In our manner of observing Christmas there is much, no doubt, that is
absurd. Christmas is to some extent a day of meaningless ceremonies,
false sentiment and hollow compliments endlessly iterated and
misapplied. The observances “appropriate to the day” had, many of them,
their origin in an age with which our own has little in common and in
countries whose social and religious characteristics were unlike those
obtaining here. As in so many other matters, America has in this been
content to take her heritage without inquiry and without alteration,
sacredly preserving much that once had a meaning now lost, much that is
now an anachronism, a mere “survival.” Even to the Christmas vocabulary
we have added little. St. Nicholas himself, the patron saint of
deceived children, still masquerades under the Spanish feminine title
of “Santa” and the German nickname of “Claus.” The back of our American
coal grate is still idealized as a “yule log,” and the English “holly”
is supposed in most cases fitly to be shadowed forth by a cedar bough,
while a comparatively innocuous but equally inedible indigenous
comestible figures as the fatal English “plum pudding.” Nearly all our
Christmas literature is, _longo intervallo_, European in spirit
and Dickensish in form. In short, we have Christmas merely because we
were in the line of succession. We have taken it as it was transmitted,
and we try to make the worst of it.
The approach of the season is apparent in the manner of the friend or
relative whose orbs furtively explore your own, seeking a sign of what
you are going to give him; in the irrepressible solicitations of babes
and cloutlings; in wild cascades of such literature as _Greenleaf
on Evidence, for Boys_ (“Boot-Leg” series), _The Little Girls’
Illustrated Differential Calculus_ and _Aunt Hetty’s Rabelais_,
in words of one syllable. Most clearly is the advent of the blessed
anniversary manifest in maddening iteration of the greeting wherein,
with a precision that never by any chance mistakes its adjective, you
are wished a “merry” Christmas by the same person who a week later
will be making ninety-nine “happies” out of a possible hundred in
New Year greetings similarly insincere and similarly insufferable.
It is unknown to me why a Christmas should be always merry but never
happy, and why the happiness appropriate to the New Year should not
be expressed in merriment. These be mysteries in whose penetration
abundance of human stupidity might be disclosed. By the time that one
has been wished a “merry Christmas” or a “happy New Year” some scores
of times in the course of a morning walk, by persons who he knows care
nothing about either his merriment or his happiness, he is disposed,
if he is a person of right feeling, to take a pessimist view of the
“compliments of the season” and of the season of compliments. He
cherishes, according to disposition, a bitter animosity or a tolerant
contempt toward his race. He relinquishes for another year his hope of
meeting some day a brilliant genius or inspired idiot who will have the
intrepidity to vary the adjective and wish him a “happy Christmas” or
a “merry New Year”; or with an even more captivating originality, keep
his mouth shut.
As to the sum of sincerity and genuine good will that utters itself
in making and accepting gifts (the other distinctive feature of
holiday time) statistics, unhappily, are wanting and estimates
untrustworthy. It may reasonably be assumed that the custom, though
largely a survival—gifts having originally been given in a propitiatory
way by the weak to the powerful—is something more; the present of a
goggle-eyed doll from a man six feet high to a baby twenty-nine inches
long not being lucidly explainable by assumption of an interested
motive.
To the children the day is delightful and instructive. It enables them
to see their elders in all the various stages of interesting idiocy,
and teaches them by means of the Santa Claus deception that exceedingly
hard liars may be good mothers and fathers and miscellaneous
relatives—thus habituating the infant mind to charitable judgment and
establishing an elastic standard of truth that will be useful in their
later life.
The annual recurrence of the “carnival of crime” at Christmas has
been variously accounted for by different authorities. By some it is
supposed to be a providential dispensation intended to heighten the
holiday joys of those who are fortunate enough to escape with their
lives. Others attribute it to the lax morality consequent upon the
demand for presents, and still others to the remorse inspired by
consciousness of ruinous purchases. It is affirmed by some that persons
deliberately and with malice aforethought put themselves in the way of
being killed, in order to avert the tiresome iteration of Christmas
greetings. If this is correct, the annual Christmas “holocaust” is not
an evil demanding abatement, but a blessing to be received in a spirit
of devout and pious gratitude.
When the earth in its eternal circumgression arrives at the point
where it was at the same time the year before, the sentimentalist whom
Christmas has not exhausted of his essence squeezes out his pitiful
dreg of emotion to baptize the New Year withal. He dusts and polishes
his aspirations, and reërects his resolve, extracting these well-worn
properties from the cobwebby corners of his moral lumber-room, whither
they were relegated three hundred and sixty-four days before. He
“swears off.” In short, he sets the centuries at defiance, breaks the
sequence of cause and effect, repeals the laws of nature and makes
himself a new disposition from a bit of nothing left over at the
creation of the universe. He can not add an inch to his stature, but
thinks he can add a virtue to his character. He can not shed his
nails, but believes he can renounce his vices. Unable to eradicate a
freckle from his skin, he is confident he can decree a habit out of his
conduct. An improvident friend of mine writes upon his mirror with a
bit of soap the cabalistic word, AFAHMASP. This is the _fiat lux_
to create the shining virtue of thrift, for it means, A Fool And His
Money Are Soon Parted. What need have we of morality’s countless
ministries; the complicated machinery of the church; recurrent
suasions of precept and unceasing counsel of example; pursuing din of
homily; still, small voice of solicitude and inaudible argument of
surroundings—if one may make of himself what he will with a mirror and
a bit of soap? But (it may be urged) if one can not reform himself, how
can he reform others? Dear reader, let us have a frank understanding.
He can not.
The practice of inflating the midnight steam-shrieker and belaboring
the nocturnal ding-dong to frighten the encroaching New Year is
obviously ineffectual, and might profitably be discontinued. It is
no whit more sensible and dignified than the custom of savages who
beat their sounding dogs to scare away an eclipse. If one elect to
live with barbarians, one must endure the barbarous noises of their
barbarous superstitions, but the disagreeable simpleton who sits up
till midnight to ring a bell or fire a gun because the earth has
arrived at a given point in its orbit should nevertheless be deprecated
as an enemy to his race. He is a sore trial to the feelings, an
affliction almost too sharp for endurance. If he and his sentimental
abettors might be melted and cast into a great bell, every right-minded
man would derive an innocent delight from pounding it, not only on
January first but all the year long.