No man or woman now living will see again such a Christmas day
as the one which closed yesterday, when the dying sun piled the
western skies with gold and purple.
A winter day it was, shot to the core with sunshine. It was
enchanting to walk abroad in its prodigal beauty, to breathe its
elixir, to reach out the hands and plunge them open-fingered
through its pulsing waves of warmth and freshness. It was June
and November welded and fused into a perfect glory that held the
sunshine and snow beneath tender and splendid skies. To have
winnowed such a day from the teeming winter was to have found an
odorous peach on a bough whipped in the storms of winter. One
caught the musk of yellow grain, the flavor of ripening nuts,
the fragrance of strawberries, the exquisite odor of violets,
the aroma of all seasons in the wonderful day. The hum of bees
underrode the whistling wings of wild geese flying southward.
The fires slept in drowsing grates, while the people, marveling
outdoors, watched the soft winds woo the roses and the lilies.
Truly it was a day of days. Amid its riotous luxury surely life
was worth living to hold up the head and breathe it in as
thirsting men drink water; to put every sense on its gracious
excellence; to throw the hands wide apart and hug whole armfuls
of the day close to the heart, till the heart itself is
enraptured and illumined. God’s benediction came down with the
day, slow dropping from the skies. God’s smile was its light,
and all through and through its supernal beauty and stillness,
unspoken but appealing to every heart and sanctifying every
soul, was His invocation and promise, “Peace on earth, good will
to men.”