the window of the cell.
Here was I locked up, caged, ironed, disgraced, a felon
and an outcast for the rest of my life. Jim, flying for his
life, hiding from every honest man, every policeman in the
country looking after him, and authorized to catch him or
shoot him down like a sheep-killing dog. Father living in
the Hollow, like a black-fellow in a cave, afraid to spend
the blessed Christmas with his wife and daughter, like the
poorest man in the land could do if he was only honest.
Mother half dead with grief, and Aileen ashamed to speak
to the man that loved and respected her from her childhood.
Gracey Storefield not daring to think of me or say my name,
after seeing me carried off a prisoner before her eyes. Here
was a load of misery and disgrace heaped up together, to be
borne by the whole family, now and for the time to come —
by the innocent as well as the guilty. And for what?
Because we had been too idle and careless to work regularly
and save our money, though well able to do it, like honest
men. Because, little by little, we had let bad dishonest
ways and flash manners grow upon us, all running up an
account that had to be paid some day.
And now the day of reckoning had come — sharp and
sudden with a vengeance ! Well, what call had we to look
for anything else? We had been working for it; now we
had got it, and had to bear it. Not for want of warning,
neither. What had mother and Aileen been saying ever
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When All the World is Kin
since we could remember? Warning upon warning. Now
the end had come just as they said. Of course I knew in a
general way that I couldn't be punished or be done anything
to right off. I knew law enough for that. The next thing
would be that I should have to be brought up before the
magistrates and committed for trial as soon as they could
get any evidence.
After breakfast, flour and water or hominy, I forget which,
the warder told me that there wasn't much chance of my
being brought up before Christmas was over. The police
magistrate was away on a month's leave, and the other
magistrates would not be likely to attend before the end of
the week, anyway. So I must make myself comfortable
where I was. Comfortable !
Rolf Boldrewood in Robbery under Arms
Colonel Carter's Christmas Tree ^^ ^^ ^>
OOON there stole over every one in the room that sense
^^ of peace and contentment which always comes when
one is at ease in an atmosphere where love and kindness
reign. The soft light of the candles, the low, rich color of
the simple room with its festoons of cedar and pine, the
aroma of the rare wine, and especially the spicy smell of the
hemlock warmed by the burning tapers — that rare, un-
mistakable smell which only Christmas greens give out and
which few of us know but once a year, and often not then;
all had their effect on host and guests. Katy became so
happy that she lost all fear of her father and prattled on to
Fitz and me (we had pinned to her frock the rose the
Colonel had bought for the "grown-up daughter," and she
231
The Book of Christmas
was wearing it just as Aunt Nancy wore hers), and Aunt
Nancy in her gentle voice talked finance to Mr. Klutchem
in a way that made him open his eyes, and.Fitz laughingly
joined in, giving a wide berth to anything bearing on
"corners" or "combinations" or "shorts" and "longs,"
while I, to spare Aunt Nancy, kept one eye on Jim,^
winking at him with it once or twice when he was about to
commit some foolishness, and so the happy feast went on.
As to the Colonel, he was never in better form. To him
the occasion was the revival of the old Days of Plenty — the
days his soul coveted and loved: his to enjoy, his to dis-
pense.
But if it had been delightful before, what was it when
Chad, after certain mysterious movements in the next room,
bore aloft the crowning glory of the evening, and placed it
with all its candles in the centre of the table, the Colonel
leaning far back in his chair to give him room, his coat
thrown wide, his face aglow, his eyes sparkling with the
laughter that always kept him young !
Then it was that the Colonel, gathering under his hand
a little sheaf of paper lamplighters which Chad had
twisted, rose from his seat, picked up a slender glass that had
once served his father ("only seben o' dat kind left," Chad
told me) and which that faithful servitor had just filled from
the flow of the old decanter of like period, and with a wave
of his hand as if to command attention, said, in a clear, firm
voice that indicated the dignity of the occasion: "My
friends, — my vehy dear friends, I should say, for I can omit
none of you — certainly not this little angel who has cap-
tured our hearts, and surely not our distinguished guest, Mr.
1 " Jim " is the pickaninny in buttons, who, as Chad says, " looks
like he's busted out with brass measles."
232
When All the World is Kin
Klutchem, who has honored us with his presence, — befo'
I kindle with the torch of my love these little beacons which
are to light each one of us on our way until another Christ-
mas season overtakes us; befo', I say, these sparks burst
into life, I want you fill yo' glasses (Chad had done that to
the brim — even little Katy's) and drink to the health and
happiness of the lady on my right, whose presence is always
a benediction and whose loyal affection is one of the
sweetest treasures of my life!"
Everybody except the dear lady stood up — even little
Katy — and Aunt Nancy's health was drunk amid her
blushes, she remarking to Mr. Klutchem that George would
always embarrass her with these too flattering speeches of
his, which was literally true, this being the fourth time I had
heard similar sentiments expressed in the dear lady's honor.
This formal toast over, the Colonel's whole manner
changed. He was no longer the dignified host conducting
the feast with measured grace. With a spring in his voice
and a certain unrestrained joyousness, he called to Chad to
bring him a light for his first lamplighter. Then, with the
paper wisp balanced in his hand, he began counting the
several candles, peeping into the branches with the manner
of a boy.
"One — two — three — fo' — yes, plenty of them, but
we are goin' to begin with the top one. This is yours,
Nancy — this little white one on the vehy tip-top. Gentle-
men, this top candle is always reserved for Miss Caarter,"
and the lighted taper kindled it into a blaze. "Just like
yo' eyes, my dear, burnin' steadily and warmin' everybody,"
and he tapped her hand caressingly with his fingers. "And
now, where is that darlin' little Katy's — she must have a
white one, too — here it is. Oh, what a brave little candle !
233
The Book of Christmas
Not a bit of sputterin' or smoke. See, dearie, what a
beautiful blaze ! May all your life be as bright and happy.
And here is Mr. Klutchem's right alongside of Katy's — a
fine red one. There he goes, steady and clear and strong —
And Fitz — dear old Fitz. Let's see what kind of a candle
Fitz should have. Do you know, Fitz, if I had my way,
I'd light the whole tree for you. One candle is absurd for
Fitz ! There, Fitz, it's off — another red one ! All you
millionnaires must have red candles ! And the Major ! Ah,
the Major!" — and he held out his hand to me — "Let's
see — yaller? No, that will never do for you. Major.
Pink? That's better. There now, see how fine you look
and how evenly you burn — just like yo' love, my dear boy,
that never fails me."
The circle of the table was now complete ; each guest had
a candle alight, and each owner was studying the several
wicks as if the future could be read in their blaze: Aunt
Nancy with a certain seriousness. To her the custom was not
new ; the memories of her life were interwoven with many
just such top candles, — one I knew of myself, that went
out long, long ago, and has never been rekindled since.
The Colonel stopped, and for a moment we thought he
was about to take his seat, although some wicks were still
unlighted — his own among them.
Instantly a chorus of voices went up: "You have for-
gotten your own. Colonel — let me light one for you," etc.,
etc. Even little Katy had noticed the omission, and was
pulling at my sleeve to call attention to the fact: the
Colonel's candle was the only one she really cared for.
"One minute," cried the Colonel. "Time enough; the
absent ones fust" — and he stooped down and peered
among the branches — "yes, — that's just the very one.
234
When All the World is Kin
This candle, Mr. Klutchem, is for our old Mammy Henny,
who is at Caarter Hall, carin' for my property, and who
must be pretty lonely to-day — ah, there you go, Mammy !
— blazin' away like one o' yo' own fires!"
Three candles now were all that were left unlighted;
two of them side by side on the same branch, a brown one
and a white one, and below these a yellow one standing all
alone.
The Colonel selected a fresh taper, kindled it in the flame
of Aunt Nancy's top candle, and turning to Chad, who was
standing behind his chair, said : —
"I'm goin' to put you, Chad, where you belong, — right
alongside of me. Here, Katy, darlin', take this taper and
light this white candle for me, and I'll light the brown one
for Chad," and he picked up another taper, lighted it, and
handed it to the child.
"Now!"
As the two candles flashed into flame, the Colonel leaned
over, and holding out his hand to the old servant — boys
together, these two, said in a voice full of tenderness: —
"Many years together, Chad, — many years, old man."
Chad's face broke into a smile as he pressed the Colonel's
hand.
"Thank ye, marster," was all he trusted himself to say —
a title the days of freedom had never robbed him of — and
then he turned his head to hide the tears.
During the whole scene little Jim had stood on tiptoe, his
eyes growing brighter and brighter as each candle flashed
into a blaze. Up to the time of the lighting of the last guest
candle his face had expressed nothing but increasing
delight. When, however. Mammy Henny's candle, and
then Chad's were kindled, I saw an expression of wonder-
235
The Book of Christmas
ment cross his features which gradually settled into one of
profound disappointment.
But the Colonel had not yet taken his seat. He had re-
lighted the taper — this time from Mammy Henny's candle
— and stood with it in his hand, peering into the branches as
if looking for something he had lost.
"Ah, here's another. I wonder — who — this — little
— yaller — candle — can — be — for," he said slowly,
looking around the room and accentuating each word. "I
reckon they're all here. Let me see — Aunt Nancy, Mr.
Klutchem, Katy, Fitz, the Major, Mammy Henny, Chad,
and me. Yes — all here. Oh!" — and he looked at the
boy with a quizzical smile on his face — "I came vehy near
forgettin'.
"This little yaller candle is Jim's."
F. HoPKiNSON Smith in Colonel Carter^ s Christmas
Copyright, IQOJ, by Charles Scribner^s Sons
236
IX
CHRISTMAS STORIES
CHRISTMAS STORIES
Christmas Roses
The Fir Tree
The Christmas Banquet
A Christmas Eve in Exile
The Rehearsal of the Mummers' Play
" TT was always said of him, that he knew how to keep
-'■ Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the know-
ledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us ! And
so, as Tiny Tim observed,
God Bless Us,
Every One."
Charles Dickens
240
Christmas Roses ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ ^^ <:^
T ^ /"HEN our guests were gone Pel leas and I sat for some
^ ^ while beside the drawing-room fire. They had
brought us a box of Christmas roses and these made sweet
the room as if with a secret Spring — a Little Spring, such
as comes to us all, now and then, through the year. And
it was the enchanted hour, when Christmas eve has just
passed and no one is yet awakened by the universal note
of Get-Your-Stocking-Before-Breakfast.
"For that matter," Pelleas said, "every day is a loving
cup, only some of us see only one of its handles: Our own."
And after a time : —
"Isn't there a legend," he wanted to know, "or if there
isn't one there ought to be one, that the first flowers were
Christmas roses and that you can detect their odour in all
other flowers? I'm not sure," he warmed to the subject,
"but that they say if you look steadily, with clear eyes, you
can see all about every flower many little lines, in the shape
of a Christmas rose!"
Of course nothing beautiful is difficult to believe. Even
in the windows of the great florists, where the dear flowers
pose as if for their portraits, we think that one looking
closely through the glass may see in their faces the spirit
of the Christmas roses. And when the flowers are made
a gift of love the spirit is set free. Who knows? Perhaps
the gracious little spirit is in us all, waiting for its liberty
in our best gifts.
And at thought of gifts I said, on Christmas eve of all
times, what had been for some time in my heart : —
R 241
The Book of Christmas
"Pelleas, we ought — we really ought, you know, to
make a new will."
The word casts a veritable shadow on the page as I
write it. Pel leas, conscious of the same shadow, moved
and frowned.
"But why, Etarre?" he asked; "I had an uncle who
lived to be ninety."
"So will you," I said, "and still—"
"He began translating Theocritus at ninety," Pelleas
continued convincingly.
"I'll venture he had made his will by then, though," said I.
"Is that any reason why I should make mine?" Pel-
leas demanded. "I never did the things my family did."
"Like living until ninety?" I murmured.
O, I could not love Pelleas if he was never unreasonable.
It seems to me that the privilege of unreason is one of the
gifts of marriage; and when I hear The Married chiding
each other for the exercise of this gift I long to cry : Is it not
tiresome enough in all conscience to have to keep up a
brave show of reason for one's friends, without wearing a
uniform of logic in private? Laugh at each other's un-
reason for your pastime, and Heaven bless you!
Pelleas can do more than this: He can laugh at his own
unreason. And when he has done so : —
"Ah, well, I know we ought," he admitted, "but I do
so object to the literary style of wills."
It has long been a sadness of ours that the law makes
all the poor dead talk alike in this last office of the human
pleasure, so that cartman and potentate and philosopher
give away their chattels to the same dreary choice of forms.
No matter with what charming propriety they have in life
written little letters to accompany gifts, most sensitively
242
Christmas Stories
shading the temper of bestowal, yet in the majesty of their
passing they are forced into a very strait-jacket of phrasing
so that verily, to bequeath a thing to one's friend is well-
nigh to throw it at him. Yes, one of the drawbacks to
dying is the diction of wills.
Pelleas meditated for a moment and then laughed out.
"Telegrams," said he, "are such a social convenience
in life that I don't see why they don't extend their function.
Then all we should need would be two witnesses, ready
for anything, and some yellow telegraph blanks, and a
lawyer to file the messages whenever we should die, telling
all our friends what we wish them to have."
At once we fell to planning the telegrams, quite as if the
Eye of the Law knew what it is to wrinkle at the corners.
As,
Mrs. Lawrence Knight,
Little Rosemont,
L. L
I wish you to have my mother's pearls and her mahogany
and my Samarcand rug and my Langhorne Plutarch and
^ ^^•^^- Aunt Etarre
and
Mr. Eric Charters,
To His Club.
Come to the house and get the Royal Sevres tea-service
on which you and Lisa had your first tea together and a
check made out to you in my check book in the library
table drawer. Uncle Pelleas
And so on, with the witnesses' names properly in the
corners.
243
The Book of Christmas
"Perfect," said I with enthusiasm. "O Pelleas, let us
get a bill through to this effect."
"But we may live to be only ninety, you know," he
reminded me.
We went to the window, presently, and threw it open to
the chance of hearing the bird of dawning singing all night
long in the Park, which is of course, in New York, where
it sings on Star of Bethlehem night. We did not hear it,
but it is something to have been certain that it was there.
And as we closed the casement,
"After all," Pelleas said seriously, "the Telegraph Will
Bill would have to do only with property. And a will
ought to be concerned with soberer matters."
So it ought, in spite of its dress of diction, rather like the
motley.
"A man," Pelleas continued, "ought to have something
more important to will away than his house and his watch
and his best bed. A man's poor soul, now — unless he is
an artist, which he probably is not — has no chance ver-
bally to leave anybody anything."
"It makes its will every day," said I.
"Even so," Pelleas contended, "it ought to die rich if
it's anything of a soul."
And that is true enough.
"Suppose," Pelleas suggested, "the telegrams were to
contain something like this: 'And from my spirit to yours
I bequeath the hard-won knowledge that you must be true
from the beginning. But if by any chance you have not
been so, then you must be true from the moment that you
know.' Why not?"
Why not, indeed?
"I think that would be mine to give," Pelleas said re-
244
Christmas Stories
flectively; "and what would yours be, Etarre?" he
asked.
At that I fell in sudden abashment. What could I say ?
What would I will my poor life to mean to any one who
chances to know that I have lived at all? O, I dare say I
should have been able to formulate many a fine-sounding
phrase about the passion for perfection, but confronted
with the necessity I could think of nothing save a few
straggling truths.
"I don't know," said I uncertainly; "I am sure of so
little, save self-giving. I should like to bequeath some
knowledge of the magic of self-giving. Now Nichola,"
I hazarded, to evade the matter, "would no doubt say:
'And from my soul to your soul this word about the uni-
verse: Helping is why.' "
"But you — you, Etarre," Pelleas persisted; "what would
the real You will to others, in this mortuary telegram ? "
And as I looked at him I knew.
"O Pelleas," I said, "I think I would telegraph to every
one: 'From my spirit to your spirit, some understanding
of the preciousness of love. And the need to keep it true.' "
I shall always remember with what gladness he turned to
me. I wished that his smile and our bright hearth and our
Christmas roses might bless every one.
"I wanted you to say that," said Pelleas.
Zona Gale in The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre
The Fir Tree ^:> <:^ ^> ^^:^ ^^y ^v^ <;^
FAR away in the deep forest there once grew a pretty
Fir Tree; the situation was delightful, the sun shone
full upon him, the breeze played freely around him, and in
245
The Book of Christmas
the neighbourhood grew many companion fir trees, some
older, some younger. But the little Fir Tree was not
happy: he was always longing to be tall; he thought not
of the warm sun and the fresh air; he cared not for the
merry, prattling peasant children who came to the forest
to look for strawberries and raspberries. Except, indeed,
sometimes, when after having filled their pitchers, or
threaded the bright berries on a straw, they would sit down
near the little Fir Tree, and say, "What a pretty little tree
this is ! " and then the Fir Tree would feel very much vexed.
Year by year he grew, a long green shoot sent he forth
every year; for you may always tell how many years a fir
tree has lived by counting the number of joints in its stem.
"Oh, that I was as tall as the others are," sighed the
little Tree, "then I should spread out my branches so far,
and my crown should look out over the wide world around 1
the birds would build their nests among my branches, and
when the wind blew I should bend my head so grandly,
just as the others do!"
He had not pleasure in the sunshine, in the song of the
birds, or in the birds, or in the red clouds that sailed over
him every morning and evening.
In the winter time, when the ground was covered with
the white, glistening snow, there was a hare that would
come continually scampering about, and jumping right
over the little Tree's head — and that was most provoking !
However, two winters passed away, and by the third the
Tree was so tall that the hare was obliged to run around it.
"Oh ! to grow, to grow, to become tall and old, that is the
only thing in the world worth Hving for;" — so thought
the Tree.
The wood cutters came in the autumn and felled some
246
Christmas Stories
among the largest of the trees; this happened every year,
and our young Fir, who was by this time a tolerable height,
shuddered when he saw those grand, magnificent trees
fall with a tremendous crash, crackling to the earth:
their boughs were then all cut off. Terribly naked, and
lanky, and long did the stem look after this — they could
hardly be recognized. They were laid one upon another
in wagons, and horses drew them away, far, far away,
from the forest. Where could they be going? What
might be their fortunes?
So next spring, when the Swallows and the Storks had
returned from abroad, the Tree asked them, saying,
"Know you not whither they are taken? have you not met
them?"
The swallows knew nothing about the matter, but the
Stork looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded his
head, and said: "Yes, I believe I have seen them! As
I was flying from Egypt to this place I met several ships;
those ships had splendid masts. I have little doubt that
they were the trees that you speak of; they smelled like fir
wood. I may congratulate you, for they sailed gloriously,
quite gloriously !"
"Oh, that I, too, were tall enough to sail upon the sea!
Tell me what it is, this sea, and what it looks like."
"Thank you, it would take too long, a great deal!"
said the Stork, and away he stalked.
"Rejoice in thy youth!" said the Sunbeams; "rejoice
in thy luxuriant youth, in the fresh life that is within thee !"
And the Wind kissed the Tree, and the Dew wept tears
over him, but the Fir Tree understood them not.
When Christmas approached, many quite young trees
were felled — trees which were some of them not so tall
247
The Book of Christmas
or of just the same height as the young restless Fir Tree
who was always longing to be away. These young trees
were chosen from the most beautiful, their branches were
not cut off, they were laid in a wagon, and horses drew
them away, far, far away from the forest.
"Where are they going?" asked the Fir Tree. "They
are not larger than I am; indeed, one of them was much
less. Why do they keep all their branches? where can
they be gone ? "
"We know! we know!" twittered the Sparrows.
"We peeped in through the windows of the town below!
we know where they are gone! Oh, you cannot think
what honour and glory they receive ! We looked through
the window-panes and saw them planted in a warm room,
and decked out with such beautiful things — gilded apples,
sweetmeats, playthings, and hundreds of bright candles!"
"And then?" asked the Fir Tree, trembling in every
bough; "and then? what happened then?"
"Oh, we saw no more. That was beautiful, beautiful
beyond compare ! "
"Is this glorious lot destined to be mine?" cried the
Fir Tree, with delight. "This is far better than sailing
over the sea. How I long for the time ! Oh, that I were
even now in the wagon ! that I were in the warm room,
honoured and adorned ! and then — yes, then, something
still better must happen, else why should they take the
trouble to decorate me? it must be that something still
greater, still more splendid, must happen — but what ?
Oh, I suffer, I suffer with longing ! I know not what it is
that I feel!"
"Rejoice in our love!" said the Air and the Sunshine.
"Rejoice in thy youth and thy freedom!"
248
Christmas Stories
But rejoice he never would : he grew and grew, in winter
as in summer he stood there clothed in green, dark green
foHage; the people that saw him said, "That is a beauti-
ful tree!" and, next Christmas, he was the first that was
felled. The axe struck sharply through the wood, the
tree fell to the earth with a heavy groan; he suffered an
agony, a faintness, that he had never expected. He quite
forgot to think of his good fortune, he felt such sorrow at
being compelled to leave his home, the place whence he
had sprung; he knew that he should never see again those
dear old comrades, or the little bushes and flowers that
had flourished under his shadow, perhaps not even the
birds. Neither did he find the journey by any means
pleasant.
The Tree first came to himself when, in the court-yard
to which he first was taken with the other trees, he heard
a man say, "This is a splendid one, the very thing we
want!"
Then came two smartly dressed servants, and carried
the Fir Tree into a large and handsome saloon. Pictures
hung on the walls, and on the mantel-piece stood large
Chinese vases with lions on the Hds; there were rocking-
chairs, silken sofas, tables covered with picture-books, and
toys that had cost a hundred times a hundred rix-thalers —
at least so said the children. And the Fir Tree was planted
in a large cask filled with sand, but no one could know that
it was a cask, for it was hung with green cloth and placed
upx)n the carpet woven of many gay colours. Oh, how
the Tree trembled! What was to happen next? A
young lady, assisted by the servants, now began to adorn
him.
Upon some branches they hung little nets cut out of
249
The Book of Christmas
coloured paper, every net filled with sugar-plums; from
others gilded apples and walnuts were suspended, look-
ing just as if they had grown there; and more than a
hundred little wax tapers, red, blue, and white, were
placed here and there among the boughs. Dolls, that
looked almost like men and women, — the Tree had
never seen such things before, — seemed dancing to and
fro among the leaves, and highest, on the summit, was
fastened a large star of gold tinsel; this was, indeed, splen-
did, splendid beyond compare! "This evening," they
said, "this evening it will be lighted up."
"Would that it were evening!" thought the Tree.
"Would that the lights were kindled, for then — what will
happen then ? Will the trees come out of the forest to see
me? Will the sparrows fly here and look in through the
window-panes? Shall I stand here adorned both winter
and summer?"
He thought much of it; he thought till he had bark-ache
with longing, and bark-aches with trees are as bad as
head-aches with us. The candles were lighted, — oh,
what a blaze of splendour! the Tree trembled in all his
branches, so that one of them caught fire. "Oh, dear!"
cried the young lady, and it was extinguished in great
haste.
So the Tree dared not tremble again; he was so fearful
of losing something of his splendour, he felt almost be-
wildered in the midst of all this glory and brightness.
And now, all of a sudden, both folding-doors were flung
open, and a troop of children rushed in as if they had a
mind to jump over him. The older people followed more
quietly; the little ones stood quite silent, but only for a
moment! then their jubilee burst forth afresh; they
250
Christmas Stories
shouted till the walls re-echoed, they danced round the
Tree, one present after another was torn down.
"What are they doing?" thought the Tree ; "what will
happen now!" And the candles burned down to the
branches, so they were extinguished, — and the children
were given leave to plunder the Tree. Oh ! they rushed
upon him in such riot, that the boughs all crackled; had
not his summit been festooned with the gold star to the
ceiling he would have been overturned.
The children danced and played about with their beau-
tiful playthings; no one thought any more of the Tree
except the old nurse, who came and peeped among the
boughs, but it was only to see whether perchance a fig or
an apple had not been left among them.
"A story, a story!" cried the children, pulling a short,
thick man toward the Tree. He sat down, saying, "It is
pleasant to sit under the shade of green boughs; besides,
the Tree may be benefited by hearing my story. But I
shall only tell you one. Would you like to hear about
Ivedy Avedy, or about Humpty Dumpty, who fell down-
stairs, and yet came to the throne and won the Princess?"
"Ivedy Avedy!" cried some; "Humpty Dumpty!"
cried others; there was a famous uproar; the Fir Tree
alone was silent, thinking to himself, "Ought I to make a
noise as they do? or ought I to do nothing at all?" for
he most certainly was one of the company, and had done
all that had been required of him.
And the short, thick man told the story of Humpty
Dumpty, who fell downstairs, and yet came to the throne
and won the Princess. And the children clapped their
hands and called out for another; they wanted to hear
the story of Ivedy Avedy also, but they did not get it.
251
The Book of Christmas
The Fir Tree stood meanwhile quite silent and thought-
ful— the birds in the forest had never related anything
like this. "Humpty Dumpty fell downstairs, and yet
was raised to the throne and won the Princess ! Yes, yes,
strange things come to pass in the world !" thought the Fir
Tree, who believed it must all be true, because such a
pleasant man had related it. "Ah, ah! who knows but I
may fall downstairs and win a Princess?" And he re-
joiced in the expectation of being next day again decked
out with candles and playthings, gold and fruit.
"To-morrow I will not tremble," thought he. "I will
rejoice in my magnificence. To-morrow I shall again
hear the story of Humpty Dumpty, and perhaps that about
Ivedy Avedy likewise," and the Tree mused thereupon
all night.
In the morning the maids came in.
"Now begins my state anew!" thought the Tree. But
they dragged him out of the room, up the stairs, and into
an attic-chamber, and there thrust him into a dark corner,
where not a ray of light could penetrate. "What can be
the meaning of this?" thought the Tree. "What am I
to do here? What shall I hear in this place?" And he
leant against the wall, and thought, and thought. And
plenty of time he had for thinking it over, for day after day
and night after night passed away, and yet no one ever
came into the room. At last somebody did come in, but
it was only to push into the corner some old trunks; the
Tree was now entirely hidden from sight, and apparently
entirely forgotten.
"It is now winter," thought the Tree. "The ground
is hard and covered with snow ; they cannot plant me now,
so I am to stay here in shelter till the spring. Men are so
252
Christmas Stories
clever and prudent ! I only wish it were not so dark and
dreadfully lonely ! not even a little hare ! Oh, how pleas-
ant it was in the forest, when the snow lay on the ground
and the hare scampered about, — yes, even when he
jumped over my head, though I did not like it then. It
is so terribly lonely here."
''Squeak, squeak!" cried a little Mouse, just then
gliding forward. Another followed; they snuffed about
the Fir Tree, and then slipped in and out among the
branches.
"It is horribly cold!" said the little Mice. "Otherwise
it is very comfortable here. Don't you think so, you
old Fir Tree?"
"I am not old," said the Fir Tree; ''there are many
who are much older than I am."
"How came you here?" asked the Mice, "and what
do you know?" They were most uncommonly curious.
"Tell us about the most delightful place on earth. Have
you ever been there? Have you been into the store room,
where cheeses lie on the shelves, and bacon hangs from
the ceiling; where one can dance over tallow candles;
where one goes in thin and comes out fat?"
"I know nothing about that," said the Tree, "but I
know the forest, where the sun shines and where the birds
sing!" and then he spoke of his youth and its pleasures.
The little Mice had never heard anything like it before;
they listened so attentively and said, "Well, to be sure!
how much you have seen ! how happy you have
been!"
"Happy!" repeated the Fir Tree, in surprise, and he
thought a moment over all that he had been saying, — •
"Yes, on the whole, those were pleasant times !" He then
253
The Book of Christmas
told them about the Christmas eve, when he had been
decked out with cakes and candles.
"Oh!" cried the little Mice, "how happy you have
been, you old Fir Tree!"
"I am not old at all!" returned the Fir; "it is only
this winter that I have left the forest; I am just in the
prime of life 1 "
"How well you can talk !" said the little Mice; and the
next night they came again, and brought with them four
other little Mice, who wanted also to hear the Tree's his-
tory; and the more the Tree spoke of his youth in the
forest, the more vividly he remembered it, and said, "Yes,
those were pleasant times ! but they may come again, they
may come again! Humpty Dumpty fell downstairs, and
for all that he won the Princess; perhaps I, too, may win
a Princess;" and then the Fir Tree thought of a pretty
little delicate Birch Tree that grew in the forest, — a real
Princess, a very lovely Princess, was she to the Fir Tree.
"Who is this Humpty Dumpty?" asked the little Mice.
Whereupon he related the tale; he could remember every
word of it perfectly: and the little Mice were ready to
jump to the top of the Tree for joy. The night following
several more Mice came, and on Sunday came also two
Rats; they, however, declared that the story was not at all
amusing, which much vexed the little Mice, who, after
hearing their opinion, could not like it so well either.
"Do you know only that one story?" asked the Rats.
"Only that one!" answered the Tree; "I heard it on
the happiest evening of my life, though I did not then know
how happy I was."
"It is a miserable story! Do you know none about
pork and tallow? — no store-room story?"
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Christmas Stories
"No," said the Tree.
"Well, then, we have heard enough of it !" returned the
Rats, and they went their ways.
The little Mice, too, never came again. The Tree
sighed. "It was pleasant when they sat round me, those
busy little Mice, listening to my words. Now that, too,
is all past ! however, I shall have pleasure in remembering
it, when I am taken away from this place."
But when would that be? One morning, people came
and routed out the lumber room; the trunks were taken
away, the Tree, too, was dragged out of the corner; they
threw him carelessly on the floor, but one of the servants
picked him up and carried him downstairs. Once more
he beheld the light of day.
"Now life begins again!" thought the Tree; he felt
the fresh air, the warm sunbeams — he was out in the
court. All happened so quickly that the Tree quite forgot
to look at himself, — there was so much to look at all
around. The court joined a garden, everything was so
fresh and blooming, the roses clustered so bright and so
fragrant round the trellis-work, the lime-trees were in full
blossom, and the swallows flew backwards and forwards,
twittering, "Quirri-virri-vit, my beloved is come!" but it
was not the Fir Tree whom they meant.
"I shall live! I shall live!" He was filled with de-
lighted hope; he tried to spread out his branches, but,
alas ! they were all dried up and yellow. He was thrown
down upon a heap of weeds and nettles. The star of gold
tinsel that had been left fixed on his crown now sparkled
brightly in the sunshine.
Some merry children were playing in the court, the same
who at Christmas time had danced round the Tree. One
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The Book of Christmas
of the youngest now perceived the gold star, and ran to
tear it off.
"Look at it, still fastened to the ugly old Christmas
Tree !" cried he, trampling upon the boughs till they broke
under his boots.
And the Tree looked on all the flowers of the garden now
blooming in the freshness of their beauty; he looked upon
himself, and he wished from his heart that he had been
left to wither alone in the dark corner of the lumber room ;
he called to mind his happy forest life, the merry Christmas
eve, and the little Mice who had listened so eagerly when
he related the story of Humpty Dumpty.
"Past, all past!" said the poor Tree. "Had I but
been happy, as I might have been! Past, all past!"
And the servant came and broke the Tree into small
pieces, heaped them up and set fire to them. And the
Tree groaned deeply, and every groan sounded like a
little shot; the children all ran up to the place and jumped
about in front of the blaze, looking into it and crying,
"Piff, piff !" But at each of those heavy groans the Fir
Tree thought of a bright summer's day, or a starry winter's
night in the forest, of Christmas eve, or of Humpty Dumpty,
the only story that he knew and could relate. And at last
the Tree was burned.
The boys played about the court; on the bosom of the
youngest sparkled the gold star that the Tree had worn on
the happiest evening of his life; but that was past, and
the Tree was past, and the story also, past ! past ! for all
stories must come to an end, some time or other.
Hans Christian Andersen
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Christmas Stories
The Christmas Banquet ^^ ^:> ^> ^;:> -=:^
IN a certain old gentleman's last will and testament
there appeared a bequest, which, as his final thought
and deed, was singularly in keeping with a long life of
melancholy eccentricity. He devised a considerable sum
for establishing a fund, the interest of which was to be ex-
pended, annually forever, in preparing a Christmas Banquet
for ten of the most miserable persons that could be found.
It seemed not to be the testator's purpose to make these
half a score of sad hearts merry, but to provide that the
storm of fierce expression of human discontent should not
be drowned, even for that one holy and joyful day, amid
the acclamations of festal gratitude which all Christendom
sends up. And he desired, likewise, to perpetuate his own
remonstrance against the earthly course of Providence,
and his sad and sour dissent from those systems of religion
or philosophy which either find sunshine in the world or
draw it down from heaven.
The task of inviting the guests, or of selecting among
such as might advance their claims to partake of this dismal
hospitality, was confided to the two trustees or stewards of
the fund. These gentlemen, like their deceased friend,
were sombre humorists, who made it their principal occu-
pation to number the sable threads in the web of human
life, and drop all the golden ones out of the reckoning.
They performed their present office with integrity and
judgment. The aspect of the assembled company, on the
day of the first festival, might not, it is true, have satisfied
every beholder that these were especially the individuals,
chosen forth from all the world, whose griefs were worthy
to stand as indicators of the mass of human sufTering. Yet,
s 257
The Book of Christmas
after due consideration, it could not be disputed that here
was a variety of hopeless discomfort, which, if it arose from
causes apparently inadequate, was thereby only the shrewder
imputation against the nature and mechanism of life.
The arrangements and decorations of the banquet were
probably intended to signify that death in life which had
been the testator's definition of existence. The hall,
illuminated by torches, was hung round with curtains of
deep and dusky purple, and adorned with branches of
cypress and wreaths of artificial flowers, imitative of such
as used to be strown over the dead. A sprig of parsley
was laid by every plate. The main reservoir of wine was a
sepulchral urn of silver, whence the liquor was distributed
around the table in small vases, accurately copied from
those that held the tears of ancient mourners. Neither
had the stewards — if it were their taste that arranged
these details — forgotten the fantasy of the old Egyptians,
who seated a skeleton at every festive board, and mocked
their own merriment with the imperturbable grin of a
death's-head. Such a fearful guest, shrouded in a black
mantle, sat now at the head of the table. It was whis-
pered, I know not with what truth, that the testator him-
self had once walked the visible world with the machinery
of that same skeleton, and that it was one of the stipula-
tions of his will, that he should thus be permitted to sit,
from year to year, at the banquet which he had instituted.
If so, it was perhaps covertly implied that he had cherished
no hopes of bliss beyond the grave to compensate for the
evils which he felt or imagined here. And if, in their
bewildered conjectures as to the purpose of earthly exist-
ence, the banqueters should throw aside the veil, and cast
an inquiring glance at this figure of death, as seeking thence
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Christmas Stories
the solution otherwise unattainable, the only reply would
be a stare of the vacant eye caverns and a grin of the skele-
ton jaws. Such was the response that the dead man had
fancied himself to receive when he asked of Death to solve
the riddle of his life ; and it was his desire to repeat it when
the guests of his dismal hospitality should find themselves
perplexed with the same question.
"What means that wreath?" asked several of the
company, while viewing the decorations of the table.
They alluded to a wreath of cypress, which was held
on high by a skeleton arm, protruding from within the
black mantle.
"It is a crown," said one of the stewards, "not for the
worthiest, but for the wofulest, when he shall prove his
claim to it."
The guest earliest bidden to the festival was a man of
soft and gentle character, who had not energy to struggle
against the heavy despondency to which his temperament
rendered him liable ; and therefore with nothing outwardly
to excuse him from happiness, he had spent a life of quiet
misery that made his blood torpid, and weighed upon his
breath, and sat like a ponderous night fiend upon every
throb of his unresisting heart. His wretchedness seemed
as deep as his original nature, if not identical with it.
It was the misfortune of a second guest to cherish within
his bosom a diseased heart, which had become so wretch-
edly sore that the continual and unavoidable rubs of the
world, the blow of an enemy, the careless jostle of a stranger,
and even the faithful and loving touch of a friend, alike
made ulcers in it. As is the habit of people thus afflicted,
he found his chief employment in exhibiting these miser-
able sores to any one who would give themselves the pain
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The Book of Christmas
of viewing them. A third guest was a hypochondriac,
whose imagination wrought necromancy in his outward
and inward world, and caused him to see monstrous faces
in the household fire, and dragons in the clouds of sunset,
and fiends in the guise of beautiful women, and something
ugly or wicked beneath all the pleasant surfaces of nature.
His neighbor at table was one who, in his early youth, had
crusted mankind too much, and hoped too highly in their
behalf, and, in meeting with disappointments, had become
desperately soured. . . .
One other guest remains to be described. He was a
young man of smooth brow, fair cheek, and fashionable
mien. So far as his exterior developed him, he might
much more suitably have found a place at some merry
Christmas table, than have been numbered among the
blighted, fate-stricken, fancy-tortured set of ill-starred
banqueters. Murmurs arose among the guests as they
noted the glance of general scrutiny which the intruder
threw over his companions. What had he to do among
them? Why did not the skeleton of the dead founder
of the feast unbend its rattling joints, arise, and motion
the unwelcome stranger from the board? ''Shameful!"
said the morbid man, while a new ulcer broke out in his
heart. "He comes to mock us! — we shall be the jest of
his tavern friends ! — he will make a farce of our miseries,
and bring it out upon the stage!"
"O, never mind him!" said the hypochondriac, smiling
sourly. "He shall feast from yonder tureen of viper soup;
and if there is a fricassee of scorpions on the table, pray
let him have his share of it. For the dessert, he shall
taste the apples of Sodom. Then, if he like our Christmas
fare, let him return again next year!"
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Christmas Stories
"Trouble him not," murmured the melancholy man,
with gentleness. ''What matters it whether the con-
sciousness of misery come a few years sooner or later?
If this youth deem himself happy now, yet let him sit with
us for the sake of the wretchedness to come."
The poor idiot approached the young man with that
mournful aspect of vacant inquiry which his face con-
tinually wore and which caused people to say that he was
always in search of his missing wits. After no little ex-
amination he touched the stranger's hand, but immedi-
ately drew back his own, shaking his head and shivering.
"Cold, cold, cold!" muttered the idiot.
The young man shivered too, and smiled.
"Gentlemen — and you, madam," said one of the
stewards of the festival, "do not conceive so ill either
of our caution or judgment, as to imagine that we have
admitted this young stranger — Gervayse Hastings by
name — without a full investigation and thoughtful bal-
ance of his claims. Trust me, not a guest at the table
is better entitled to his seat."
The steward's guaranty was perforce satisfactory. The
company, therefore, took their places, and addressed them-
selves to the serious business of the feast, but were soon
disturbed by the hypochondriac, who thrust back his
chair, complaining that a dish of stewed toads and vipers
was set before him, and that there was green ditch water
in his cup of wine. This mistake being amended, he
quietly resumed his seat. The wine, as it flowed freely
from the sepulchral urn, seemed to come imbued with all
gloomy inspirations; so that its influence was not to cheer,
but either to sink the revellers into a deeper melancholy,
or elevate their spirits to an enthusiasm of wretchedness.
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The Book of Christmas
The conversation was various. They told sad stories
about people who might have been worthy guests at such
a festival as the present. They talked of grisly incidents
in human history; of strange crimes, which, if truly con-
sidered, were but convulsions of agony; of some lives
that had been altogether wretched, and of others, which,
wearing a general semblance of happiness, had yet been
deformed, sooner or later, by misfortune, as by the in-
trusion of a grim face at a banquet ; of death-bed scenes,
and what dark intimations might be gathered from the
words of dying men; of suicide, and whether the more
eligible mode were by halter, knife, poison, drowning,
gradual starvation, or the fumes of charcoal. The ma-
jority of the guests, as is the custom with people thoroughly
and profoundly sick at heart, were anxious to make their
own woes the theme of discussion, and prove themselves
most excellent in anguish. The misanthropist went deep
into the philosophy of evil, and wandered about in the
darkness, with now and then a gleam of discolored light
hovering on ghastly shapes and horrid scenery. Many a
miserable thought, such as men have stumbled upon from
age to age, did he now rake up again, and gloat over it
as an inestimable gem, a diamond, a treasure far pref-
erable to those bright, spiritual revelations of a better
world, which are like precious stones from heaven's pave-
ment. And then, amid his lore of wretchedness, he hid
his face and wept.
*******
The banquet drew to its conclusion, and the guests
departed. Scarcely had they stepped across the threshold
of the hall, when the scene that had there passed seemed
like the vision of a sick fancy, or an exhalation from a
262
Christmas Stones
stagnant heart. Now and then, however, during the year
that ensued, these melancholy people caught glimpses of
one another, transient, indeed, but enough to prove that
they walked the earth with the ordinary allotment of
reality. Sometimes a pair of them came face to face,
while stealing through the evening twilight, enveloped in
their sable cloaks. Sometimes they casually met in church-
yards. Once, also, it happened that two of the dismal
banqueters mutually started at recognizing each other
in the noonday sunshine of a crowded street, stalking
there like ghosts astray. Doubtless they wondered why the
skeleton did not come abroad at noonday too.
But whenever the necessity of their affairs compelled
these Christmas guests into the bustling world, they were
sure to encounter the young man who had so unaccount-
ably been admitted to the festival. They saw him among
the gay and fortunate; they caught the sunny sparkle of
his eye; they heard the light and careless tones of his
voice, and muttered to themselves with such indignation
as only the aristocracy of wretchedness could kindle —
"The traitor! The vile impostor! Providence, in its
own good time, may give him a right to feast among us!"
But the young man's unabashed eye dwelt upon their
gloomy figures as they passed him, seeming to say, per-
chance with somewhat of a sneer, "First, know my secret!
— then, measure your claims with mine !"
The step of Time stole onward, and soon brought merry
Christmas round again, with glad and solemn worship
in the churches, and sports, games, festivals, and every-
where the bright face of joy beside the household fire.
Again likewise the hall, with its curtains of dusky purple,
was illuminated by the death torches gleaming on the
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The Book of Christmas
sepulchral decorations of the banquet. The veiled skeleton
sat in state, lifting the cypress wreath above its head, as
the guerdon of some guest illustrious in the qualifications
'which there claimed precedence. As the stewards deemed
the world inexhaustible in misery, and were desirous of
recognizing it in all its forms, they had not seen fit to
reassemble the company of the former year. New faces
now threw their gloom across the table.
There was a man of nice conscience, who bore a blood
stain in his heart — the death of a fellow-creature — which,
for his more exquisite torture, had chanced with such a
peculiarity of circumstances, that he could not absolutely
determine whether his will had entered into the deed or
not. Therefore, his whole life was spent in the agony
of an inward trial for murder, with a continual sifting
of the details of his terrible calamity, until his mind had
no longer any thought, nor his soul any emotion, dis-
connected with it. There was a mother, too — but a
desolation now — who, many years before, had gone out
on a pleasure party, and, returning, found her infant
smothered in its little bed. And ever since she has been
tortured with the fantasy that her buried baby lay smother-
ing in its coffin. Then there was an aged lady, who had
lived from time immemorial with a constant tremor quiver-
ing through her frame. It was terrible to discern her
dark shadow tremulous upon the wall; her lips, likewise,
were tremulous; and the expression of her eye seemed
to indicate that her soul was trembling too. Owing to
the bewilderment and confusion which made almost a
chaos of her intellect, it was impossible to discover what
dire misfortune had thus shaken her nature to its depths;
so that the stewards had admitted her to the table, not
264
Christmas Stories
from any acquaintance with her history, but on the safe
testimony of her miserable aspect. Some surprise was
expressed at the presence of a bluff, red-faced gentleman,
a certain Mr. Smith, who had evidently the fat of many
a rich feast within him, and the habitual twinkle of whose
eye betrayed a disposition to break forth into uproarious
laughter for little cause or none. It turned out, however,
that with the best possible flow of spirits, our poor friend
was afflicted with a physical disease of the heart, which
threatened instant death on the slightest cachinnatory
indulgence, or even that titillation of the bodily frame
produced by merry thoughts. In this dilemma he had
sought admittance to the banquet, on the ostensible plea
of his irksome and miserable state, but, in reality, with
the hope of imbibing a life -preserving melancholy. . . .
And now appeared a figure which we must acknowledge
as our acquaintance of the former festival. It was Ger-
vayse Hastings, whose presence had then caused so much
question and criticism, and who now took his place with
the composure of one whose claims were satisfactory to
himself and must needs be allowed by others. Yet his
easy and unruffled face betrayed no sorrow. The well-
skilled beholders gazed a moment into his eyes and shook
their heads, to miss the unuttered sympathy — the counter-
sign, never to be falsified — of those whose hearts are
cavern mouths, through which they descend into a region
of illimitable woe and recognize other wanderers there.
" Who is this youth? " asked the man with a blood stain
on his conscience. *' Surely he has never gone down into
the depths ! I know all the aspects of those who have
passed through the dark valley. By what right is he
among us? "
265
The Book of Christmas
"Ah, it is a sinful thing to come hither without a sorrow,"
murmured the aged lady, in accents that partook of the
eternal tremor which pervaded her whole being. "De-
part, young man ! Your soul has never been shaken.
I tremble so much the more to look at you."
"His soul shaken! No; I'll answer for it," said bluff
Mr. Smith, pressing his hand upon his heart and mak-
ing himself as melancholy as he could, for fear of a fatal
explosion of laughter. "I know the lad well; he has as
fair prospects as any young man about town, and has no
more right among us miserable creatures than the child
unborn. He never was miserable and probably never
will be!"
"Our honored guests," interposed the stewards, "pray
have patience with us, and believe, at least, that our deep
veneration for the sacredness of this solemnity would
preclude any wilful violation of it. Receive this young
man to your table. It may not be too much to say, that
no guest here would exchange his own heart for the one
that beats within that youthful bosom!"
"I'd call it a bargain, and gladly, too," muttered Mr.
Smith, with a perplexing mixture of sadness and mirth-
ful conceit. "A plague upon their nonsense! My own
heart is the only really miserable one in the company;
it will certainly be the death of me at last."
Nevertheless, as on the former occasion, the judgment
of the stewards being without appeal, the company sat
down. The obnoxious guest made no more attempt to
obtrude his conversation on those about him, but appeared
to listen to the table talk with peculiar assiduity, as if some
inestimable secret, otherwise beyond his reach, might be
conveyed in a casual word. And in truth, to those who
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Christmas Stories
could understand and value it, there was rich matter in
the upgushings and outpourings of these initiated souls
to whom sorrow had been a talisman, admitting them into
spiritual depths which no other spell can open. Some-
times out of the midst of densest gloom there flashed a
momentary radiance, pure as crystal, bright as the flame
of stars, and shedding such a glow upon the mysteries of
life that the guests were ready to exclaim, "Surely the
riddle is on the point of being solved!" At such illumi-
nated intervals the saddest mourners felt it to be revealed
that mortal griefs are but shadowy and external ; no more
than the sable robes voluminously shrouding a certain
divine reaUty and thus indicating what might otherwise
be altogether invisible to mortal eye.
"Just now," remarked the trembling old woman, "I
seemed to see beyond the outside. And then my ever-
lasting tremor passed away!"
"Would that I could dwell always in these momentary
gleams of light!" said the man of stricken conscience.
"Then the blood stain in my heart would be washed clean
away."
This strain of conversation appeared so unintelligibly
absurd to good Mr. Smith, that he burst into precisely
the fit of laughter which his physicians had warned him
against, as likely to prove instantaneously fatal. In effect,
he fell back in his chair a corpse, with a broad grin
upon his face, while his ghost, perchance, remained beside
it bewildered at its unpremeditated exit. This catastrophe
of course broke up the festival.
"How is this? You do not tremble?" observed the
tremulous old woman to Gervayse Hastings, who was
gazing at the dead man with singular intentness. "Is
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The Book of Christmas
it not awful to see him so suddenly vanish out of the midst
of life — this man of flesh and blootl, whose earthly nature
was so warm and strong? There is a never-ending tremor
in my soul, but it trembles afresh at this! And you are
calm!"
''Would that he could teach me somewhat !" said Ger-
vayse Hastings, drawing a long breath. "Men pass be-
fore me like shadows on the wall ; their actions, passions,
feelings are flickerings of the light, and then they vanish !
Neither the corpse, nor yonder skeleton, nor this old wo-
man's everlasting tremor, can give me what I seek."
And then the company departed.
We cannot linger to narrate, in such detail, more circum-
stances of these singular festivals, which in accordance
with the founder's will, continued to be kept with the regu-
larity of an established institution. In process of time the
stewards adopted the custom of inviting, from far and near,
those individuals whose misfortunes were prominent above
other men's, and whose mental and moral development
might, therefore, be supposed to possess a corresponding
interest. The exiled noble of the French Revolution, and
the broken soldier of the Empire, were alike represented at
the table. Fallen monarchs, wandering about the earth,
have found places at that forlorn and miserable feast. The
statesman, when his party flung him off, might, if he chose
it, be once more a great man for the space of a single ban-
quet. Aaron Burr's name appears on the record at a period
when his ruin — the profoundest and most striking, with more
of moral circumstances in it than that of almost any other
man — was complete in his lonely age. Stephen Girard,
when his wealth weighed upon him like a mountain, once
sought admittance of his own accord. It is not probable,
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Christmas Stories
however, that these men had any lesson to teach in the lore
of discontent and misery which might not equally well have
been studied in the common walks of life. Illustrious un-
fortunates attract a wider sympathy, not because their
griefs are more intense, but because, being set on lofty
pedestals, they the better ser\^e mankind as instances and
bywords of calamity.
It concerns our present purpose to say that, at each suc-
cessive festival, Gervayse Hastings showed his face gradu-
ally changing from the smooth beauty of his youth to the
thoughtful comeliness of manhood, and thence to the bald,
impressive dignity of age. He was the only individual in-
variably present. Yet on every occasion there were mur-
murs, both from those who knew his character and position,
and from them whose hearts shrank back as denying his
companionship in their mystic fraternity.
"Who is this impassive man ?" had been asked a hundred
times. ''Has he suffered? Has he sinned? There are no
traces of either. Then wherefore is he here ? "
"You must inquire of the stewards or of himself," was
the constant reply. "We seem to know him well here in
our city and know nothing of him but what is creditable and
fortunate. Yet hither he comes, year after year, to this
gloomy banquet, and sits among the guests like a marble
statue. Ask yonder skeleton ; perhaps that may solve the
riddle I"
It was in truth a wonder. The life of Gervayse Hastings
was not merely a prosperous, but a brilliant one. Every-
thing had gone well with him. He was wealthy, far beyond
the expenditure that was required by habits of magnificence,
a taste of rare purity and cultivation, a love of travel, a
scholar's instinct to collect a splendid library, and, more-
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The Book of Christmas
over, what seemed a magnificent liberality to the distressed.
He had sought happiness, and not vainly, if a lovely and
tender v^^ife, and children of fair promise, could insure it.
He had, besides, ascended above the limit which separates
the obscure from the distinguished, and had won a stainless
reputation in affairs of the widest public importance. Not
that he was a popular character, or had within him the
mysterious attributes which are essential to that species of
success. To the public he was a cold abstraction, wholly
destitute of those rich hues of personality, that living
warmth, and the peculiar faculty of stamping his own heart's
impression on a multitude of hearts by which the people
recognize their favorites. And it must be owned that, after
his most intimate associates had done their best to know
him thoroughly, and love him warmly, they were startled
to find how little hold he had upon their affections. They
approved, they admired, but still in those moments when
the human spirit most craves reality, they shrank back from
Gervayse Hastings, as powerless to give them what they
sought. It was the feeling of distrustful regret with which
we should draw back the hand after extending it, in an illu-
sive twilight, to grasp the hand of a shadow upon the wall.
As the superficial fervency of youth decayed, this peculiar
effect of Gervayse Hastings's character grew more percep-
tible. His children, when he extended his arms, came
coldly to his knees, but never climbed them of their own
accord. His wife wept secretly, and almost adjudged her-
self a criminal because she shivered in the chill of his bosom.
He, too, occasionally appeared not unconscious of the chill-
ness of his moral atmosphere, and willing, if it might be so,
to warm himself at a kindly fire. But age stole onward and
benumbed him more and more. As the hoar-frost began
270
Christmas Stones
to gather on him his wife went to her grave, and was
doubtless warmer there; his children either died or were
scattered to different homes of their own; and old Ger-
vayse Hastings, unscathed by grief, — alone, but needing
no companionship, — continued his steady walk through life,
and still on every Christmas day attended at the dismal
banquet. His privilege as a guest had become prescriptive
now. Had he claimed the head of the table, even the
skeleton would have been ejected from its seat.
Finally, at the merry Christmas-tide, when he had
numbered fourscore years complete, this pale, high-browed,
marble-featured old man once more entered the long-fre-
quented hall, with the same impassive aspect that had called
forth so much dissatisfied remark at his first attendance.
Time, except in matters merely external, had done nothing
for him, either of good or evil. As he took his place he
threw a calm, inquiring glance around the table, as if to
ascertain whether any guest had yet appeared, after so many
unsuccessful banquets, who might impart to him the
mystery — the deep, warm secret — the life within the life
— which, whether manifested in joy or sorrow, is what
gives substance to a world of shadows.
"My friends," said Gervayse Hastings, assuming a posi-
tion which his long conversance with the festival caused to
appear natural, "you are welcome I I drink to you all in
this cup of sepulchral wine."
The guests replied courteously, but still in a manner that
proved them unable to receive the old man as a member of
their sad fraternity. It may be well to give the reader an
idea of the present company at the banquet.
One was formerly a clergyman, enthusiastic in his profes-
sion, and apparently of the genuine dynasty of those old
271
The Book of Christmas
puritan divines whose faith in their calling, and stern
exercise of it, had placed them among the mighty of the
earth. But yielding to the speculative tendency of the age,
he had gone astray from the firm foundation of an ancient
faith, and wandered into a cloud region, where everything
was misty and deceptive, ever mocking him with a semblance
of reality, but still dissolving when he flung himself upon it
for support and rest. His instinct and early training de-
manded something steadfast; but, looking forward, he
beheld vapors piled on vapors, and behind him an im-
passable gulf between the man of yesterday and to-day, on
the borders of which he paced to and fro, sometimes
wringing his hands in agony, and often making his own woe
a theme of scornful merriment. This surely was a miser-
able man. . . .
There was a modern philanthropist, who had become
so deeply sensible of the calamities of thousands and mil-
lions of his fellow-creatures, and of the impracticableness
of any general measures for their relief, that he had no
heart to do what little good lay immediately within his
power, but contented himself with being miserable for
sympathy. Near him sat a gentleman in a predicament
hitherto unprecedented, but of which the present epoch
probably affords numerous examples. Ever since he was
of capacity to read a newspaper this person had prided
himself on his consistent adherence to one political party,
but, in the confusion of these latter days, had got bewildered
and knew not whereabouts his party was. This wretched
condition, so morally desolate and disheartening to a man
who has long accustomed himself to merge his individuality
in the mass of a great body, can only be conceived by such as
have experienced it. His next companion was a popular
272
MADONNA DELLA SEDIA. Raphael.
Christmas Stories
orator who had lost his voice, and — as it was pretty much
all that he had to lose — had fallen into a state of hopeless
melancholy. The table was likewise graced by two of the
gentler sex — one, a half-starved, consumptive seamstress,
the representative of thousands just as wretched; the other,
a woman of unemployed energy, who found herself in the
world with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing
even to suffer. She had, therefore, driven herself to the
verge of madness by dark broodings over the wrongs of her
sex, and its exclusion from a proper field of action. . . .
In their own way, these were as wretched a set of people
as ever had assem.bled at the festival. There they sat, with
the veiled skeleton of the founder holding aloft the cypress
wreath, at one end of the table, and at the other, wrapped in
furs, the withered figure of Gervayse Hastings, stately, calm,
and cold, impressing the company with awe, yet so little
interesting their sympathy that he might have vanished into
thin air without their once exclaiming, ''Whither is he
gone?"
"Sir," said the philanthropist, addressing the old man,
"you have been so long a guest at this annual festival, and
have thus been conversant with so many varieties of human
affliction, that, not improbably, you have thence derived
some great and important lessons. How blessed were your
lot could you reveal a secret by which all this mass of woe
might be removed!"
"I know of but one misfortune," answered Gervayse
Hastings, quietly, "and that is my own."
"Your own!'' rejoined the philanthropist. "And,
looking back on your serene and prosperous life, how can
you claim to be the sole unfortunate of the human race?"
"You will not understand it," replied Gervayse Hastings,
T 273
The Book of Christmas
feebly, and with a singular inefficiency of pronunciation,
and sometimes putting one word for another. "None have
understood it — not even those who experience the like. It
is a chillness — a want of earnestness — a feeling as if what
should be my heart were a thing of vapor — a haunting per-
ception of unreality ! Thus seeming to possess all that other
men have — all that other men aim at — I have really
possessed nothing, neither joy nor griefs. All things, all
persons — as was truly said to me at this table long and
long ago — have been like shadows flickering on the wall.
It was so with my wife and children — with those who
seemed my friends: it is so with yourselves, whom I see
now before me. Neither have I myself any real existence,
but am a shadow Hke the rest."
"And how is it with your views of a future life?" inquired
the speculative clergyman.
"Worse than with you," said the old man, in a hollow
and feeble tone; "for I cannot conceive it earnestly enough
to feel either hope or fear. IMine — mine is the wretched-
ness ! This cold heart — this unreal life ! Ah 1 it grows
colder still."
It so chanced that at this juncture the decayed ligaments
of the skeleton gave way, and the dry bones fell together in a
heap, thus causing the dusty wreath of cypress to drop upon
the table. The attention of the company being thus di-
verted for a single instant from Gervayse Hastings, they
perceived, on turning again towards him, that the old man
had undergone a change. His shadow had ceased to
flicker on the wall.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
274
Christmas Stories
A Christmas Eve in Exile ^^ <^ ^^ ^:^
TT is Christmas Eve in a large city of Bavaria. Along
^ the streets, white with snow, in the confusion of the
fog, am:ng the rattle of carriages and the ringing of bells,
the crowd hurries joyously towards the open-air roast-meat
shops, the holiday stalls and booths. Brushing with a light
rustling sound the shops decorated with ribbons and
flowers, branches of green holly and whole spruce trees
covered with pendants move along in the arms of passers-by,
rising above all the heads, like a shadow of the Thuringian
Forests, a touch of nature in the artificial life of winter.
Night is falling. Over there, behind the gardens of the
" Residence," one sees still a glow of the setting sun, deep
red through the fog ; and throughout the city there is such
gayety, so many festive preparations, that every light that
flames up at a window seems to hang on a Christmas tree.
But this is no ordinary Christmas. We are in the year of
Grace 1870; and the birth of Christ is but a pretext the
more to drink to the illustrious Van der Than, and to cele-
brate the triumph of Bavarian arms. Noel ! Noel ! Even
the Jews in the lower city join in the merriment. There
is old Augu.stus Cahn, turning the corner at "The Blue
Grape" on the run. Never have his ferret-eyes sparkled
as to-night. Never has his brush-like queue wriggled so
merrily. On his sleeve, worn threadbare by the cords of
his wallet, hangs a tidy little basket, full to the brim, covered
with a yellow napkin, with the neck of a bottle and a sprig
of holly peeping out.
What the deuce is the old usurer going to do with all that ?
Is he, too, going to celebrate Christmas? Will he gather
together his friends, his family, to drink to the German
275
The Book of Christmas
Fatherland? But no. Every one knows well that old
Cahn has no Fatherland. His Fatherland is his strong-
box. He has neither family nor friends; nothing but
creditors. His sons, his associates too, left three months ago
with the army. Down there behind the gun-carriages of
the home guard they ply their trade, selling brandy, buying
watches, and at night, after a battle, going out to rifle the
pockets of the dead and to empty the knapsacks that have
fallen in the trenches by the way. Father Cahn, too old to
follow his children, has remained in Bavaria, and there he
does a magnificent business with the French prisoners.
Always prowling about the barracks, it is he who buys
watches, medals, money-orders. One sees him gliding
through the hospitals and among the ambulances. He
approaches the bedside of the wounded and asks them very
softly in his hideous gibberish: —
"Haf you anydings to zell?"
Look ! At this very moment, when you see him trotting
so briskly with his basket under his arm, it is because the
Military Hospital closes at five o'clock; and there are two
Frenchmen waiting up there in that big black building, with
its narrow-barred windows, where Christmas to illumine its
coming has only the pale lights which guard the bedside of
the dying. . . .
These two Frenchmen are Salvette and Bernadou.
They are infantrymen, two Provencals of the same village,
enrolled in the same battalion, and wounded by the same
shell. Only, Salvette is the stronger; and already he
begins to get up, to make some steps from his bed to the
window. Bernadou, for his part, will not recover. Be-
tween the wan curtains of his hospital cot his face looks
thinner, more languid, day by day ; and when he speaks of
276
Christmas Stones
his country, of the return, it is with the sad smile of the
invalid, in which there is more of resignation than of hope.
Nevertheless, to-day he is a little animated, thinking of
the beautiful Christmas festival, which in our Provencal
country seems like a great bonfire lighted in the midst of
winter, recalling the midnight mass, the church decorated,
glowing with light, the dark village streets filled with people,
then the long watch about the table, the three traditional
torches, the ''aioli," ^ the snails, and the pretty ceremony of
the Yule log, which the grandfather carries about the house,
and anoints with steaming wine.
"Ah! my poor Salvette, what a sad Christmas we are
going to have this year ! . . . If we only had enough to
buy a white roll and a bottle of claret ! . . . How happy I
would be if, once more, before taps sound for me, I could
drink with you over the Yule log!"
The sick man's eyes brighten as he speaks of the wine
and the white bread. But how is it to be done? They
have nothing left — poor fellows ! — no money, no watch.
To be sure, Salvette still keeps in the lining of his jacket a
money-order for forty francs. But that is for the day when
they shall be free; for the first halt that they make in a
French inn. That money is sacred. No way to touch that.
But poor Bernadou is so ill ! Who knows if he will ever be
able to take up the journey home? And since here is a
beautiful Christmas which they can still celebrate together,
were it not best to profit by it?
So, without a word to his countryman, Salvette rips open
his tunic, takeaout the order, and when old Cahn has come,
as every morning, to make his round in the halls, after long
^ A maj'onnaise sauce richly flavored with garlic.
277
The Book of Christmas
arguments and whispered discussions he sh"ps into the old
Jew's hand this square of paper, yellowed and stiff, smelling
of powder, and stained with blood. From that moment
Salvette rhaintains an air of mystery. He rubs his hands
and laughs to himself as he looks at Bernadou. And now,
as day falls, he is there on watch, his forehead pressed
against the narrow panes until he sees, in the dusk of the
deserted courtyard, old Augustus Cahn, ail out of breath, a
little basket on his arm.
This solemn midnight, which sounds from all the bells of
the city, falls mournfully in this white camp of suffering.
The hospital ward is silent, lighted only by the night lamps
hung from the ceiling. Great wandering shadows float
over the beds and the bare walls, with an incessant vibration
which seems the oppressed breathing of all the sufferers
stretched out there. At moments dreams talk aloud, night-
mares groan, while from the street rises a vague murmur,
steps and voices, confused in the cold, resonant air as if
under the porch of a cathedral. One feels the devout hast-
ening, the mystery of a religious festival, intruding upon
the hour of sleep and throwing upon the darkened city
the dim light of lanterns and the glow of church win-
dows.
"Art thou asleep, Bernadou?" . . .
Very gently, on the little table near his friend's bed,
Salvette has placed a bottle of Lunel wine and a round loaf
— a comely Christmas loaf, in which the sprig of holly is
planted upright. The sick man opens eyes darkly rimmed
with fever. In the uncertain light of the night lamps and
under the white reflection of the great roofs where the moon
shines dazzling upon the snow, this improvised Christmas
seems to him a phantasy.
278
Christmas Stories
"Come, comrade, wake up ! . . . It shall not be said
that two Provencals let Christmas Eve pass without toasting
it in a cup of claret." . . . And Salvette raises him with a
mother's tenderness. He fills the glasses, cuts the bread;
and they drink, and talk of Provence. Little by little
Bernadou rouses, becomes tender. . . . The wine, the
recalling of old days. . . . With the childish spirit which
comes again to the sick in their weakness, he asks Salvette
to sing a Christmas carol of Provence. His comrade asks
nothing better.
"Come! Which one do you want? 'The Host'?
'The Three Kings'? or 'Saint Joseph Said to Me'?"
"No. I love better 'The Shepherds.' The one we al-
ways sang at home."
"'The Shepherds' let it be." In a low voice, his head
between the curtains, Salvette begins to hum. But sud-
denly, as he sings the last couplet, where the shepherds,
coming to see Jesus in his stable, have laid their offerings of
fresh eggs and cheese in the manger, and are dismissed in
kindly fashion : —
"Joseph leur dit: Allons I soyez bien sages,
Tournez-vous-en et faites bon voyage.
Bergers,
Prenez votre conge, . . ."
poor Bernadou slips and falls heavily upon his pillow. His
comrade, thinking he sleeps, calls him, shakes him. But
the sick man remains motionless; and the little sprig of
holly across the stiff coverlet seems already the green palm
that is laid on the pillow of the dead.
Salvette understands. Then, all in tears, and a little
intoxicated with the feast and with so great a sorrow, he
279
The Book of Christmas
takes up again in full voice, in the silence of the ward, the
joyous refrain of Provence ; —
"Shepherds,
Take your leave T"
Alphonse Daudet
The Rehearsal of the Mummers' Play ^^ <::^
T^HEN fell the great first rehearsal of the Christmas
-^ play, and Dennis Masterman found that he had been
wise to take time by the forelock in this matter. The mum-
mers assembled in the parish room, and the vicar and his
sister, with Nathan Baskerville's assistance, strove to lead
them through the drama.
''It's not going to be quite like the version that a kind
friend has sent me, and from which your parts are written,"
explained Dennis. "I've arranged for an introduction in
the shape of a prologue. I shall do this myself, and ap-
pear before the curtain and speak a speech to explain what
it is all about. This answers Mr. Waite here, who is going
to be the Turkish Knight. He didn't want to begin the
piece. Now I shall have broken the ice, and then he will
be discovered as the curtain rises."
Mr. Timothy Waite on this occasion, however, began
proceedings, as the vicar's prologue was not yet written.
He proved letter-perfect, but exceedingly nervous.
"Open your doors and let me in,
I hope your favours I shall win.
Whether I rise or whether I fall,
I'll do my best to please j'ou all!"
280
Christmas Stories
Mr. Waite spoke jerkily, and his voice proved a little out
of control, but everybody congratulated him.
"How he rolls his eyes to be sure," said Vivian Baskerville.
"A very daps of a Turk, for sartain."
" You ought to stride about more, Waite," suggested Ned
Baskerville, who had cheered up of recent days, and was
now standing beside Cora and other girls destined to assist
the play. "The great thing is to stride about and look alive
— isn't it, Mr. Masterman?"
"We'll talk afterwards," answered Dennis. "We
mustn't interfere with the action. You have got your
speech ofif very well, Waite, but you said it much too fast.
We must be slow and distinct so that not a word is missed."
Timothy, who enjoyed the praise of his friends, liked
this censure less.
"As for speaking fast," he said, "the man would speak
fast. Because he expects St . George will be on his tail in a
minute. He says, 'I know he'll pierce my skin.' In fact,
he's pretty well sweating with terror from the first moment
he comes on the stage, I should reckon."
But Mr. Masterman was unprepared for any such subtle
rendering of the Turkish Knight, and he only hoped that
the more ancient play-actors would not come armed with
equally obstinate opinions.
"We'll talk about it afterwards," he said. "Now you
go off to the right, Waite, and Father Christmas comes on at
the left. Mr. Baskerville — Father Christmas, please."
Nathan put his part into his pocket, marched on to the
imaginary stage and bowed. Everybody cheered.
"You needn't bow," explained Dennis ; but the inn-
keeper differed from him.
"I'm afraid I must, your reverence. When I appear
281
The Book of Christmas
before them, the people will give me a lot of applause in
their usual kindly fashion. Why, even these here — just
t'other actors do, you see — so you may be sure that the
countryside will. Therefore I had better practise the bow
at rehearsal, if you've no great argument against it."
"All right, push on," said Dennis.
"We must really be quicker," declared Miss Masterman.
"Half an hour has gone, and we've hardly started."
"Off I go, then; and I want you chaps — especially you,
Vivian, and you. Jack Head, and you, Tom Gollop — to
watch me acting. Acting ban't the same as ordinary
talking. If I was just talking, I should say all quiet, with-
out flinging my arms about, and walking round, and stop-
ping, and then away again. But in acting you do all these
things, and instead of merely saying your speeches, as we
would just man to man, over my bar or in the street, you
have to bawl 'em out so that every soul in the audience
catches 'em."
Having thus explained his theory of histrionics, Mr.
Baskerville started, and with immense and original empha-
sis, and sudden actions and gestures, introduced himself.
"Here come I, the dear old Father Christmas.
Welcome or welcome not,
I hope old Father Christmas
Will never be forgot.
A room — make room here, gallant boys,.
And give us room to rhyme ..."
Nathan broke off to explain his reading of the part.
"When I say 'make room' I fly all round the stage, as if I
was pushing the people back to give me room."
He finished his speech, and panted and mopped his head.
282
Christmas Stories
"That's acting, and whatd'you think of it?" he asked.
They all applauded vigorously excepting Mr. Gollop, who
now prepared to take his part.
Nathan then left the stage and the vicar called him back.
"You don't go off," he explained. "You stop to welcome
the King of Egypt."
"Beg pardon," answered the innkeeper. " But of course,
so it is. I'll take my stand here."
"You bow to the King of Egypt when he comes on,"
declared Gollop. "He humbly bows to me, don't he,
reverend Masterman?"
"Yes," said Dennis, "he bows, of course. You'll have a
train carried by two boys, Gollop; but the boys aren't here
to-night, as they're both down with measles — Mrs.
Bassett's youngsters."
"I'll bow to you if you bow to me, Tom," said Mr.
Baskerville. "That's only right."
"Kings don't bow to common people," declared the
parish clerk. "Me and my pretended darter — that's
Miss Cora Lintern, who's the Princess — ban't going to
bow, I should hope."
"You ought to, then," declared Jack Head. "No reason
because you'm King of Egypt why you should think your-
self better than other folk. Make him bow, Nathan.
Don't you bow to him if he don't bow to you."
"Kings do bow," declared Dennis. "You must bow to
Father Christmas, Gollop."
"He must bow first, then," argued the parish clerk.
"Damn the man! turn him out and let somebody else
do it!" cried Head.
"Let neither of *em bow," suggested Mrs. Hacker
suddenly. "With all this here bowing and scraping, us
283
The Book of Christmas
shan't be done afore midnight; and I don't come in the
play till the end of all things as 'tis."
"You'd better decide, your reverence," suggested
Vivian. "Your word's law. I say let 'em bow simultane-
ous — how would that serve?"
"Excellent!" declared Dennis. "You'll bow together,
please. Now, Mr. Gollop."
Thomas marched on with amazing gait, designed to be
regal.
"They'll all laugh if you do it like that, Tom," com-
plained Mr. Voysey.
" Beggar the man ! And why for shouldn't they laugh ? "
asked Jack Head. "Thomas don't want to make 'em cry,
do he ? Ban't we all to be as funny as ever we can, reverend
Masterman?"
"Yes," said Dennis. "In reason — in reason. Jack.
But acting is one thing, and playing the fool is another."
"Oh, Lord! I thought they was the same," declared
Vivian Baskerville. "Because if I've got to act the giant
>)
"Order! order!" cried the clergyman, "We must get
on. Don't be annoyed, Mr. Baskerville, I quite see your
point; but it will all come right at rehearsal."
" You'll have to tell me how to act then," said Vivian.
"How the mischief can a man pretend to be what he isn't?
A giant "
"You're as near being a live giant as you can be," de-
clared Nathan. "You've only got to be yourself and you'll
be all right."
"No," argued Jack Head. "If the man's himself, he's
not funny, and nobody will laugh. I say "
"You can show us what you mean when you come to
284
Christmas Stories
your own part, Jack," said Dennis desperately. "Do get
on, Gollop."
"Bow then," said Mr. Gollop to Nathan.
"I'll bow when you do, and not a minute sooner,"
answered the innkeeper firmly.
The matter of the bow was arranged, and Mr. Gollop, in
the familiar voice with which he had led the psalms for a
quarter of a century, began his part.
"Here I, the King of Egypt, boldly do appear,
St. Garge ! St. Garge ! walk in, my only son and heir;
Walk in, St. Garge, my son, and boldly act thy part,
That all the people here may see thy wondrous art!"
"Well done, Tom!" said Mr. Masterman, "that's
splendid; but you mustn't sing it."
"I ban't singing it," answered the clerk. "I know what
to do."
"Allright. Now, St. George, St. George, where are you?"
"Along with the girls, as usual," snapped Mr. Gollop.
As a matter of fact Ned Baskerville was engaged in deep
conversation with Princess Sabra and the Turkish Knight.
He left them and hurried forward.
"Give tongue, Ned !" cried his father.
"You walk down to the footlights, and the King of
Egypt will be on one side of you and Father Christmas on
the other," explained the vicar.
"And you needn't look round for the females, 'cause they
don't appear till later on," added Jack Head.
A great laugh followed this jest, whereon Miss Master-
man begged her brother to try and keep order.
"If they are not going to be serious, we had better give
it up, and waste no more time," she said.
The Book of Christmas
"Don't take it like that, miss, I beg of you," urged
Nathan. "All's prospering very well. We shall shape
down. Go on, Ned."
Ned looked at his part, then put it behind his back, and
then brought it out again.
"This is too bad, Baskerville," complained Dennis.
"You told me yesterday that you knew every word."
"So I did yesterday, I'll swear to it. I said it out in the
kitchen after supper to mother — didn't I, father?"
"You did," assented Vivian; "but that's no use if you've
forgot it now."
"'Tis stage fright," explained Nathan. "You'll get
over it."
"Think you'm talking to a maiden," advised Jack
Head.
"Do get on!" cried Dennis. Then he prompted the
faulty mummer.
" Here come I, St. George "
Ned struck an attitude and started.
"Here come I, St. George; from Britain did I spring;
I'll fight the Russian Bear, my wonders to begin.
I'll pierce him through, he shall not fly;
I'll cut him — cut him — cut him "
"How does it go?"
"'I'll cut him down,' " prompted Dennis.
"Right!"
" I'll cut him down, or else I'll die."
"Good! Now, come on. Bear!'' said Nathan.
"You and Jack Head will have to practise the fight,"
explained the vicar; "and at this point, or earlier, the
ladies will march in to music and take their places, because,
286
Christmas Stories
of course, 'fair Sabra' has to see St. George conquer his
foes."
"That'll suit Ned exactly!" laughed Nathan.
Then he marshalled Cora and several other young women,
including May and Polly Baskerville from Cadworthy, and
Cora's sister PhyUis.
*' There will be a dais lifted up at the back, you know
— that's a raised platform. But for the present you must
pretend these chairs are the throne. You sit by 'fair
Sabra,' Thomas, and then the trumpets sound and the
Bear comes on."
"Who'll play the brass music?" asked Head, "because
I've got a very clever friend at Sheepstor "
"Leave all that to me. The music is arranged. Now,
come on!"
"Shall you come on and play it like a four-footed thing,
or get up on your hind-legs, Jack?" asked St. George.
"I be going to come in growhng and yowling on all
fours," declared Mr. Head grimly. " Then I be going to do
a sort of a comic bear dance ; then I be going to have a
bit of fun eating a plum pudding ; then I thought that me
and Mr. Nathan might have a bit of comic work ; and then
I should get up on my hind-legs and go for St. George."
"You can't do all that," declared Dennis. "Not that I
want to interfere with you, or anybody. Head ; but if each
one is going to work out his part and put such a lot into it,
we shall never get done."
"The thing is to make 'em laugh, reverend Masterman,"
answered Jack with firmness. "If I just come on and just
say my speech, and fight and die, there's nought in it; but
if "
"Go on, then — go on. We'll talk afterwards."
287
The Book of Christmas
"Right. Now you try not to laugh, souls, and I wager
I'll make you giggle like a lot of zanies," promised Jack.
Then he licked his hands, went down upon them, and
scrambled along upon all fours.
" Good for you, Jack ! Well done ! You'm funnier than
anything that's gone afore !" cried Joe Voysey.
"So you be, for certain," added Mrs. Hacker.
"For all the world like my bob-tailed sheep-dog,"
declared Mr. Waite.
"Now I be going to sit up on my hams and scratch myself,"
explained Mr. Head; "then off I go again and have a sniff
at Father Christmas. Then you ought to give me a plum
pudding, Mr. Baskerville, and I balance it 'pon my nose."
"Well thought on!" declared Nathan. "So I will.
'Twill make the folk die of laughing to see you."
"Come on to the battle," said Dennis.
"Must be a sort of wrashn' fight," continued Head,
"because the Bear's got nought but his paws. Then, I
thought when I'd thro wed St. George a fair back heel, he'd
get up and draw his shining sword and stab me in the guts.
Then I'd roar and roar, till the place fairly echoed round,
and then I'd die in frightful agony."
"You ban't the whole play. Jack," said Mr. Gollop with
much discontent. "You forget yourself, surely. You
can't have the King of Egypt and these here other high
characters all standing on the stage doing nought while
you'm going through these here vagaries."
But Mr. Head stuck to his text.
"We'm here to make 'em laugh," he repeated with bull-
dog determination. "And I'll do it if mortal man can do it.
Then, when I've took the doctor's stuff, up I gets again and
goes on funnier than ever."
288
Christmas Stories
"I wouldn't miss it for money, Jack," declared Vivian
Baskerville. ''Such a clever chap as you be, and none of us
ever knowed it. You ought to go for Tom Fool to the
riders. 1 lay you'd make tons more money than ever you
will to Trowlesworthy Warren."
"By the vv^ay, who is to be the Doctor?" asked Ned
Baskerville. '"Twasn't settled, Mr. Masterman."
Dennis collapsed blankly.
"By Jove! No more it was," he admitted, "and I've
forgotten all about it. The Doctor's very important, too.
We must have him before the next rehearsal. For the
present you can read it out of the book, Mark."
Mark Baskerville was prompting, and now, after St.
George and the Bear had made a pretence of wrestling, and
the Bear had perished with much noise and to the ac-
companiment of loud laughter, Mark read the Doctor's
somewhat arrogant pretensions.
"All sorts of diseases —
Whatever you pleases :
The phthisic, the palsy, the gout,
If the Devil's in, I blow him out.
"I carry a bottle of alicampane,
Here, Russian Bear, take a little of my flip-flap,
Pour it down thy tip-tap;
Rise up and fight again !"
"Well said, Mark! 'Twas splendidly given. Why for
shouldn't Mark be Doctor?" asked Nathan.
"An excellent idea," declared Dennis. "I'm sure now,
if the fair Queen Sabra will only put in a word "
Mark's engagement was known. The people clapped
their hands heartily and Cora blushed.
u 289
The Book of Christmas
"I wish he would," said Cora.
"Your wish ought to be his law," declared Ned. "Fm
sure if 'twas me "
But Mark shook his head.
"I couldn't do it," he answered. "I would if I could;
but when the time came, and the people, and the excitement
of it all, I should break down, I'm sure I should."
"It's past ten o'clock," murmured Miss Masterman to
her brother.
The rehearsal proceeded: Jack Head, as the Bear, was
restored to life and slain again with much detail. Then Ned
proceeded —
"I fought the Russian Bear
And brought him to the slaughter;
By that I won fair Sabra,
The King of Egypt's daughter.
Where is the man that now will me defy?
I'll cut his giblets full of holes and make his buttons fly."
"And when I've got my sword, of course 'twill be much
finer," concluded Ned.
Mr. Gollop here raised an objection.
"I don't think the man ought to tell about cutting any-
body's giblets full of holes," he said; "no, nor yet making
their buttons fly. 'Tis very coarse, and the gentlefolks
wouldn't like it."
"Nonsense, Tom," answered the vicar, "it's all in keep-
ing with the play. There's no harm in it at all."
"Evil be to them as evil think," said Jack Head. "Now
comes the song, reverend Masterman, and I was going to
propose that the Bear, though he's dead as a nit, rises up on
his front paws and sings with the rest, then drops down
again — eh, souls?"
290
Christmas Stories
"They'll die of laughing if you do that, Jack," declared
Vivian. *' I vote for it."
But Dennis firmly refused permission and addressed his
chorus.
"Now, girls, the song — everbody joins. The other
songs are not written yet, so we need not bother about them
till next time."
The girls, glad of something to do, sang vigorously, and
the song went well. Then the Turkish Knight was duly
slain, restored and slain again.
"We can't finish to-night," declared Dennis, looking at
his watch, "so I'm sorry to have troubled you to come,
Mrs. Hacker, and you, Voysey."
"They haven't wasted their time, however, because Head
and I have showed them what acting means," said Nathan.
"And when you do come on, Susan Hacker, you've got to
quarrel and pull my beard, remember; then we make it up
afterwards."
"We'll finish for to-night with the Giant," decreed
Dennis. "Now speak your long speech, St. George, and
then Mr. Baskerville can do the Giant."
Ned, who declared that he had as yet learned no more,
read his next speech, and Vivian began behind the scenes —
"Fee — fi — fo — fum !
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Let him be living, or let him be dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread."
"You ought to throw a bit more roughness in your voice,
farmer," suggested Mr. Gollop. "If you could bring it up
from the innards, 'twould sound more awful, wouldn't it,
reverend Masterman?"
291
The Book of Christmas
"And when you come on, farmer, you might pass me by
where I lie dead," said Jack, "and I'll up and give you a nip
in the calf of the leg, and you'll jump round, and the people
will roar again,"
"No," declared the vicar. "No more of you. Head, till
the end. Then you come to life and dance with the French
Eagle — that's Voysey. But you mustn't act any more till
then."
"A pity," answered Jack. "I was full of contrivances;
however, if you say so "
"Be I to dance?" asked Mr. Voysey. "This is the first
I've heard tell o' that. How can I dance, and the rheuma-
tism eating into my knees for the last twenty year?"
"I'll dance," said Head. "You can just turn round and
round slowly."
"Now, Mr. Baskerville!"
Vivian strode on to the stage.
"Make your voice big, my dear," pleaded Gollop.
"Here come I, the Giant; bold Turpin is my name,
And all the nations round do tremble at my fame,
Where'er I go, they tremble at my sight:
No lord or champion long with me will dare to fight."
"People will cheer you like thunder, Vivian," said his
brother, "because they know that the nations really did
tremble at your fame when you was champion wrestler of
the west."
"But you mustn't stand like that, farmer," said Jack
Head. "You'm too spraddlesome. For the Lord's sake,
man, try and keep your feet in the same parish!"
Mr. Baskerville bellowed with laughter and slapped his
immense thigh.
292
Christmas Stories
"Dammy! that's funnier than anything in the play,"
he said. "'Keep my feet in the same parish !' Was ever
a better joke heard?"
**Now, St. George, kill the Giant," commanded Dennis.
"The Giant will have a club, and he'll try to smash you;
then run him through the body."
"Take care you don't hit Ned in real earnest, however,
else you'd settle him and spoil the play," said Mr. Voysey.
"'Twould be a terrible tantarra for certain if the Giant
went and whipped St. George."
" 'T wouldn't be the first time, however," said Mr.
Baskerville. "Would it, Ned?"
Nathan and Ned's sisters appreciated this family joke.
Then Mr. Gollop advanced a sentimental objection.
"I may be wrong," he admitted, "but I can't help
thinking it might be a bit ondecent for Ned Baskerville here
to kill his father, even in play. You see, though everybody
will know 'tis Ned and his parent, and that they'm only
pretending, yet it might shock a serious-minded person here
and there to see the son kill the father. I don't say I mind,
as 'tis all make-believe and the frolic of a night; but — well,
there 'tis."
"You'm a silly old grandmother, and never no King of
Egypt was such a fool afore," said Jack. "Pay no heed to
him, reverend Masterman."
Gollop snarled at Head, and they began to wrangle
fiercely.
Then Dennis closed the rehearsal.
"That'll do for the present," he announced. "We've
made a splendid start, and the thing to remember is that we
meet here again this day week, at seven o'clock. And mind
you know your part, Ned. Another of the songs will be
293
The Book of Christmas
ready by then; and the new harmonium will have come
that my sister is going to play. And do look about, all of
you, to find somebody who will take the Doctor."
"We shall have the nation's eyes on us — not for the
first time," declared Mr. Gollop as he tied a white wool
muffler round his throat; "and I'm sure I hope one and all
will do the best that's in 'em."
The actors departed; the oil lamps were extinguished,
and the vicar and his sister returned home. She said little
by the way, and her severe silence made him rather nervous.
"Well," he broke out at length, "jolly good, I think, for a
first attempt — eh, Alice?"
"I'm glad you were satisfied, dear. Everything depends
upon us — that seems quite clear, at any rate. They'll
all get terribly self-conscious and silly, I'm afraid, long
before the time comes. However, we must hope for the
best. But I shouldn't be in a hurry to ask anybody who
really matters."
Eden Phillpotts in The Three Brothers
294
X
NEW YEAR
NEW YEAR
New Year
Midnight Mass for the Dying Year
The Death of the Old Year
A New Year's Carol
New Year's Resolutions
Love and Joy come to You
Ring Out, Wild Bells
New Year's Eve, 1850
Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming
of Age
New Year's Rites in the Highlands
The Chinese New Year
New Year's Gifts in Thessaly
" Smashing" in the New Year
New Year Calls in Old New York
Sylvester Abend in Davos
- llwr^wx. "
New Year
T^ACH New Year is a leaf of our love's rose;
-■— ' It falls, but quick another rose-leaf grows.
So is the flower from year to year the same,
But richer, for the dead leaves feed its flame.
Richard Watson Gilder
By permission of Houghton Mifflin Company
298
Midnight Mass for the Dying Year -<:^ ^;:> ^^
'V/'ES, the Year is growing old,
-*- And his eye is pale and bleared!
Death, with frosty hand and cold.
Plucks the old man by the beard,
Sorely, sorely!
The leaves are falling, falling,
Solemnly and slow;
Caw ! caw ! the rooks are calling.
It is a sound of woe,
A sound of woe !
Through woods and mountain passes
The winds, like anthems, roll;
They are chanting solemn masses.
Singing, "Pray for this poor soul,
Pray, pray!"
And the hooded clouds, like friars.
Tell their beads in drops of rain.
And patter their doleful prayers;
But their prayers are all in vain.
All in vain !
There he stands in the foul weather,
The foolish, fond Old Year,
Crowned with wild-flowers and with heather,
Like weak, despised Lear,
A king, a king !
Then comes the summer-like day.
Bids the old man rejoice !
299
The Book of Christmas
His joy, his last ! O, the old man gray
Loveth that ever-soft voice,
Gentle and low.
To the crimson v^oods he saith,
To the voice gentle and low
Of the soft air, like a daughter's breath,
"Pray do not mock me so!
Do not laugh at me!"
And now the sweet day is dead;
Cold in his arms it lies;
No stain from its breath is spread
Over the glassy skies.
No mist or stain !
Then, too, the Old Year dieth,
And the forests utter a moan,
Like the voice of one who crieth
In the wilderness alone,
"Vex not his ghost!"
Then comes, with an awful roar,
Gathering and sounding on,
The storm-wind from Labrador,
The wind Euroclydon,
The storm-wind !
Howl! howl! and from the forest
Sweep the red leaves away !
Would, the sins that thou abhorrest,
O Soul ! could thus decay,
And be swept away !
300
New Year
For there shall come a mightier blast,
There shall be a darker day;
And the stars, from heaven down -cast,
Like red leaves be swept away !
Kyrie, eleyson !
Christe, eleyson!
Henry W. Longfellow
The Death of the Old Year ^:^ ^;:i^ ^:n^ ^Ci^
TTj^ULL knee-deep lies the winter snow,
-^ And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church-bell sad and slow.
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
Old year, you must not die;
You came to us so readily.
You lived with us so steadily.
Old year, you shall not die.
He lieth still: he doth not move:
He will not see the dawn of day.
He hath no other life above.
He gave me a friend, and a true true-love,
And the New Year will take 'em away.
Old year, you must not go;
So long as you have been with us.
Such joy as you have seen with us,
Old year, you shall not go.
He froth'd his bumpers to the brim;
A jollier year we shall not see.
301
The Book of Christmas
But tho' his eyes are waxing dim,
And tho' his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me.
Old year, you shall not die;
We did so laugh and cry with you,
I've half a mind to die with you.
Old year, if you must die.
He was full of joke and jest.
But all his merry quips are o'er.
To see him die, across the waste
His son and heir doth ride post-haste,
But he'll be dead before.
Every one for his own.
The night is starry and cold, my friend.
And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,
Comes up to take his own.
How hard he breathes ! over the snow
I heard just now the crowing cock.
The shadows flicker to and fro:
The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
'Tis nearly twelve o'clock.
Shake hands, before you die.
Old year, we'll dearly rue for you:
What is it we can do for you?
Speak out before you die.
His face is growing sharp and thin.
Alack ! our friend is gone.
Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
Step from the corpse, and let him in
That standeth there alone,
302
New Year
And awaiteth at the door.
There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,
And a new face at the door, my friend,
A new face at the door.
Alfred Tennyson
A New Year's Carol ^^ ^;:> ^oy ^s> -^^
A H ! dearest Jesus, Holy Child,
-^^ Make Thee a bed, soft, undefil'd,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.
My heart for very joy doth leap,
My lips no more can silence keep,
I too must sing, with joyful tongue,
That sweetest ancient cradle song,
'' Glory to God in highest Heaven,
Who unto man His Son hath given."
While angels sing, with pious mirth,
A glad New Year to all the earth.
Martin Luther
New Year's Resolutions ^cy ^::y ^^ ^:y ^c:^^
JANUARY ist. — The service on New Year's Eve is
the only one in the whole year that in the least im-
presses me in our little church, and then the very bareness
and ugliness of the place and the ceremonial produce an
effect that a snug service in a well-lit church never would.
Last night we took Irais and Minora, and drove the three
lonely miles in a sleigh. It was pitch-dark, and blowing
303
The Book of Christmas
great guns. We sat wrapped up to our eyes in furs, and
as mute as a funeral procession.
''We are going to the burial of our last year's sins,"
said Irais, as we started ; and there certainly was a funereal
sort of feeling in the air. Up in our gallery pew we tried
to decipher our chorales by the light of the spluttering
tallow candles stuck in holes in the woodwork, the flames
wildly blown about by the draughts. The wind banged
against the windows in great gusts, screaming louder than
the organ, and threatening to blow out the agitated lights
together. The parson in his gloomy pulpit, surrounded
by a framework of dusty carved angels, took on an awful
appearance of menacing Authority as he raised his voice
to make himself heard above the clatter. Sitting there
in the dark, I felt very small, and solitary, and defenceless,
alone in a great, big, black world. The church was as
cold as a tomb; some of the candles guttered and went
out; the parson in his black robe spoke of death and
judgment; I thought I heard a child's voice screaming,
and could hardly believe it was only the wind, and felt
uneasy and full of forebodings; all my faith and philoso-
phy deserted me, and I had a horrid feeling that I should
probably be well punished, though for what I had no
precise idea. If it had not been so dark, and if the wind
had not howled so despairingly, I should have paid little
attention to the threats issuing from the pulpit; but, as it
was, I fell to making good resolutions. This is always
a bad sign, — only those who break them make them ;
and if you simply do as a matter of course that which is
right as it comes, any preparatory resolving to do so be-
comes completely superfluous. I have for some years
past left off making them on New Year's Eve, and only
304
New Year
the gale happening as it did reduced me to doing so last
night; for I have long since discovered that, though the
year and the resolutions may be new, I myself am not, and
it is worse than useless putting new wine into old bottles.
"But I am not an old bottle," said Irais indignantly,
when I held forth to her to the above effect a few hours
later in the library, restored to all my philosophy by the
.warmth and light, "and I find my resolutions carry me
very nicely into the spring. I revise them at the end of
each month, and strike out the unnecessary ones. By the
end of April they have been so severely revised that there
are none left."
"There, you see I am right; if you were not an old
bottle your new contents would gradually arrange them-
selves amiably as a part of you, and the practice of your
resolutions would lose its bitterness by becoming a habit."
She shook her head. "Such things never lose their
bitterness," she said, "and that is why I don't let them
cling to me right into the summer. When May comes,
I give myself up to jollity with all the rest of the world, and
am too busy being happy to bother about anything I may
have resolved when the days were cold and dark."
"And that is just why I love you," I thought. She
often says what I feel.
From Elizabeth and her German Garden
Love and Joy come to You ^:v ^^' ^^ ^^
TTERE we come a-wassailing
-*- -*■ Among the leaves so green,
Here we come a-wandering.
So fair to be seen.
X 305
The Book of Christmas
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too.
And God bless you, and send you
A happy New Year.
We are not daily beggars
That beg from door to door,
But we are neighbours' children
Whom you have seen before.
Love and joy, b'c.
Good Master and good Mistress,
As you sit by the fire,
Pray think of us poor children
Who are wandering in the mire.
Love and joy, dfc.
We have a little purse
Made of ratching leather skin;
We want some of your small change
To line it well within.
Love and joy, d^c.
Call up the butler of this house,
Put on his golden ring;
Let him bring us a glass of beer.
And the better we shall sing.
Love and joy, d^c.
Bring us out a table,
And spread it with a cloth;
Bring us out a mouldy cheese
And some of your Christmas loaf.
Love and joy, d^c.
306
New Year
God bless the Master of this house,
Likewise the Mistress too,
And all the little children
That round the table go.
Love and joy come to you,
And to you your wassail too.
And God bless you, and send you
A happy New Year.
Old English
Ring Out, Wild Bells <:^ <>y ^^ ^
T3 ING out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
-■-^ The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new.
Ring, happy bells, across the snow;
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
*
Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old.
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
307
The Book of Christmas
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Alfred Tennyson
New Year's Eve, 1850 ^^ ^r^^ ^i^ -^r^y ^Oy
nPHIS is the midnight of the century, — hark !
■^ Through aisle and arch of Godminster have gone
Twelve throbs that tolled the zenith of the dark,
And mornward now the starry hands move on;
"Morn ward!" the angelic watchers say,
^' Passed is the sorest trial;
No plot of man can stay
The hand upon the dial;
Night is the dark stem of the lily Day."
If we, who watched in valleys here below.
Toward streaks, misdeemed of morn, our faces turned
When Vulcan glares set all the east aglow, —
We are not poorer that we wept and yearned;
Though earth swing wide from God's intent,
And though no man nor nation
Will move with full consent
In heavenly gravitation.
Yet by one Sun is every orbit bent.
James Russell Lowell
308
New Year
Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age
THE Old Year being dead, and the New Year coming
of age, which he does, by Calendar Law, as soon as
the breath is out of the old gentleman's body, nothing
would serve the young spark but he must give a dinner
upon the occasion, to which all the Days in the year were
invited. The Festivals, whom he deputed as his stewards,
were mightily taken with the notion. They had been en-
gaged time out of mind, they said, in providing mirth and
good cheer for mortals below ; and it was time they should
have a taste of their own bounty. It was stiffly debated
among them whether the Fasts should be admitted. Some
said the appearance of such lean, starved guests, with their
mortified faces, would pervert the ends of the meeting.
But the objection was overruled by Christmas Day, who
had a design upon Ash Wednesday (as you shall hear),
and a mighty desire to see how the old Domine would be-
have himself in his cups. Only the Vigils were requested
to come with their lanterns, to light the gentlefolks home
at night.
All the Days came to their day. Covers were provided
for three hundred and sixty-five guests at the principal
table; with an occasional knife and fork at the side-board
for the Twenty-Ninth of February.
I should have told you, that cards of invitation had been
issued. The carriers were the Hours; twelve little, merry,
whirligig foot-pages, as you should desire to see, that went
all rounJ, and found out the persons invited well enough,
with the exception of Easter Day, Shrove Tuesday, and a
few such Moveables, who had lately shifted their quarters.
Well, they all met at last — foul Days, fine Days, all
The Book of Christmas
sorts of Days, and a rare din they made of it. There was
nothing but, Hail ! fellow Day, well met — brother Day —
sister Day, — only Lady Day kept a Httle on the aloof, and
seemed somewhat scornful. Yet some said Twelfth Day
cut her out and out, for she came in a tiffany suit, white
and gold, like a queen on a frost-cake, all royal, glittering,
and Epiphanous. The rest came, some in green, some in
white — but old Lent and his family were not yet out of
mourning. Rainy Days came in dripping; and sunshiny
Days helped them to change their stockings. Wedding
Day was there in his marriage finery, a little worse for
wear. Pay Day came late, as he always does; and Dooms-
day sent word — he might be expected.
April Fool (as my young lord's jester) took upon him-
self to marshal the guests, and wild work he made with it.
It would have posed old Erra Pater to have found out any
given Day in the year to erect a scheme upon — good
Days, bad Days, were so shuffled together, to the con-
founding of all sober horoscopy.
He had stuck the Twenty-First of June next to the
Twenty-Second of December, and the former looked like
a Maypole siding a marrow-bone. Ash Wednesday got
wedged in (as was concerted) betwixt Christmas and Lord
Mayor's Days. Lord ! how he laid about him ! Nothing
but barons of beef and turkeys would go down with him —
to the great greasing and detriment of his new sackcloth
bib and tucker. And still Christmas Day was at his elbow,
plying him with the wassail-bowl, till he roared, and hic-
cupp'd, and protested there was no faith in dried ling, but
commended it to the devil for a sour, windy, acrimonious,
censorious, hy-po-crit-crit-critical mess, and no dish for a
gentleman. Then he dipt his fist into the middle of the
310
New Year
great custard that stood before his left-hand neighbour,
and daubed his hungry beard all over with it, till you
would have taken him for the Last Day in December, it
so hung in icicles.
At another part of the table, Shrove Tuesday was help-
ing the Second of September to some cock broth, — which
courtesy the latter returned with the delicate thigh of a hen
pheasant — so that there was no love lost for that matter.
The Last of Lent was spunging upon Shrove-tide's pan-
cakes; which April Fool perceiving, told him that he did
well, for pancakes were proper to a good fry-day.
In another part, a hubbub arose about the Thirtieth of
January, who, it seems, being a sour, puritanic character,
that thought nobody's meat good or sanctified enough for
him, had smuggled into the room a calf's head, which he
had had cooked at home for that purpose, thinking to
feast thereon incontinently; but as it lay in the dish, March
Manyweathers, who is a very fine lady, and subject to the
meagrims, screamed out there was a '' human head in the
platter," and raved about Herodias' daughter to that de-
gree, that the obnoxious viand was obliged to be removed ;
nor did she recover her stomach till she had gulped down
a Restorative, confected of Oak Apple, which the merry
Twenty -Ninth of May always carries about with him for
that purpose.
The King's health being called for after this, a notable
dispute arose between the Twelfth of August (a zealous
old Whig gentlewoman) and the Twenty-Third of April
(a new-fangled lady of the Tory stamp) as to which of
them should have the honour to propose it. August grew
hot upon the matter, affirming time out of mind the pre-
scriptive right to have lain with her, till her rival had basely
The Book of Christmas
supplanted her; whom she represented as little better than
a kept mistress, who went about in fine clothes, while she
(the legitimate Birthday) had scarcely a rag, etc.
April Fool, being made mediator, confirmed the right,
in the strongest form of words, to the appellant, but de-
cided for peace' sake, that the exercise of it should remain
with the present possessor. At the time, he slily rounded
the first lady in the ear, that an action might lie against the
Crown for bi-geny.
It beginning to grow a little duskish. Candlemas lustily
bawled out for lights, which was opposed by all the Days,
who protested against burning daylight. Then fair water
was handed round in silver ewers, and the same lady was
observed to take an unusual time in Washing herself.
May Day, with that sweetness which is peculiar to her,
in a neat speech proposing the health of the founder,
crowned her goblet (and by her example the rest of the
company) with garlands. This being done, the lordly
New Year, from the upper end of the table, in a cordial
but somewhat lofty tone, returned thanks. He felt proud
on an occasion of meeting so many of his worthy father's
late tenants, promised to improve their farms, and at the
same time to abate (if anything was found unreasonable)
in their rents.
At the mention of this, the four Quarter Days invol-
untarily looked at each other, and smiled; April Fool
whistled to an old tune of "New Brooms"; and a surly
old rebel at the farther end of the table (who was discovered
to be no other than the Fifth of November) muttered out,
distinctly enough to be heard by the whole company, words
to this effect — that "when the old one is gone, he is a
fool that looks for a better." Which rudeness of his, the
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New Year
guests resenting, unanimously voted his expulsion; and
the malcontent was thrust out neck and heels into the
cellar, as the properest place for such a houtefeu and fire-
brand as he had shown himself to be.
Order being restored — the young lord (who, to say
truth, had been a little ruffled, and put beside his oratory)
in as few, and yet as obliging words as possible, assured
them of entire welcome ; and, with a graceful turn, singling
out poor Twenty-Ninth of February, that had sate all this
while mumchance at the side-board, begged to couple his
health with that of the good company before him — which
he drank accordingly; observing, that he had not seen his
honest face any time these four years, with a number of
endearing expressions besides. At the same time removing
the solitary Day from the forlorn seat which had been
assigned him, he stationed him at his own board, some-
where between the Greek Calends and Latter Lammas.
Ash Wednesday, being now called upon for a song, with
his eyes fast stuck in his head, and as well as the Canary he
had swallowed would give him leave, struck up a Carol,
which Christmas Day had taught him for the nounce ; and
was followed by the latter, who gave "Miserere" in fine
style, hitting off the mumping notes and lengthened drawl
of Old Mortification with infinite humour. April Fool
swore they had exchanged conditions; but Good Friday
was observed to look extremely grave; and Sunday held
her fan before her face that she might not be seen to smile.
Shrove-tide, Lord Mayor's Day, and April Fool next
joined in a glee —
Which is the properest day to drink?
in which all the Days chiming in, made a merry burden.
313
The Book of Christmas
They next fell to quibbles and conundrums. The ques-
tion being proposed, who had the greatest number of fol-
lowers — the Quarter Days said, there could be no ques-
tion as to that; for they had all the creditors in the world
dogging their heels. But April Fool gave it in favour of
the Forty Days before Easter; because the debtors in all
cases outnumbered the creditors, and they kept Lent all
the year.
All this while Valentine's Day kept courting pretty May,
who sate next him, slipping amorous billets-doux under
the table, till the Dog Days (who are naturally of a warm
constitution) began to be jealous, and to bark and rage
exceedingly. April Fool, who likes a bit of sport above
measure, and had some pretensions to the lady besides,
as being but a cousin once removed, — clapped and hal-
loo'd them on; and as fast as their indignation cooled, those
mad wags, the Ember Days, were at it with their bellows,
to blow it into a flame; and all was in a ferment, till old
Madam Septuagesima (who boasts herself the Mother of
the Days) wisely diverted the conversation with a tedious
tale of the lovers which she could reckon when she was
young, and of one Master Rogation Day in particular, who
was for ever putting the question to her; but she kept him
at a distance, as the chronicle would tell — by which I
apprehend she meant the Almanack. Then she rambled
on to the Days that were gone, the good old Days, and so
to the Days before the Flood — which plainly showed
her old head to be little better than crazed and doited.
Day being ended, the Days called for their cloaks and
greatcoats, and took their leaves. Lord Mayor's Day
went off in a Mist, as usual; Shortest Day in a deep black
Fog, that wrapt the little gentleman all round like a hedge-
314
New Year
hog. Two Vigils — so watchmen are called in heaven —
saw Christmas Day safe home — they had been used to the
business before. Another Vigil — a stout, sturdy patrole,
called the Eve of St. Christopher — seeing Ash Wednesday
in a condition little better than he should be — e'en whipt
him over his shoulders, pick-a-back fashion, and Old
Mortification went floating home singing —
On the bat's back do I fly,
and a number of old snatches besides, between drunk and
sober, but very few Aves or Penitentiaries (you may believe
me) were among them. Longest Days set off westward in
beautiful crimson and gold — the rest, some in one fashion,
some in another; but Valentine and pretty May took their
departure together in one of the prettiest silvery twilights
a Lover's Day could wish to set in.
Charles Lamb
New Year's Rites in the Highlands ^c^ ^> -^:>
"\TEW YEAR'S DAY was not in pre-Reformation times
•^ ^ associated with any special rites. Hence Scottish
Reformers, while subjecting to discipline those who ob-
served Christmas, were willing that New Year's Day
should be appropriated to social pleasures. Towards the
closing hour of the 31st December each family prepared a
hot pint of wassail bowl of which all the members might drink
to each other's prosperity as the new year began. Hot
pint usually consisted of a mixture of spiced and sweetened
ale with an infusion of whiskey. Along with the drinking
of the hot pint was associated the practice oi first foot, or a
neighborly greeting. After the year had commenced, each
315
The Book of Christmas
one hastened to his neighbor's house bearing a small
gift; it was deemed "unlucky" to enter "empty handed."
With New Year's Day were in some portions of the
Highlands associated peculiar rites. At Strathdown the
junior anointed in bed the elder members of the household
with water, which the evening before had been silently
drawn from " the dead and living food." Thereafter they
kindled in each room, after closing the chimneys, bunches
of juniper. These rites, the latter attended with much
discomfort, were held to ward off pestilence and sorcery.
The direction of the wind on New Year's Eve was sup-
posed to rule the weather during the approaching year.
Hence the rhyme:
If New Year's Eve night-wind blow south,
It betokeneth warmth and growth;
If west, much milk, — and fish in the sea:
If north, much cold and storms there will be;
If east, the trees will bear much fruit;
If north-east, flee it, man and brute.
Charles Rogers in Social Life in Scotland
The Chinese New Year -^ ^:> ^^^ -=;^ ^^
HTHE anniversary of the New Year in China follows the
-*- variations of a lunar year, falling in early February or
toward the end of January; the rejoicings are continued
with great spirit for a week or more.
On the last day of the old year, accounts are settled,
debts cancelled, and books carefully balanced in every
mercantile establishment from the largest merchants or
bankers, down to the itinerant venders of cooked food and
vegetable-mongers. In every house the swanpaun, or
316
New Year
calculating machine, is in use. This nation does not write
down figures, but reckons with surprising rapidity and
accuracy by the aid of a small frame of wood crossed with
wires like columns and small balls strung on them for
counters.
It is considered disgraceful, and almost equivalent to an
act of bankruptcy, if all accounts are not settled the last day
of the old year; consequently it frequently happens that
articles of ornament or curiosity can be purchased at low
rates in the last week of the year from the desire of mer-
chants to sacrifice their stock rather than go without ready
money. In all courts the official seals are locked in strong-
boxes, till the hoHday is at an end.
On the last day of the old year is observed the ancient
custom of surrounding the furnace. A feast is spread in
great form before males in one room, females in another;
underneath the table exactly in the centre is placed a
brazier filled with lighted wood or charcoal ; fireworks are
discharged, gilt paper burned, and the feast eaten, the
younger sons serving the head of the house. After the
repast there is more burning of gilt paper, and the ashes are
divided, while still smouldering, into twelve heaps, which are
anxiously watched. The twelve heaps are each allotted to a
month, and it is believed that from the length of time it
takes each heap to die completely out, can be predicted the
changes of rain or drought which will be of benefit to the
crops or the reverse.
The first celebration of the New Year is the offering to
heaven and earth. A table in the principal entrance is
spread with a bucket of rice, five or ten bowls of different
vegetables (no meats) ten cups of tea, ten cups of wine, two
large red candles, and three sticks of common incense or one
317
The Book of Christmas
large stick of a more fragrant kind. In the wooden bucket
holding the rice are stuck flowers or bits of fragrant cedar,
and ten pairs of chopsticks. On the sticks are laid mock
money only used at this season ; to one of the sticks is sus-
pended by a red string an almanac of the coming year;
and near the centre of the table is always displayed a bowl
of oranges. Then after a display of fireworks each member
of the family approaches and performs homage by a cere-
mony of triple bowings. This is succeeded by ceremonies of
veneration to ancestors and tokens of respect and reverence
to living ancestors or relatives — but to the living neither
incense, nor candle nor mock money is offered, — not even
food except the omnipresent loose skinned orange whose
colloquial name is the same as the term for "fortunate."
On New Year's Day, the houses are decorated with in-
scriptions which are hung at either side of the door, on the
pillars or frames, and in the interior of the houses ; some
are suspended from long poles attached to the outside of the
house. The color of the paper indicates whether during the
preceding year the inmates of the house have lost a relative
and if so the degree of the relation of the dead person to
those within. Those who are not in mourning use a brilliant
crimson paper ; in many cases the word happiness is repeated
innumerable times; on some are more ambitious mottoes:
— "May I be so learned as to bear in my memory the sub-
stance of three millions of volumes," "May I know the
affairs of the whole universe for six thousand years," "I
will cheat no man." The monasteries declare "Our lives
are pure" and the nunneries "We are grandmothers in
heart."
In some parts of China there prevails a curious custom
among mendicants of electing a chief who goes to each
318
New Year
shopkeeper and asks a donation. If that received be
liberal, a piece of red paper affixed to the merchant's door-
way exempts him from applications from the begging fra-
ternity for one year. During this term of immunity there
will be no annoyance from the clatter on his doorpost of the
beggars' bamboo.
For the time being, business is suspended, tribunals are
closed, houses are decorated, gifts interchanged, large sums
expended on fireworks, and the celebration reaches full
swing on the night of the Feast of Lanterns, when every
dwelling in the Kingdom from the mud-walled bamboo hut,
to the Emperor's palace with marble halls, are all illuminated
with lanterns of every size and shape. At the end of the
feast a great pyrotechnic display takes place, in the court-
yard of the better class of residences, in the streets before
the abodes of the middle and lower classes, each one
trying to outdo the year before in the magnificence of the
display, the strangeness of the devices, and the brilHancy
of the fireworks. The air is illumined with millions of
sparks, and the eye rests upon thousands of grotesque
monsters outhned in the many colored flames.
H. C. SiER in China and the Chinese
New Year's Gifts in Thessaly ^:::y ^^ ^^^ •^::>
"\T0 good Thessalian would think of being absent from
-'■ ^ the liturgy on New Year's morning, and no good
peasant would think of leaving behind him the pome-
granate which has been exposed to the stars all night, and
which they take to the church for the priest to bless. On
his return home the master of each house dashes this pome-
The Book of Christmas
granate on the floor as he crosses his threshold, and says as
he does so, " May as many good-lucks come to my household
as there are pips in this pomegranate;" and apostrophizing,
so to speak, the demons of the house, he adds, "Away with
you, fleas, and bugs, and evil words ; and within this house
may health, happiness, and the good things of this world
reign supreme!"
In like manner, no good housewife would neglect to
distribute sweets to her children on New Year's morning,
considering that by eating them they will secure for them-
selves a sweet career for the rest of the year.
And many other little superstitions of a kindred nature are
considered essential to the well-being of the family. In
one house we entered on New Year's Day we were presented
with pieces of a curious and exceedingly nasty leavened loaf,
and were told that this is the New Year's cake which every
family makes; into it is dropped a coin, and he who gets
the coin in his slice will be the luckiest during the coming
year. Every member of the family has a slice given to him
— even the tiny baby, who has not the remotest chance of
consuming all his; and then besides the family slices, two
large ones are always cut off the cake and set on one side;
one of these is said to be **for the house," which nobody
eats, but when it is quite dry it is put on a shelf near the
sacred pictures, which occupy a corner in every home,
however humble, and is dedicated to the saints — the house-
hold gods of the old days. The other slice is for the poor,
who go around with baskets on their arms on New Year's
Day and collect from each household the portion which
they know has been put aside for them.
Every Thessalian, however poor, gives a New Year's
gift "for good luck," they say; and these gifts curiously
320
New Year
enough are called eTrtvo/xcSes — a word which we find
Athenasnus using as a translation of the Roman term strena
for the same gift, which still exists in the French etrennes
and Italian strenne. Even as in ancient Rome gifts were
given on this day bona ominis causa so did we find ourselves
constantly presented with something on New Year's Day —
nuts, apples, dried figs, and things of a like nature, which
caused our pockets to become inconveniently crowded.
I fancy it was much the same in Roman days and probably
earlier as it is now in out of the way corners of Greece.
We know how on New Year's Day clients sent presents to
their patrons — slaves to the lords, friends to friends, and
the people to the Emperor — and that Caligula, who was
never a rich man, took advantage of this custom and made
known that on New Year's Day he wanted a dower for
his daughter, which resulted in such piles of gold being
brought that he walked barefoot upon them at his palace
door.
The custom of giving New Year's gifts in Rome grew as
great a nuisance as wedding presents bid fair to become with
us, and sumptuary laws had to be passed to restrict the
lavish expenditure in them, and the earlier Christian
divines took occasion to abuse them hotly, St. Augustine
calling New Year's gifts "diabolical" and Chrysostom
preaching that the first of the year was a "Satanic extrava-
gance."
Wishing to Christianize a pagan custom as they always
tried to do, these earlier divines invented Christmas gifts
as a substitute. Wherefore we unfortunate dwellers in the
West have the survival of both Christmas and New Year's
gifts; in Greece Christmas gifts are unknown; but there
exists not in Greece a man, however poor, who does not
Y 321
The Book of Christmas
make an effort to give his friends a gift on the day of the
K^^^^^^' J. Theodore Bent
"Smashing" in the New Year ^:> -^^ ^:^ -^^
npHE Old Year went out with much such a racket as we
^ make nowadays, but of quite a different kind. We did
not blow the New Year in, we " smashed " it in. When it was
dark on New Year's Eve, we stole out with all the cracked
and damaged crockery of the year that had been hoarded
for the purpose and, hieing ourselves to some favorite
neighbor's door, broke our pots against it. Then we ran,
but not very far or very fast, for it was part of the game that
if one was caught at it, he was to be taken in and treated to
hot doughnuts. The smashing was a mark of favor, and
the citizen who had most pots broken against his door
was the most popular man in town. When I was in the
Latin School a cranky burgomaster, whose door had been
freshly painted, gave orders to the watchmen to stop it, and
gave them an unhappy night, for they were hard put to it
to find a way it was safe to look, with the streets full of
the best citizens in town, and their wives and daughters,
sneaking singly by with bulging coats on their way to salute
a friend. That was when our mothers, those who were
not out smashing in the New Year, came out strong after the
fashion of mothers. They baked more doughnuts than
ever that night, and beckoned the watchman in to the treat;
and there he sat, blissfully deaf while the street rang with
the thunderous salvos of our raids; until it was discovered
that the burgomaster himself was on post, when there was
a sudden rush from kitchen doors and a great scurrying
through the streets that grew strangely silent.
322
New Year
The town had its revenge, however. The burgomaster,
returning home in the midnight hour, stumbled in his gate
over a discarded Christmas-tree hung full of old boots and
many black and sooty pots that went down round him with
a great smash as he upset it, so that his family came running
out in alarm to find him sprawling in the midst of the biggest
celebration of all. His dignity suffered a shock which he
never quite got over. But it killed the New Year's fun,
too. For he was really a good fellow, and then he was
the burgomaster and chief of police to boot. I suspect the
fact was that the pot-smashing had run its course. Per-
haps the supply of pots was giving out; we began to use
tinware more about that time. That was the end of it,
anyhow. .
Jacob Riis in The Old Town
New Year Calls in Old New York ^^ ^r^^ ^:::y
"Cj^ROM old Dutch times to the middle of the nineteenth
"^ century New Year's Day in New York was devoted
to an universal interchange of visits. Old friendships were
renewed, family differences settled, a hearty welcome ex-
tended even to strangers of presentable appearance.
The following is an entry in Tyrone Powers the actor's
diary for January i, 1834: "On this day from an early
hour every door in New York is open and all the good
things possessed by the inmates paraded in lavish profusion.
Every sort of vehicle is put in requisition. At an early
hour a gentleman of whom I had a slight knowledge entered
my room, accompanied by an elderly person I had never
before seen, and who, on being named, excused himself
for adopting such a frank mode of making my acquaintance.
323
The Book of Christmas
which he was pleased to add he much desired, and at once
requested me to fall in with the custom of the day, whose
privilege he had thus availed himself of, and accompany
him on a visit to his family.
" I was the last man on earth likely to decline an offer made
in such a spirit ; so entering his carriage, which was wait-
ing, we drove to his house on Broadway, where, after being
presented to a very amiable lady, his wife, and a pretty
gentle-looking girl, his daughter, I partook of a sump-
tuous luncheon, drank a glass of champagne, and on the
arrival of other visitors, made my bow, well pleased with
my visit.
" My host now begged me to make a few calls with him,
explaining, as we drove along, the strict observances paid to
this day throughout the State, and tracing the excellent cus-
tom to the early Dutch colonists. I paid several calls in
company with my new friend, and at each place met a hearty
welcome, when my companion suggested that I might have
some compliments to make on my own account, and so
leaving me, begged me to consider his carriage perfectly
at my disposal. I left a card or two and made a couple of
hurried visits, then returned to my hotel to think over the
many beneficial effects likely to grow out of such a chari-
table custom which makes even the stranger sensible of the
benevolent influence of this kindly day, and to wish for its
continued observance."
At the period of which Power speaks there were great
feasts spread in many houses, and the traditions of tre-
mendous Dutch eating and drinking were faithfully ob-
served. Special houses were noted for particular forms
of entertainment. At one it was eggnog, at another rum
punch; at this one, pickled oysters, at that, boned turkey,
324
New Year
or marvellous chocolate, or perfect Mocha coffee ; or for the
select cognoscenti a drop of old Madeira as delicate in flavor
as the texture of the glass from which it was sipped. At
all houses there were the New Year's cakes, in the form of
an Egyptian cartouche, and in later and more degener-
ate days relays of champagne-bottles appeared, — the
coming in of the lower empire.
Then followed the gradual breaking down of all the lines
of conventionality into a wild and unseemly riot of visits.
New Year's Day took on the character of a rabid and un-
tamed race against time. A procession, each of whose
component parts was made up of two or three young men
in an open barouche, with a pair of steaming horses and a
driver more or less under the influences of the hilarity of the
day, would rattle from one house to another all day long.
The visitors would jump out of the carriage, rush into the
house, and reappear in a miraculously short space of time.
The ceremony of calling was a burlesque. There was a
noisy, hilarious greeting, a glass of wine was swallowed
hurriedly, everybody shook hands all around, and the
callers dashed out, rushed into the carriage, and were
driven hurriedly to the next house.
A reaction naturally set in which ended in the almost
complete disuse of the custom of New Year's Calls.
W. S. Walsh in Curiosities of Popular Customs
Sylvester Abend in Davos ^;:> ^:> ^;^ ^^
TT is ten o'clock upon Sylvester Abend, or New Year's
-^ Eve. Herr Buol sits with his wife at the head of his
long table. His family and serving-folk are around him.
There is his mother, with little Ursula, his child, upon her
325
The Book of Christmas
knee. The old lady is the mother of four comely daughters
and nine stalwart sons, the eldest of whom is now a grizzled
man. Besides our host, four of the brothers are here to-
night; the handsome melancholy Georg, who is so gentle
in his speech; Simeon, with his diplomatic face; Florian,
the student of medicine; and my friend, colossal-breasted
Christian. Palmy came a little later, worried with many
cares, but happy to his heart's core. No optimist was ever
more convinced of his philosophy than Palmy. After them,
below the salt, were ranged the knechts and porters, the
marmiton from the kitchen, and innumerable maids. The
board was tessellated with plates of birnen-brod and eier-
brod, kuchli and cheese and butter; and Georg stirred
grampampuli in a mighty metal bowl. For the unini-
tiated, it may be needful to explain these Davos delicacies.
Birnen-brod is what the Scotch would call a "bun," or
massive cake, composed of sliced pears, almonds, spices, and
a little flour. Eier-brod is a saffron -coloured sweet bread,
made with eggs; and kuchli is a kind of pastry, crisp and
flimsy, fashioned into various devices of cross, star, and
scroll. Grampampuli is simply brandy burnt with sugar,
the most unsophisticated punch I ever drank from tumblers.
The frugal people of Davos, who live on bread and cheese
and dried meat all the year, indulge themselves but once
with these unwonted dainties in the winter.
The occasion was cheerful, and yet a little solemn. The
scene was feudal. For these Buols are the scions of a
warrior race : —
" A race illustrious for heroic deeds;
Humbled, but degraded."
During the six centuries through which they have lived
326
New Year
nobles in Davos, they have sent forth scores of fighting men
to foreign lands, ambassadors to France and Venice and the
Milanese, governors to Chiavenna and Bregaglia and the
much-contested Valtelline. Members of their house are
Counts of Buol-Schauenstein in Austria, Freiherrs of Muh-
lingen and Berenberg in the now German Empire. They
keep the patent of nobility conferred on them by Henri IV.
Their ancient coat — parted per pale azure and argent,
with a dame of the fourteenth century bearing in her hand
a rose, all counterchanged — is carved in wood and monu-
mental marble on the churches and old houses hereabouts.
And from immemorial antiquity the Buol of Davos has sat
thus on Sylvester Abend with family and folk around him,
summoned from alp and snowy field to drink grampampuH
and break the birnen-brod.
These rites performed, the men and maids began to sing
— brown arms lounging on the table, and red hands folded
in white aprons — serious at first in hymn-Hke cadences,
then breaking into wilder measures with a jodel at the close.
There is a measured solemnity in the performance, which
strikes the stranger as somewhat comic. But the singing
was good ; the voices strong and clear in tone, no hesitation
and no shirking of the melody. It was clear that the singers
enjoyed the music for its own sake, with half-shut eyes, as
they take dancing, solidly, with deep-drawn breath, sus-
tained and indefatigable. But eleven struck ; and the two
Christians, my old friend and Palmy, said we should be
late for church. They had promised to take me with them
to see bell-ringing in the tower. All the young men of the
village meet, and draw lots in the Stube of the Rathhaus.
One party tolls the old year out, the other rings the new
year in. He who comes last is sconced three litres of
327
The Book of Christmas
Veltliner for the company. This jovial fine was ours to pay
to-night.
When we came into the air we found a bitter frost ; the
whole sky clouded over; a north wind whirling snow from
alp and forest through the murky gloom. The benches and
broad walnut tables of the Rathhaus were crowded with
men in shaggy homespun of brown and grey frieze. Its low
wooden roof and walls enclosed an atmosphere of smoke,
denser than the eternal snow-drift. But our welcome was
hearty, and we found a score of friends. Titanic Fopp,
whose limbs are Michelangelesque in length; spectacled
Morosani ; the little tailor Kramer, with a French horn on
his knees; the puckered forehead of the Baumeister; the
Troll-shaped postman ; peasants and woodmen, known on
far excursions upon pass and upland valley. Not one but
carried on his face the memory of winter strife with ava-
lanche and snow-drift, of horses struggling through Fluela
whirlwinds, and wine-casks tugged across Bernina, and
haystacks guided down precipitous gullies at thundering
speed 'twixt pine and pine, and larches felled in distant
glens beside the frozen watercourses. Here we were, all
met together for one hour from our several homes and
occupations, to welcome in the year with clinked glasses
and cries of Prosit Neujahr !
The tolling bells above us stopped. Our turn had come.
Out into the snowy air we tumbled, beneath the row of
wolves' heads that adorn the pent-house roof. A few steps
brought us to the still God's acre, where the snow lay deep
and cold upon high-mounded graves of many generations.
We crossed it silently, bent our heads to the low Gothic
arch, and stood within the tower. It was thick darkness
there. But far above, the bells began again to clash and
328
New Year
jangle confusedly, with volleys of demoniac joy. Successive
flights of ladders, each ending in a giddy platform hung
across the gloom, climb to the height of some hundred and
fifty feet ; and all their rungs were crusted with frozen snow,
deposited by trampling boots. For up and down these
stairs, ascending and descending, moved other than angels
— the frieze-jacketed Burschen, Grisens bears, rejoicing in
their exercise, exhilarated with the tingling noise of beaten
metal. We reached the first room safely, guided by firm-
footed Christian, whose one candle just defined the rough
walls and the slippery steps. There we found a band of
boys pulling ropes that set the bells in motion. But our
destination was not reached. One more aerial ladder, per-
pendicular in darkness, brought us swiftly to the home of
sound. It is a small square chamber, where the bells are
hung, filled with the interlacement of enormous beams, and
pierced to north and south by open windows, from whose
parapets I saw the village and the valley spread beneath.
The fierce wind hurried through it, charged with snow, and
its narrow space thronged with men. Men on the platform,
men on the window-sills, men grappling the bells with iron
arms, men brushing by to reach the stairs, crossing, re-cross-
ing, shouldering their mates, drinking red wine from gigan-
tic beakers, exploding crackers, firing squibs, shouting and
yelling in corybantic chorus. They yelled and shouted,
one could see it by their open mouths and glittering eyes;
but not a sound from human lungs could reach our ears.
The overwhelming incessant thunder of the bells drowned
all. It thrilled the tympanum, ran through the marrow of
the spine, vibrated in the inmost entrails. Yet the brain
was only steadied and excited by this sea of brazen noise.
After a few moments I knew the place and felt at home in it.
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Then I enjoyed a spectacle which sculptors might have
envied. For they ring the bells in Davos after this fashon :
— The lads below set them going with ropes. The men
above climb in pairs on ladders to the beams from which they
are suspended. Two mighty pine-trees, roughly squared
and built into the walls, extend from side to side across the
belfry. Another, from which the bells hang, connects these
massive trunks at right angles. Just where the central beam
is wedged into the two parallel supports, the ladders reach
from each side of the belfry, so that, bending from the higher
rung of the ladder, and leaning over, stayed upon the lateral
beam, each pair of men can keep one bell in movement with
their hands. Each comrade plants one leg upon the ladder,
and sets the other knee firmly athwart the horizontal pine.
Then round each other's waist they twine left arm and right.
The two have thus become one man. Right arm and left
are free to grasp the bell's horns, sprouting at its crest
beneath the beam. With a grave rhythmic motion, bending
sideward in a close embrace, swaying and returning to their
centre from the well-knit loins, they drive the force of
each strong muscle into the vexed bell. The impact is
earnest at first, but soon it becomes frantic. The men take
something from each other of exalted enthusiasm. This
efflux of their combined energies inspires them and exasper-
ates the mighty resonance of metal which they rule. They
are lost in a trance of what approximates to dervish pas-
sion — so thrilling is the surge of sound, so potent are the
rhythms they obey. Men come and tug them by the heels.
One grasps the starting thews upon their calves. Another
is impatient for their place. But they strain still, locked
together, and forgetful of the world. At length, they have
enough: then slowly, clingingly, unclasp, turn round with
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New Year
gazing eyes, and are resumed, sedately, into the diurnal
round of common life. Another pair is in their room
upon the beam.
The Englishman who saw those things stood looking up,
enveloped in his ulster with the grey cowl thrust upon his
forehead, like a monk. One candle cast a grotesque shadow
of him on the plastered wall. And when his chance came,
though he was but a weakling, he too climbed and for some
moments hugged the beam, and felt the madness of the
swinging bell. Descending, he wondered long and strangely
whether he ascribed too much of feeling to the men he
watched. But no, that was impossible. There are emo-
tions deeply seated in the joy of exercise, when the body is
brought into play, and masses move in concert, of which the
subject is but half conscious. Music and dance, and the
delirium of the battle or the chase, act thus upon spontane-
ous natures. The mystery of rhythm and associated energy
and blood tingling in sympathy is here. It lies at the root
of man's most tyrannous instinctive impulses.
It was past one when we reached home, and now a medi-
tative man might well have gone to bed. But no one
thinks of sleeping on Sylvester Abend. So there followed
bowls of punch in one friend's room, where English,
French, and German blent together in convivial Babel;
and flasks of old Montagner in another. Palmy, at this
period, wore an archdeacon's hat, and smoked a church-
warden's pipe ; and neither were his own, nor did he derive
anything ecclesiastical or Anglican from the association.
Late in the morning we must sally forth, they said, and
roam the town. For it is the custom here on New Year's
night to greet acquaintances, and ask for hospitality, and
no one may deny these self-invited guests. We turned out
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again into the grey snow-swept gloom, a curious Comus —
not at all like Greeks, for we had neither torches in our
hands nor rose-wreaths to suspend upon a lady's door-
posts. . . .
However, upon this occasion, though we had winter wind
enough, and cold enough, there was not much love in the
business. My arm was firmly clenched in Christian Buol's,
and Christian Palmy came behind, trolling out songs in
Italian dialect, with still recurring canaille choruses, of
which the facile rhymes seemed mostly made on a pro-
longed amu-u-u-r. It is noticeable that Italian ditties are
especially designed for fellows shouting in the streets at
night. . . . The tall church-tower and spire loomed up
above us in grey twilight. The tireless wind still swept
thin snow from fell and forest. But the frenzied bells had
sunk into their twelve-month's slumber, which shall be
broken only by decorous tollings at less festive times. I
wondered whether they were tingling still with the heart-
throbs and with the pressure of those many arms? Was
their old age warmed, as mine was, with that gust of life —
the young men who had clung to them like bees to lily-bells,
and shaken all their locked -up tone and shrillness into the
wild winter air? Alas ! how many generations of the young
have handled them ; and they are still there, frozen in their
belfry; and the young grow middle-aged, and old, and die
at last ; and the bells they grappled in their lust of manhood
toll them to their graves, on which the tireless wind will,
winter after winter, sprinkle snow from alps and forests
which they knew.
John Addington Symonds
332
XI
TWELFTH NIGHT
DOWN with the rosemary and bays,
Down with tlie mistletoe ;
Instead of holly, now up-raise
The greener box, for show.
The holly hitherto did sway;
Let box now domineer.
Until the dancing Easter-day,
On Easter's Eve appear.
Robert Herrick
336
Now have Good Day ^^ ^:::y <^ ^::y ^
ATOW have good day, now have good dayl
I am Christmas, and now I go my way!
Here have I dwelt with more and less,
From Hallow-tide till Candlemas !
And now must I from you hence pass,
Now have good day!
I take my leave of King and Knight,
And Earl, Baron, and lady bright !
To wilderness I must me dight !
Now have good day !
And at the good lord of this hall,
I take my leave, and of guestes all !
Methinks I hear Lent doth call,
Now have good day!
And at every worthy officer,
Marshall, panter, and butler,
I take my leave as for this year.
Now have good day!
Another year I trust I shall
Make merry in this hall !
If rest and peace in England may fall !
Now have good day!
But often times I have heard say,
That he is loth to part away,
That often biddeth " have good day ! "
Now have good day!
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The Book of Christmas
Now fare ye well all in-fere !
Now fare ye well for all this year,
Yet for my sake make ye good cheer !
Now have good day!
From a Balliol MS. of c. 1540
A Twelfth Night Superstition <:> ^c> ^::^ <:>
n^WICE six nights then from Christmasse, they do count
-^ with diligence,
Wherein eche maister in his house doth burne by francken-
sence :
And on the table settes a loafe, when night approcheth nere,
Before the coles and franckensence to be perfumed there:
First bowing down his heade he standes, and nose and eares
and eyes
He smokes, and with hos mouth receyves the fume that
doth arise
Whom followeth streight his wife, and doth the same full
solemly,
And of their children every one and all their family;
Which doth preserve they say their teeth and nose and eye
and eare
From every kind of maladie, and sicknesse all the yeare.
When every one receyued hath this odour great and small
Then one takes up the pan with coales, and franckensence
and all
An other takes the loafe, whom all the rest do follow here.
And round about the house they go with torch or taper clere,
That neither bread nor meat do want, nor witch with dread-
ful charme
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Twelfth Night
Have power to hurt their children or to do their cattell
harme
There are that three nightes only do perfoure this foolish
geare
To this intent, and thinke themselves in safetie all the yeare.
Barnaby Googe's versification of The Popish Kingdome
Twelfth-Day Table Diversion ^> ^;> -^::> ^^^y
JOHN Nott, describing himself as "late cook to the
dukes of Somerset, Ormond, and Batton," writes in
1726: "Ancient artists in cookery inform us that in former
days, when good housekeeping was in fashion amongst the
English nobility, they used either to begin or conclude
their entertainments, and divert their guests with such
pretty devices as these following, viz : —
A castle made of pasteboard, with gates, drawbridges,
battlements and portcullises, all done over with paste, was
set upon a table in a large charger, with salt laid round
about it, as if it were the ground in which were stuck egg-
shells full of rose or other sweet waters, the meat of the
egg having been taken out by a great pin. Upon the bat-
tlement of the castle were planted Kexes covered over with
paste, in the form of cannons, and made to look like brass
by covering them with dutch leaf-gold. These cannons
being charged with gunpowder, and trains laid so that
you might fire as many as you pleased, at one touch ; this
castle was set at one end of the table.
Then in the middle of the table, they would set a stag
made of paste, but hollow, and filled with claret wine, and
a broad arrow stuck in his side ; this was also set in a large
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The Book of Christmas
charger, with a ground made of salt with egg-shells of
perfumed waters stuck in it as before.
Then at the other end of the table, they would have a
ship made of pasteboard, and covered ail over with paste,
with masts, sails, flags, and streamers; and guns made of
Kexes, covered with paste and charged with gunpowder,
with a train, as in the castle. This being placed in a large
charger was set upright in as it were a sea of salt, in which
were also stuck egg-shells full of perfumed waters. Then
betwixt the stag and castle, and the stag and ship, were
placed two pies made of coarse paste, filled with bran, and
washed over with saffron and the yolks of eggs; when
these were baked the bran was taken out, a hole was cut
in the bottom of each, and live birds put into one and frogs
into the other. Then the holes were closed up with paste,
and the lids neatly cut up, so that they might be easily
taken off by the funnels, and adorned with gilded laurels.
These being thus prepared, and placed in order on the
table, one of the ladies was persuaded to draw the arrow
out of the body of the stag, which being done the claret
wine issued forth like blood from a wound and caused ad-
miration in the spectators; which being over, after a little
pause, all the guns on one side of the castle were by a
train discharged against the ship; and afterwards the guns
of one side of the ship were discharged against the castle ;
then, having turned the chargers, the other sides were fired
off as in a battle. This causing a great smell of powder,
the ladies or gentlemen took up the eggshells of perfumed
water and threw them at one another. This pleasant
disorder being pretty well laughed over, and the two great
pies still remaining untouched, some one or other would
have the curiosity to see what was in them and on lifting
340
Twelfth Night
up the lid of one pie, out would jump the frogs, which
would make the ladies skip and scamper; and on lifting
up the lid of the other out would fly the birds, which would
naturally fly at the light and so put out the candles. And
so with the leaping of the frogs below, and the flying of the
birds above, would cause a Surprising and diverting hurley
burley among the guests, in the dark. After which the
candles being lighted, the banquet would be brought in,
the music sound, and the particulars of each person's
surprise and adventures furnish matter for diverting
discourse.
The Cook and Confectioners Dictionary, 1726
The Blessing of the Waters ^^ -^ ^^^ <::iy
T WAS anxious to be present at the early liturgy of the
-*■ morning of Epiphany to witness the ceremony of the
blessing of the waters in the pretty quaint village on the
island of Skiathos in a far-away corner of Greece. It was
a great effort, for the night had been cold and stormy;
however, by some process which will never be quite clear
to me I managed to find myself at the door of the one church
with its many storied bell-tower, soon after four o'clock.
Very quaint indeed it looked as I went out of the cold dark-
ness into the brilliantly lighted church, and saw the pious
islanders kneeling all around on the cold floor as the liturgy
was being chanted prior to the blessing of the waters.
Near the entrance stood the font filled to the brim; and
close to it was placed an eikon or sacred picture, repre-
senting the baptism of our Lord ; around the font were
stuck many candles fastened by their own grease; whilst
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The Book of Christmas
pots and jugs of every size and description, full of water,
stood about on the floor in the immediate vicinity of the font.
After the priest had chanted the somewhat tedious
litany from the steps of the high altar, he set off dressed
sumptuously in his gold brocaded vestments, round the
church with a large cross in one hand, and a sprig of basil
in the other, accompanied by two acolytes, who waved
their censers and cast about a pleasant odor of frankin-
cense. Every one was prostrate as the priest read the
appointed Scripture, signed the water in the font and in the
adjacent jugs with the cross and threw into the font his
sprig of basil. No sooner was this solemn impressive
ceremony over than there was a general rush from all sides
with mugs and bottles to secure some of this consecrated
water. Everybody laughed and hustled his neighbor;
even the priest, with the cross in his hand, stood and
watched them with a grin. The sudden change from the
preceding solemnity was ludicrous in the extreme.
Before taking his departure for his home each person
went up to kiss the cross which the priest held and to be
sprinkled with water from the sprig of basil. Each person
had brought his own sprig of basil which he presented to
the priest to bless, and in return for this favor dropped a
small coin into the plate held by one of the acolytes. Basil
is always held to be a sacred plant in Greece. The legend
says that it grew on Christ's tomb, and they imagine that
this is the reason why its leaves grow in a cruciform shape.
In nearly every humble Greek dwelling you may see a dried
sprig of basil hanging in the household sanctuary. It is
this sprig which has been blessed at the Feast of Lights.
It is most effectual say they in keeping off the influence of
the evil eye.
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Twelfth Night
The day broke fine and the violence of the storm was
over. Yet our captain still lingered saying that perhaps
toward evening we might start, and for this delay I believe
I discovered the reason. Towards midday on Epiphany
it is customary among these seafaring islanders to hold a
solemn function, closely akin to the one I had witnessed in
the church that morning, namely, the blessing of the sea.
From their homes by the shore the fishermen came, and
all the inhabitants of Skiathos assembled on the quay to
join the procession which descended from the church by a
zigzag path, headed by two priests and two acolytes behind
them waving censers, and men carrying banners and the
large cross.
Very touching it was to watch the deep devotion of these
hardy seafaring men as they knelt on the shore whilst the
litany was being chanted, and whilst the chief priest blest
the waves with his cross and invoked the blessing of the
most High on the many and varied crafts which were riding
at anchor in Skiathos harbor. When the service was over
there followed, as in the morning, an unseemly bustle, so
ready are these vivacious people to turn from the solemn to
the gay. Every one chatted with his neighbor and pressed
forward toward a little jetty to see the fun. Presently the
priest advanced to the end of this jetty with the cross in his
hand, and after tying a heavy stone to it he threw it into
the sea. Thereupon there was a general rush into the
water; men and boys with their clothes on plunged and
dived until at length to the applause of the bystanders one
young man succeeded in bringing the cross to the surface,
stone and all. A subscription was then raised for the suc-
cessful diver, the proceeds of which were spent by him in
ordering many glasses of wine at the nearest coffee shop,
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The Book of Christmas
and the wet men sat down for a heavy drink — to drive
out the chill, I suppose.
In many places you will find the boats hauled upon the
beach the day before Christmas, and nothing will induce
their owners to launch them again until after the blessing
of the sea. I am sure the captain of our steamer shared
the superstition, though he chose to laugh at the island-
ers' ways; for a few hours after the sea had been blessed
we put out into it, and I imagine could have started hours
before if the captain had been so inclined.
J. T. Bent
La Galette du Roi ^^^ ^^ ^::> ^> -^r^ ^:iy
TN France, where it probably originated, the Twelfth
-*- Night cake, known as La Galette du Roi ("the king's
cake"), still survives.
The cake is generally made of pastry, and baked in a
round sheet like a pie. The size of the cake depends on
the number of persons in the company. In former times
a broad bean was baked in the cake, but now a small china
doll is substituted.
The cake is the last course in the dinner. One of the
youngest people at the table is asked to say to whom each
piece shall be given. This creates a little excitement and
all watch breathlessly to see who gets the doll. The person
who gets it is king or queen, and immediately chooses a
king or queen for a partner. So soon as the king and queen
are announced they are under the constant observation of
the rest of the party and whatever they do is immediately
commented upon. In a short time there is a perfect up-
roar: "The king drinks," "the queen speaks," "the
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Twelfth Night
queen laughs." This is kept up for a long time; then
there are games, music and dancitig.
William Hone in the Everyday Book
Drawing King and Queen on Twelfth Night -^^
TTONE, in his Everyday Bookj describes a drawing as it
■*■ ^ was conducted in 1823 : ''First, buy your cake. Then,
before your visitors arrive, buy your characters (painted
cards) , each of which should have a pleasant verse beneath.
Next, look at your invitation list and count the number of
ladies you expect; and afterwards the number of gentle-
men. Then take as many female characters as you have
invited ladies; fold them up, exactly of the same size, and
number each on the back, taking care to make the King
No. I and the Queen No. 2. Then prepare and number
the gentlemen's characters. Cause tea and coffee to be
handed to your visitors as they drop in. When all are
assembled, and tea over, put as many ladies' characters
in a reticule as there are ladies present ; next put the gentle-
men's characters in a hat. Then call a gentleman to carry
the reticule to the ladies, as they sit, from which each lady
is to draw one ticket and preserve it unopened. Select a
lady to bear the hat to the gentlemen for the same purpose.
There will be one ticket left in the reticule and another in
the hat, which the lady and gentleman who carried each
is to interchange, as having fallen to each. Next arrange
your visitors according to their numbers — the King No. i,
the Queen No. 2, and so on. The king is then to recite
the verse on his ticket, then the queen the verse on hers,
and so the characters are to proceed in numerical order.
This done, let the cake and refreshments go round, and
hey! for merriment.
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The Book of Christmas
St. Distaff's Day and Plough Monday ^^ ^=::^
HTHE day after Epiphany was called St. Distaff's day
■^ by country people, because the Christmas holidays
being ended the time had come for the resumption of the
distaff and other industrious employments of good house-
wives.
The Monday after Twelfthday was a similar occasion
for the resumption of agricultural labors. Another writer
connects the day with a custom which among farm servants
corresponded somewhat to the 'prentices Boxing Day.
The usage was "to draw around a plough and solicit money
with guisings, and dancing with swords, preparatory to
beginning to plough after the Christmas holidays."
Olaus Magnus describes the "dance with swords":
First, with swords sheathed and erect in their hands, they
dance in a triple round; then with their drawn swords
held erect as before ; afterwards extending them from hand
to hand, they lay hold of each other's hilts and points, and
while they are wheeling more moderately around and
changing their order, they throw themselves into the figure
of a hexagon which they call a rose : but presently raising
and drawing back their swords, they undo that figure, in
order to form with them a four-square rose so that they may
rebound over the head of each other. Lastly, they dance
rapidly backwards, and vehemently rattling the sides of
their swords together, conclude their sport. Pipes or
songs (sometimes both) direct the measure which at first
is slow, increasing to a very quick movement at the close.
Olaus Magnus adds: "It is scarcely to be understood how
gamely and decent it is."
William Hone in Year Book
346
XII
THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT
"As Littb Children in a Darkened Hall
Christmas Dreams
The Professor's Christmas Sermon
Awaiting the King
Elizabeth's Christmas Sermon
Nichola's '' Reason Why "
The Changing Spirit of Christmastide
A Prayer for Christmas Peace
Under the Holly Bough
Christmas Music
A Christmas Sermon
A S little children in a darkened hall
-^^^ At Christmas-tide await the opening door,
Eager to tread the fairy-haunted floor
About the tree with goodly gifts for all,
And into the dark unto each other call —
Trying to guess their happiness before, —
Or of their elders eagerly implore
Hints of what fortune unto them may fall :
So wait we in Time's dim and narrow room,
And with strange fancies, or another's thought,
Try to divine, before the curtain rise,
The wondrous scene. Yet soon shall fly the gloom,
And we shall see what patient ages sought,
The Father's long-planned gift of Paradise.
Charles Henry Crandall in Wayside Music
Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons
3SO
Christmas Dreams -^^ ^:^ ^:^ ^^ -^^^ ^;^
'T^O-MORROW is Merry Christmas; and when its
night descends there will be mirth and music, and
the light sounds of the merry-twinkling feet within these
now so melancholy walls — and sleep now reigning over
all the house save this one room, will be banished far over
the sea — and morning will be reluctant to allow her light
to break up the innocent orgies.
Were every Christmas of which we have been present at
the celebration, painted according to nature — what a
Gallery of Pictures ! True that a sameness would per-
vade them all — but only that kind of sameness that per-
vades the nocturnal heavens. One clear night always is,
to common eyes, just like another; for what hath any
night to show but one moon and some stars — a blue vault,
with here a few braided, and there a few castellated, clouds?
yet no two nights ever bore more than a family resemblance
to each other before the studious and instructed eye of him
who has long communed with Nature, and is familiar with
every smile and frown on her changeful, but not capricious,
countenance. Even so with the Annual Festivals of the
heart. Then our thoughts are the stars that illumine
those skies — and on ourselves it depends whether they
shall be black as Erebus, or brighter than Aurora.
"Thoughts ! that like spirits trackless come and go" — is
a fine Hne of Charles Lloyd's. But no bird skims, no arrow
pierces the air, without producing some change in the
Universe, which will last to the day of doom. No coming
and going is absolutely trackless ; nor irrecoverable by
Nature's law is any consciousness, however ghostlike;
though many a one, even the most blissful, never does
The Book of Christmas
return, but seems to be buried among the dead. But they
are not dead — but only sleep; though to us who recall
them not, they are as they had never been, and we, wretched
ingrates, let them lie for ever in oblivion! How passing
sweet when of our own accord they arise to greet us in our
solitude ! — as a friend who, having sailed away to a for-
eign land in our youth, has been thought to have died
many long years ago, may suddenly stand before us, with
face still familiar and name reviving in a moment, and all
that he once was to us brought from utter forgetfulness
close upon our heart.
My Father's House! How it is ringing like a grove
in spring, with the din of creatures happier, a thousand
times happier, than all the birds on earth. It is the Christ-
mas holidays — Christmas Day itself — Christmas Night
— and Joy in every bosom intensifies Love. Never be-
fore were we brothers and sisters so dear to one another — ■
never before had our hearts so yearned towards the authors
of our being — our blissful being ! There they sat — •
silent in all that outcry — composed in all that disarray —
still in all that tumult; yet, as one or other flying imp
sweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully
strive to catch a prisoner — a mother's gentler touch on
some sylph's disordered symar be felt almost as a reproof,
and for a moment slacken the fairy flight. One old game
treads on the heels of another — twenty within the hour —
and many a new game never heard of before nor since,
struck out by the collision of kindred spirits in their glee,
the transitory fancies of genius inventive through very
delight. Then, all at once, there is a hush, profound as
ever falls on some little plat within a forest when the moon
drops behind the mountain, and small green-robed People
352
The Christmas Spirit
of Peace at once cease their pastime, and vanish. For
she — the Silver-Tongued — is about to sing an old ballad,
words and air alike hundreds of years old — and sing she
doth, while tears begin to fall, with a voice too mournfully
beautiful long to breathe below — and, ere another Christ-
mas shall have come with the falling snows, doomed to be
mute on earth — but to be hymning in Heaven. . . .
Then came a New Series of Christmases, celebrated,
one year in this family, another year in that — none present
but those whom Charles Lamb the Delightful calleth the
"old familiar faces"; something in all features, and all
tones of voice, and all manners, betokening origin from
one root — relations all, happy, and with no reason either
to be ashamed or proud of their neither high nor humble
birth, their lot being cast within that pleasant realm,
"the Golden Mean," where the dwellings are connecting
links between the hut and the hall — fair edifices resem-
bling manse or mansionhouse, according as the atmosphere
expands or contracts their dimensions — in which Com-
petence is next-door neighbor to Wealth, and both of them
within the daily walk of Contentment. Merry Christ-
mases they were indeed — one Lady always presiding,
with a figure that once had been the stateliest among
the stately, but then somewhat bent, without being
bowed down, beneath an easy weight of most venerable
years. Sweet was her tremulous voice to all her grand-
children's ears. Nor did these solemn eyes, bedimmed
into a pathetic beauty, in any degree restrain the glee that
sparkled in orbs that have as yet shed not many tears, but
tears of joy or pity. Dearly she loved all those mortal
creatures whom she was soon about to leave ; but she sat in
sunshine even within the shadow of death; and the "voice
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The Book of Christmas
that called her home" had so long been whispering in her
ear, that its accents had become dear to her, and consola-
tory every word that was heard in the silence, as from
another world.
Whether we were indeed all so witty as we thought
ourselves — uncles, aunts, brothers, sisters, nephews,
nieces, cousins, and "the rest," it might be presumptuous
in us, who were considered by ourselves and a few others
not the least amusing of the whole set, at this distance of
time to decide — especially in the affirmative ; but how
the roof did ring with sally, pun, retort, and repartee!
Ay, with pun — a species of impertinence for which we
have therefore a kindness even to this day. Had incom-
parable Thomas Hood had the good fortune to have been
born a cousin of ours, how with that fine fancy of his would
he have shone at those Christmas festivals, eclipsing us all !
Our family, through all its different branches, had ever been
famous for bad voices, but good ears ; and we think we
hear ourselves — all those uncles and aunts, nephews and
nieces, and cousins — singing now ! Easy it is to "warble
melody" as to breathe air. But we hope harmony is the
most difficult of all things to people in general, for to us it
was impossible; and what attempts ours used to be at
Seconds! Yet the most woful failures were rapturously
encored; and ere the night was done we spoke with most
extraordinary voices indeed, every one hoarser than an-
other, till at last, walking home with a fair cousin, there
was nothing left it but a tender glance of the eye — a tender
pressure of the hand — for cousins are not altogether
sisters, and although partaking of that dearest character,
possess, it may be, some peculiar and appropriate charms
of their own; as didst thou, Emily the "Wildcap!" —
354
The Christmas Spirit
That soubriquet all forgotten now — for now thou art a
matron, nay a Grandam, and troubled with an elf fair and
frolicsome as thou thyself wert of yore, when the gravest
and wisest withstood not the witchery of thy dancing, thy
singings, and thy showering smiles.
On rolled Suns and Seasons — the old died — the elderly
became old — and the young, one after another, were
wafted joyously away on the wings of hope, like birds almost
as soon as they can fly, ungratefully forsaking their nests
and the groves in whose safe shadow they first essayed
their pinions; or like pinnaces that, after having for a few
days trimmed their snow-white sails in the land-locked
bay, close to whose shores of silvery sand had grown the
trees that furnished timber both for hull and mast, slip
their tiny cables on some summer day, and gathering every
breeze that blows, go dancing over the waves in sunshine,^
and melt far off into the main. Or, haply, some were like
young trees, transplanted during no favorable season, and
never to take root in another soil, but soon leaf and branch
to wither beneath the tropic sun, and die almost unheeded
by those who knew not how beautiful they had been be-
neath the dews and mists of their own native climate.
Vain images! and therefore chosen by fancy not too
plainly to touch the heart. For some hearts grew cold and
forbidding with selfish cares — some, warm as ever in their
own generous glow, were touched by the chill of Fortune's
frowns, ever worst to bear when suddenly succeeding her
smiles — some, to rid themselves of painful regrets, took
refuge in forgetfulness, and closed their eyes to the past —
duty banished some abroad, and duty imprisoned others
at home — estrangements there were, at first unconscious
and unintended, yet erelong, though causeless, complete —
355
The Book of Christmas
changes were wrought insensibly, invisibly, even in the
innermost nature of those who being friends knew no
guile, yet came thereby at last to be friends no more —
unrequited love broke some bonds — requited love re-
laxed others — the death of one altered the conditions of
many — and so — year after year — the Christmas Meet-
ing was interrupted — deferred — till finally it ceased
with one accord, unrenewed and unrenewable. For when
Some Things cease for a time — that time turns out to be
forever. . . .
For a good many years we have been tied to town in
winter by fetters as fine as frost-work, which we could not
break without destroying a whole world of endearment.
That seems an obscure image; but it means what the
Germans would call in English — our winter environment.
We are imprisoned in a net; yet we can see it when we
choose — just as a bird can see, when he chooses, the
wires of his cage, that are invisible in his happiness, as he
keeps hopping and fluttering about all day long, or haply
dreaming on his perch with his poll under his plumes —
as free in confinement as if let loose into the boundless sky.
That seems an obscure image too ; but we mean, in truth,
the prison unto which we doom ourselves no prison is;
and we have improved on that idea, for we have built our
own — and are prisoner, turnkey, and jailer all in one,
and 'tis noiseless as the house of sleep. Or what if we de-
clare that Christopher North is a king in his palace, with
no subjects but his own thoughts — his rule peaceful over
those lights and shadows — and undisputed to reign over
them his right divine.
The opening year in a town, now answers in all things
to our heart's desire. How beautiful the smoky air ! The
356
The Christmas Spirit
clouds have a homely look as they hang over the happy
families of houses, and seem as if they loved their birth-
place ; — all unlike those heartless clouds that keep stra-
vaiging over mountain-tops, and have no domicile in the
sky ! Poets speak of living rocks, but what is their life to
that of houses ? Who ever saw a rock with eyes — that is,
with windows? Stone-blind all, and stone-deaf, and with
hearts of stone; whereas who ever saw a house without
eyes — that is, windows? Our own is an Argus; yet the
good old Conservative grudges not the assessed taxes —
his optics are as cheerful as the day that lends them light,
and they love to salute the setting sun, as if a hundred
beacons, level above level, were kindled along a mountain
side. He might safely be pronounced a madman who
preferred an avenue of trees to a street. Why, trees have
no chimneys; and, were you to kindle a fire in the hollow
of an oak, you would soon be as dead as a Druid. It
won't do to talk to us of sap, and the circulation of sap.
A grove in winter, bole and branch — leaves it has none —
is as dry as a volume of sermons. But a street, or a square,
is full of ''vital sparks of heavenly flame" as a volume of
poetry, and the heart's blood circulates through the system
like rosy wine.
But a truce to comparisons ; for we are beginning to feel
contrition for our crime against the country, and, with
humbled head and heart, we beseech you to pardon us —
ye rocks of Pavey-Ark, the pillared palaces of the storms —
ye clouds, now wreathing a diadem for the forehead of
Helvellyn — ye trees, that hang the shadows of your un-
dying beauty over the "one perfect chrysolite," of blessed
Windermere !
Our meaning is transparent now as the hand of an
357
The Book of Christmas
apparition waving peace and good-will to all dwellers in the
land of dreams. In plainer but not simpler words (for
words are like flowers, often rich in their simplicity —
witness the Lily, and Solomon's Song) — Christian people
all, we wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New-Year
in town or in country — or in ships at sea.
Christopher North
The Professor's Christmas Sermon -^i^ ^:> -n^
'T*AKE all in a word : the truth in God's breast
■^ Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed;
Though he is so bright and we so dim,
We are made in his image to witness him:
And were no eye in us to tell.
Instructed by no inner sense,
The light of heaven from the dark of hell,
That light would want its evidence, —
Though justice, good and truth were still
Divine, if, by some demon's will.
Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed
Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.
No mere exposition of morality
Made or in part or in totality.
Should win you to give it worship, therefore:
And, if no better proof you will care for,
Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?
Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more
Of right what is, than arrives at birth
In the best man's acts that we bow before:
This last knows better — true, but my fact is,
358
The Christmas Spirit
'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.
And thence I conclude that the real God-function
Is to furnish a motive and injunction
For practising what we know already.
And such an injunction and such a motive
As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,
High-minded," hang your tablet -votive
Outside the fane on a finger-post?
Morality to the uttermost,
Supreme in Christ as we all confess,
Why need we prove would avail no jot
To make him God, if God he were not?
What is the point where himself lays stress?
Does the precept run "Believe in good, •
" In justice, truth now understood
" For the first time?" — or, " Believe in me^
" Who lived and died, yet essentially
" Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take
The same to his heart and for mere love's sake
Conceive of the love, — that man obtains
A new truth; no conviction gains
Of an old one only, made intense
By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.
Robert Browning from Christmas Eve
Awaiting the King ^::> ^::> ^;:> ^^ ^^ -^^
" I ^HAT sweetly prophetic evening silence, before the
^ great feast of Good-Will, does not come over every-
thing each year, even in a lonely cottage on an abandoned
farm in Connecticut, than which you cannot possibly im-
agine anything more silent or more remote from the noise
359
The Book of Christmas
of the world. Sometimes it rains in torrents just on that
night, sometimes it blows a raging gale that twists the
leafless birches and elms and hickory trees like dry grass
and bends the dark firs and spruces as if they were feathers,
and you can hardly be heard unless you shout, for the
howling and screaming and whistling of the blast.
But now and then, once in four or five years perhaps,
the feathery snow lies a foot deep, fresh-fallen, on the still
country side and in the woods ; and the waxing moon sheds
her large light on all, and Nature holds her breath to wait
for the happy day and tries to sleep, but cannot from sheer
happiness and peace. Indoors, the fire is glowing on the
wide hearth, a great bed of coals that will last all night
and be enough, because it is not bitter weather, but only
cold and clear and still, as it should be ; or if there is only
a poor stove, like Overholt's, the iron door is open and a
comfortable, cheery red light shines out from within upon
the battered iron plate and the wooden floor beyond; and
the older people sit round it, not saying much, and thinking
with their hearts rather than with their heads, but small
boys and girls know that interesting things have been hap-
pening in the kitchen all the afternoon, and are rather glad
that the supper was not very good, because there will be
more room for good things to-morrow ; and the grown-ups
and the children have made up any little differences of
opinion they may have had, before supper time, because
Good-Will must reign, and reign alone, like Alexander;
so that there is nothing at all to regret, and nothing hurts
anybody any more, and they are all happy in just waiting
for King Christmas to open the door softly and make them
all great people in his kingdom. But if it is the right sort
of house, he is already looking in through the window, to
360
The Christmas Spirit
be sure that everyone is all ready for him, and that nothing
has been forgotten.
F. Marion Crawford in The Little City of Hope
Elizabeth's Christmas Sermon ^^^ ^^ ^::>
T CANNOT see that there was anything gross about
■*" our Christmas, and we were perfectly merry without
any need to pretend, and for at least two days it brought
us a little nearer together, and made us kind. Happiness
is so wholesome; it invigorates and warms me into piety
far more effectually than any amount of trials and griefs,
and an unexpected pleasure is the surest means of bringing
me to my knees. In spite of the protestations of some
peculiarly constructed persons that they are the better for
trials, I don't believe it. Such things must sour us, just
as happiness must sweeten us, and make us kinder, and
more gentle. And will anybody afi&rm that it behooves us
to be more thankful for trials than for blessings? We
were meant to be happy, and to accept all the happiness
offered with thankfulness — indeed, we are none of us
ever thankful enough, and yet we each get so much, so
very much, more than we deserve. I know a woman —
she stayed with me last summer — who rejoices grimly
when those she loves suffer. She believes that it is our lot,
and that it braces us and does us good, and she would
shield no one from even unnecessary pain; she weeps
with the sufferer, but is convinced it is all for the best.
Well, let her continue in her dreary beliefs; she has no
garden to teach her the beauty and the happiness of holi-
ness, nor does she in the least desire to possess one; her
convictions have the sad gray colouring of the dingy
361
The Book of Christmas
streets and houses she Hves amongst — the sad colour of
humanity in masses. Submission to what people call
their "lot" is simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry
and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out
for yourself; don't listen to the shrieks of your relations,
to their gibes or their entreaties; don't let your own mi-
croscopic set prescribe your goings-out and comings-in;
don't be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neigh-
bour in the next house, when all the world is before you
new and shining, and everything is possible, if you only be
energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the
scruff of the neck.
From Elizabeth and her German Garden
Nichola Expounds ''the Reason Why" on Christ-
mas Eve ^^^ ^=^ ^=^ ^=^ ^^^:^ ^^::i^ ^^^
" "DUT the whole world helps along," she said shrilly,
^-^ "or else we should tear each other's eyes out. What
do I do, me ? I do not put fruit peel in the waste paper to
worrit the ragman, I do not put potato jackets in the stove
to worrit the ashman. I do not burn the bones because I
think of the next poor dog. What crumbs are left I lay
always, always on the back fence for the birds. I kill no
living thing but spiders — which the devil made. Our
Lady knows I do very little. But if I was the men with
pockets on I'd find a way! I'd find a way, me," said
Nichola, wagging her old gray head.
"Pockets?" Hobart repeated, puzzled.
"For the love of heaven, yes !" Nichola cried. "Pockets
■ — money — give !" she illustrated in pantomime. "What
362
The Christmas Spirit
can I do? On Thursday nights I take what sweets are in
this house, what flowers are on all the plants, and I carry
them to a hospital I know. If you could see how they wait
for me on the beds ! What can I do ? The good God gave
me almost no pockets. It is as he says," she nodded to.
Pelleas, '' Helping is why. Yah ! None of what you say is
so. Mem, I didn't get no time to frost the nutcakes."
Zona Gale in The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre
The Changing Spirit of Christmastide ^^ ^^
HTHE English, from the great prevalence of rural habit
■*^ throughout every class of society, have always been
fond of those festivals and holidays which agreeably in-
terrupt the stillness of country life; and they were, in
former days, particularly observant of the religious and
social rites of Christmas. It is inspiring to read even the
dry details which some antiquarians have given of the quaint
humours, the burlesque pageants, the complete abandon
ment to mirth and good-fellowship, with which this festi-
val was celebrated. It seemed to throw open every door,
and unlock every heart. It brought the peasant and the
peer together, and blended all ranks in one warm generous
flow of joy and kindness. The old halls of castles and
manor-houses resounded with the harp and the Christmas
carol, and their ample boards groaned under the weight of
hospitality. Even the poorest cottage welcomed the fes-
tive season with green decorations of bay and holly — the
cheerful fire glanced its rays through the lattice, inviting
the passenger to raise the latch, and join the gossip knot
huddled round the hearth, beguiling the long evening with
legendary jokes and oft-told Christmas tales.
3^3
The Book of Christmas
One of the least pleasing effects of modern refinement is the
havoc it has made among the hearty old holiday customs 1
It has completely taken off the sharp touchings and spirited
reliefs of these embellishments of life, and has worn down
society into a more smooth and polished, but certainly a less
characteristic surface. Many of the games and ceremonials
of Christmas have entirely disappeared, and like the sherris
sack of old Falstaff, are become matters of speculation and
dispute among commentators. They flourished in times
full of spirit and lustihood, when men enjoyed life roughly,
but heartily and vigorously; times wild and picturesque,
which have furnished poetry with its richest materials, and
the drama with its most attractive variety of characters and
manners. The world has become more worldly. There is
more of dissipation, and less of enjoyment. Pleasure has
expanded into a broader, but shallower stream, and has
forsaken many of those deep and quiet channels where it
flowed sweetly through the calm bosom of domestic life.
Society has acquired a more enlightened and elegant tone;
but it has lost many of its strong local peculiarities, its
home-bred feelings, its honest fireside delights. The
traditionary customs of golden-hearted antiquity, its feudal
hospitalities, and lordly wassailings, have passed away with
the baronial castles and stately manor-houses in which they
were celebrated. They comported with the shadowy hall,
the great oaken gallery, and the tapestried parlour, but are
unfitted to the light showy saloons and gay drawing-rooms
of the modern villa.
Shorn, however, as it is, of its ancient and festive honours,
Christmas is still a period of delightful excitement in
England. It is gratifying to see that home feeling com
pletely aroused which seems to hold so powerful a place in
364
The Christmas Spirit
every English bosom. The preparations making on every
side for the social board that is again to unite friends and
kindred ; the presents of good cheer passing and repassing,
those tokens of regard, and quickeners of kind feelings;
the evergreens distributed about houses and churches, em-
blems of peace and gladness; all these have the most
pleasing effect in producing fond associations, and kindling
benevolent sympathies. Even the sound of the waits, rude
as may be their minstrelsy, breaks upon the mid-watches of a
winter night with the effect of perfect harmony. As I have
been awakened by them in that still and solemn hour,
''when deep sleep falleth upon man," I have listened with
a hushed delight, and, connecting them with the sacred and
joyous occasion, have almost fancied them into another
celestial choir, announcing peace and good-will to mankind.
Washington Irving
Charles Kingsley's Prayer for Christmas Peace
/'"^HRISTMAS peace is God's ; and he must give it him-
^^ self, with his own hand, or we shall never get it. Go
then to God himself. Thou art his child, as Christmas Day
declares ; be not afraid to go unto thy Father. Pray to him ;
tell him what thou wantest: say, "Father, I am not moder-
ate, reasonable, forbearing. I fear I cannot keep Christ-
mas aright for I have not a peaceful Christmas spirit in
me ; and I know that I shall never get it by thinking, and
reading, and understanding ; for it passes all that, and lies
far away beyond it, does peace, in the very essence of
thine undivided, unmoved, absolute, eternal Godhead,
which no change nor decay of this created world, nor sin
365
The Book of Christmas
or folly of men or devils, can ever alter; but which abideth
forever what it is, in perfect rest, and perfect power and
perfect love. O Father, give me thy Christmas peace."
From Town and Country Sermons
Under the Holly Bough •<^> ^:^ ^^ ^;:> ^;^
^ZE who have scorned each other,
-*- Or injured friend or brother,
In this fast fading year;
Ye who, by word or deed,
Have made a kind heart bleed.
Come gather here.
Let sinned against, and sinning,
Forget their strife's beginning,
And join in friendship now:
Be links no longer broken.
Be sweet forgiveness spoken.
Under the Holly Bough.
Ye who have loved each other,
Sister and friend and brother.
In this fast fading year:
Mother and sire and child,
Young man and maiden mild.
Come gather here;
And let your hearts grow fonder,
As memory shall ponder
Each past unbroken vow.
Old loves and younger wooing
366
The Christmas Spirit
Are sweet in the renewing,
Under the Holly Bough.
Ye who have nourished sadness,
Estranged from hope and gladness,
In this fast fading year;
Ye, with o'erburdened mind,
Made aliens from your kind,
Come gather here.
Let not the useless sorrow
Pursue you night and morrow.
If e'er you hoped, hope now —
Take heart ; — uncloud your faces.
And join in our embraces.
Under the Holly Bough.
Charles Mackay
Christmas Music <:i^ ^:^ ^;^ ^:::y ^^^ '<;^
iy /TANY elements mix in the Christmas of the present,
■'■ ■*• partly, no doubt, under the form of vague and ob-
scure sentiment, partly as time-honoured reminiscences,
partly as a portion of our own life. But there is one phase of
poetry which we enjoy more fully than any previous age.
That is music. Music is of all the arts the youngest, and
of all can free herself most readily from symbols. A fine
piece of music moves before us like a living passion, which
needs no form or color, no interpreting associations, to
onvey its strong but indistinct significance. Each man
there finds his soul revealed to him, and enabled to assume
a cast of feeling in obedience to the changeful sound. In
367
The Book of Christmas
this manner all our Christmas thoughts and emotions have
been gathered up for us by Handel in his drama of the
Messiah. To Englishmen it is almost as well known
and necessary as the Bible. But only one who has heard
its pastoral episode performed year after year from child-
hood in the hushed cathedral, where pendent lamps or
sconces make the gloom of aisle and choir and airy column
half intelligible, can invest this music with long associations
of accumulated awe. To his mind it brings a scene at
midnight of hills clear in the starlight of the East, with
white flocks scattered on the down. The breath of winds
that come and go, the bleating of the sheep, with now and
then a tinkling bell, and now and then the voice of an
awakened shepherd, is all that breaks the deep repose.
Overhead shimmer the bright stars, and low to west lies the
moon, not pale and sickly (he dreams) as in our North,
but golden, full, and bathing distant towers and tall aerial
palms with floods of light. Such is a child's vision, begotten
by the music of the symphony; and when he wakes from
trance at its low silver close, the dark cathedral seems glow-
ing with a thousand angel faces, and all the air is tremulous
with angel wings. Then follow the solitary treble voice and
the swift chorus.
John Addington Symonds
A Christmas Sermon -^^i^y ^:> ^^ ^^ ^^
' I ^O be honest, to be kind — to earn a little and to spend
-*- a little less, to make upon the whole a family happier
for his presence, to renounce when that shall be necessary
and not be embittered, to keep a few friends but those with-
368
The Christmas Spirit
out capitulation — above all, on the same grim condition,
to keep friends with himself — here is a task for all that a
man has of fortitude and delicacy. He has an ambitious
soul who would ask more; he has a hopeful spirit who
should look in such an enterprise to be successful.
There is indeed one element in human destiny that not
blindness itself can controvert: whatever else we are in-
tended to do, we are not intended to succeed ; failure is the
fate allotted. It is so in every art and study ; it is so above
all in the continent art of living well. Here is a pleasant
thought for the year's end or for the end of life: Only self-
deception will be satisfied, and there need be no despair for
the despairer.
Robert Loms Stevenson in A Christmas Sermon
By permission of Charles Scribner's Sons
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"An unusual collection of poetry and prose in comment upon
the varying aspects of the feminine form and nature, wherein is
set forth for the delectation of man what great writers from
Chaucer to Ruskin have said about the eternal feminine. The
result is a decidedly companionable volume." — Town and
Country.
"To possess this book is to fill your apartment — your lonely
farm parlor or little ' flat ' drawing-room in which few sit —
with the rustle of silks and the swish of lawns; to comfort your
ear with seemly wit and musical laughter; and to remind you
how sweet an essence ascends from the womanly heart to the
high altar of the Maker of Women." — The Chicago Tribune.
Cloth, $i.2j net
Some Friends of Mine
By E. V. LUCAS
At last the sterner sex is to have its literary dues. In this
little volume Mr. Lucas has essayed to do for men what he did
for the heroines of life and poetry and fiction in ' The Ladies'
Pageant.' No other editor has so deft a hand for work of this
character, and this volume is as rich a fund of amusement and
instruction as all the previous ones of the author have been.
" Mr. Lucas does not compile. What he does, rather, is to
assemble a quantity of rough material, quaried from the classics,
and then to fashion out of it a fabric stamped with his own per-
sonality. . . . He makes a little book in which old poems and
bits of old prose take on a new character, through being placed
in a relation to one another determined by Mr. Lucas' peculiar
fancy. . . . He will always be sure of an appreciative public."
— The New York Tribune.
Now ready
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
London's Lure
An Anthology in Prose and Verse
By HELEN and LEWIS MELVILLE
A selection of what poets and prose writers have said about
the great metropolis — that capital of all Europe which has
for most Americans the closest attraction and the most last-
ing charm. Curious out-of-the-way places and equally
curious out-of-the-way people are tucked away in some
parts of the book, while elsewhere, Westminster Abbey,
St. Paul's Cathedral, and other of the more renowned parts
of the city come in for their share of treatment. Every
section of London is here and all the different viewpoints
from which it has been regarded, as well. The authors
selected range from Herrick, Shelley, Lamb, and Hazlitt
to Hood, Dickens, Thackeray, and Wilde.
Clo^^, $/.2j net
The Wayfarer in New York
This book takes up New York in much the same way that
London was discussed in " London's Lure." A few pages
from old books of travel and correspondence show how the
city changed in aspect through the years. Then follow
more or less impressionistic pictures of different phases of
the modern city, from the yeasty, seething East Side, west
to where old Greenwich grimly holds its own; from the
"granite cliffs" of lower Broadway to where by night "the
serpent of stars " winds around Morningside.
Now Ready
PUBLISHED BY
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York
Princeton
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