CHRISTMAS

"Christmas, now," as Mr. Brooke in "Middlemarch" might have said—"I went a good deal into that kind of thing at one time; but I found it would carry me too far—over the hedge, in fact." That, I imagine, pretty well represents the attitude of the adult world towards the feast which closes the year. We all loved it when we were young. Now, it is all very well for once in a way; it might pall if frequently repeated; even recurring only annually, it must be observed temperately and enjoyed moderately. Anything resembling excess would carry one too far—"over the hedge, in fact." But, within these recognized and salutary limits, Christmas is an institution which I would not willingly let die. In the days of my youth a Jewish lady caused me not a little consternation by remarking that it seemed very odd for Christians to celebrate the Feast of Redemption with gluttony and drunkenness. She lived, I am bound to say, in a very unregenerate village in a remarkably savage part of the country, and as, of course, she did not go to church, I dare say that Gluttony and Drunkenness were the forms of Christmas observance which most obtruded themselves on her notice. Even Cardinal Newman seems to have remarked the same phenomenon in his youth, though he satirized it more delicately. "Beneficed clergymen used to go to rest as usual on Christmas-eve, and leave to ringers, or sometimes to carollers, the observance which was paid, not without creature comforts, to the sacred night." Now all that is changed. Churches of all confessions vie with one another in the frequency and heartiness and picturesque equipment of their religious services. Even the Daily Telegraph preaches Christmas sermons; and I very much question whether the populace gets more drunk at Christmas than at Easter. But, though we may have learnt to celebrate the festival with rites more devout and less bibulous, we have not yet escaped my Jewish friend's reproach of gluttony. The Christmas Dinner of the British Home is still a thing imagination boggles at. The dreadful pleasantries of the aged—their sorry gibes about the doctor and the draught; hoary chestnuts about little boys who stood up to eat more—remain among the most terrible memories of the Christmas dinner. And they were quite in keeping with the dinner itself. I say nothing against the Turkey, which (as my medical friends well know) was found, by practical experiment in the case of Alexis St. Martin, to be the most easily digested of all animal foods, except venison; but surely, as a nation, we eat quite beef enough in the course of the year without making Christmas an annual orgy of carnivorous excess. I protest that the very sight of the butchers' shops at this season of the year is enough to upset a delicately balanced organization. Rightly said the Shah, in that immortal Diary which he kept during his visit to England in 1873—"Meat is good, but it should not be hung up in windows." Macaulay used to say that Thackeray, in his famous description of the Clapham sect in "The Newcomes," made one blunder—he represented them as Dissenters, whereas, in fact, they were rather dogged Church-people. The only exception to the rule was a Baptist lady, who, living on Clapham Common, testified against the superstitions of the Established Church by eating roast veal and apple-pie on Christmas-day instead of more orthodox dainties. Churchman though I am, I protest that I think the Baptist lady was right: and I believe that the Puritans were wiser than they knew when they denounced Plum-Pudding and Mince Pies as inventions of the Evil One. Yet the love of these vindictive viands is one of the root-instincts of our English nature. Forty-eight years ago the British Army was keeping its Christmas in the Crimea, amid all the horrors and hardships of a peculiarly grim campaign. An English Sister of Mercy, who was nursing under Miss Nightingale in the Hospital at Scutari, thus described the melancholy festivity: "The 'Roast Beef of Old England' was out of the question, but with the aid of a good deal of imagination, it seemed possible at least to secure the Plum Pudding. I think I might with safety affirm that as the doctor left the ward every man drew from under his pillow a small portion of flour and fat, with an egg and some plums, and began to concoct a Christmas pudding. I assisted many to make the pudding, whom nothing short of a miracle would enable to eat it; still they must have the thing. For some days previously I had been asked for pieces of linen, which, without dreaming of the use to which they were to be applied, I supplied. Thus were the pudding cloths provided."

It can scarcely be conceived that these unhappy soldiers, maddened by wounds and fever or perishing by frost-bite and gangrene, can have had much physical enjoyment in Christmas puddings made of materials which had been concealed under their sick pillows; in such circumstances the value of the pudding is spiritual and symbolic. A few Christmases ago I was assisting (in the literal sense) at a dinner for starving "Dockers." A more broken, jaded, and dejected crew it would be difficult to picture. They had scarcely enough energy to eat and drink, but lumbered slowly through their meal of meat-pies and coffee without a smile and almost without a word. All at once an unrehearsed feature was introduced into the rather cheerless programme, and a huge Plum Pudding, wreathed with holly and flaming blue with burnt brandy, was borne into the hall. A deep gasp of joy burst from the assembled guests, and the whole company rose as one man and greeted the joyous vision with "Auld Lang Syne." The eating was yet to come, so the exhilaration was purely moral. The Pudding spoke at once to Memory and to Hope.

There are other adjuncts of Christmas which must by no means be overlooked—Christmas presents, for instance, and Christmas amusements. As to Christmas presents, I regard them as definite means of grace. For weeks—sometimes months—before Christmas returns we concentrate our thought on our friends instead of ourselves. We reflect on people's likes and dislikes, habits, tastes, and occupations. We tax our ingenuity to find gifts suitable for the recipients, and buy objects which we think frankly hideous in the hope of gratifying our unsophisticated friends. Happily the age of ormolu and malachite has passed. We no longer buy blotting-books made unusable by little knobs of enamel on the cover; nor gilt-paper weights which cost a hundred times more than the overweighted letters of a lifetime could amount to. Christmas gifts of this type belong to an unreturning past, and, as Walter Pater said of the wedding-present which he was expected to admire, "Very rich, very handsome, very expensive, I'm sure—but they mustn't make any more of them." Nor will they. The standard of popular taste in the matter of nick-nacks has improved as conspicuously as in that of furniture; and the fancy shops, when spread for the Christmas market, display a really large choice of presents which one can buy without sacrificing self-respect, and give without the appearance of insult.

But Christmas presents, even at a moderate rate of charge, may, if one has a large circle of acquaintance, carry one over the hedge, as Mr. Brooke said; and here is the scope and function of the Christmas Card. Few people have bought more Christmas cards in a lifetime than the present writer; and, out of a vast experience, he would offer one word of friendly counsel to the card-sender. Do not accumulate the cards which you receive this Christmas and distribute them among your friends next Christmas, for, if you do, as sure as fate you will one day return a card to the sender; and old friendships and profitable connexions have been severed by such miscarriages.

Of Christmas amusements I can say little. My notion of them is chiefly derived from "Happy Thoughts," where Byng suggests some "Christmassy sort of thing" to amuse his guests, and fails to gratify even his Half-Aunt. My infancy was spent in the country, remote from Dances and Theatres, Pantomimes and Panoramas. "The Classic Walls of Old Drury" never welcomed me on Boxing Night. Certainly a Christmas Tree and a stocking full of presents appealed to that acquisitive instinct which is fully as strong in infancy as in old age; but, though exceedingly young in my time, I never was young enough to be amused by a Snow-Man or dangerously excited by Blind Man's Buff. Looking back, like Tennyson's "many-wintered crow," on these Christmases of infancy, I have sometimes asked myself whether I lost much by my aloofness from the normal merriment of youth. Mr. Anstey Guthrie knows the secret heart of English boyhood more accurately than most of us, and when I read his description of a Christmas party I am inclined to be thankful that my lot was cast a good many miles beyond the cab-radius.

"Why couldn't you come to our party on Twelfth-night? We had great larks. I wish you'd been there."

"I had to go to young Skidmore's instead," said a pale, spiteful-looking boy with fair hair, carefully parted in the middle. "It was like his cheek to ask me, but I thought I'd go, you know, just to see what it was like."

"What was it like?" asked one or two near him, languidly.

"Oh, awfully slow! They've a poky little house in Brompton somewhere, and there was no dancing, only boshy games and a conjuror, without any presents. And, oh! I say, at supper there was a big cake on the table, and no one was allowed to cut it, because it was hired. They're so poor, you know. Skidmore's pater is only a clerk, and you should see his sisters!"

All my sympathies are with Skidmore, and I think that the fair-haired boy was an unmitigated beast, and cad, and snob. But there is an awful verisimilitude about "Boshy Games and a Conjuror," and I bless the fate which allowed me to grow up in ignorance of Christmas Parties.