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 incomparable 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, has 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 another, 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 "Wild-cap!"--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 dancings, 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 fair 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 beneath 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--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 relaxed others--the death of one altered the
conditions of many--and so--year after year--the Christmas Meeting 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.
Survivors of those happy circles! wherever ye be--should these imperfect
remembrances of days of old chance, in some thoughtful pause of life's
busy turmoil, for a moment to meet your eyes, let there be towards the
inditer a few throbs of revived affection in your hearts--for his,
though "absent long and distant far," has never been utterly forgetful
of the loves and friendships that charmed his youth. To be parted in
body is not to be estranged in spirit--and many a dream and many a
vision, sacred to nature's best affections, may pass before the mind of
one whose lips are silent. "Out of sight out of mind" is rather the
expression of a doubt--of a fear--than a belief or a conviction. The
soul surely has eyes that can see the objects it loves, through all
intervening darkness--and of those more especially dear it keeps within
itself almost undimmed images, on which, when they know it not, think it
not, believe it not, it often loves to gaze, as on relics imperishable
as they are hallowed.
All hail! rising beautiful and magnificent through the mists of
morning--ye Woods, Groves, Towers, and Temples, overshadowing that
famous Stream beloved by all the Muses! Through this midnight
hush--methinks we hear faint and far-off sacred music--
"Where through the long-drawn aisle and fretted vault,
The pealing anthem swells the note of praise!"
How steeped now in the stillness of moonlight are all those pale,
pillared Churches, Courts and Cloisters, Shrines and Altars, with here
and there a Statue standing in the shade, or Monument sacred to the
memory of the pious--the immortal dead. Some great clock is striking
from one of many domes--from the majestic Tower of St. Mary
Magdalen--and in the deepened hush that follows the solemn sound, the
mingling waters of the Cherwell and the Isis soften the severe silence
of the holy night.
Remote from kindred, and from all the friendships that were the native
growth of the fair fields where our boyhood and our youth had roamed and
meditated and dreamed, those were indeed years of high and lofty mood
which held us in converse with the shades of great Poets and ages of old
in Rhedicyna's hallowed groves, still, serene, and solemn, as that Attic
Academe where divine Plato, with all Hybla on his lips, discoursed such
excellent music that his life seemed to the imagination spiritualized--a
dim reminiscence of some former state of being. How sank then the
Christmas Service of that beautiful Liturgy into our hearts! Not
faithless we to the simple worship that our forefathers had loved; but
Conscience told us there was no apostasy in the feelings that rose
within us when that deep organ began to blow, that choir of youthful
voices so sweetly to join the diapason,--our eyes fixed all the while on
that divine Picture over the Altar, of our Saviour
"Bearing his cross up rueful Calvary."
The City of Palaces disappears--and in the setting sunlight we behold
mountains of soft crimson snow! The sun hath set, and even more
beautiful are the bright-starred nights of winter, than summer in all
its glories beneath the broad moons of June. Through the woods of
Windermere, from cottage to cottage, by coppice-pathways winding up to
dwellings among the hill-rocks where the birch-trees cease to grow--
"Nodding their heads, before us go,
The merry minstrelsy."
They sing a salutation at every door, familiarly naming old and young by
their Christian names; and the eyes that look upward from the vales to
the hanging huts among the plats and cliffs, see the shadows of the
dancers ever and anon crossing the light of the star-like window, and
the merry music is heard like an echo dwelling in the sky. Across those
humble thresholds often did we on Christmas-week nights of
yore--wandering through our solitary silvan haunts, under the branches
of trees within whose hollow trunks the squirrel slept--venture in,
unasked perhaps, but not unwelcome, and, in the kindly spirit of the
season, did our best to merrify the Festival by tale or song. And now
that we behold them not, are all those woods, and cliffs, and rivers,
and tarns, and lakes, as beautiful as when they softened and brightened
beneath our living eyes, half-creating, as they gazed, the very world
they worshipped! And are all those hearths as bright as of yore, without
the shadow of our figure! And the roofs, do they ring as mirthfully,
though our voice be forgotten. We hang over Westmoreland, an
unobserved--but observant star. Mountains, hills, rocks, knolls, vales,
woods, groves, single trees, dwelling--all asleep! O Lakes! but we are
indeed, by far too beautiful! O fortunate Isles! too fair for human
habitation, fit abode for the Blest! It will not hide itself--it will
not sink into the earth--it will rise; and risen, it will stand steady
with its shadow in the overpowering moonlight, that ONE TREE! that ONE
HOUSE!--and well might the sight of ye two together--were it
harder--break our heart. But hard at all it is not--therefore it is but
crushed.
Can it be that there we are utterly forgotten! No star hanging higher
than the Andes in heaven--but sole-sitting at midnight in a small
chamber--a melancholy man are we--and there seems a smile of
consolation, O Wordsworth! on thy sacred Bust.
Alas! how many heavenly days, "seeming immortal in their depth of rest,"
have died and been forgotten! Treacherous and ungrateful is our memory
even of bliss that overflowed our being as light our habitation. Our
spirit's deepest intercommunion with nature has no place in her
records--blanks are there that ought to have been painted with
imperishable imagery, and steeped in sentiment fresh as the morning on
life's golden hills. Yet there is mercy in this dispensation--for who
can bear to behold the light of bliss re-arising from the past on the
ghastlier gloom of present misery? The phantoms that will not come when
we call on them to comfort us, are too often at our side when in our
anguish we could almost pray that they might be reburied in oblivion.
Such hauntings as these are not as if they were visionary--they come and
go like forms and shapes still imbued with life. Shall we vainly stretch
out our arms to embrace and hold them fast, or as vainly seek to
intrench ourselves by thought of this world against their visitation?
The soul in its sickness knows not whether it be the duty of love to
resign itself to indifference or to despair. Shall it enjoy life, they
being dead? Shall we, the survivors, for yet a little while, walk in
other companionship out into the day, and let the sunbeams settle on
their heads as they used to do, or cover them with dust and ashes, and
show to those in heaven that love for them is now best expressed by
remorse and penitence?
Sometimes we have fears about our memory--that it is decaying; for,
lately, many ordinary yet interesting occurrences and events, which we
regarded at the time with pain or pleasure, have been slipping away
almost into oblivion, and have often alarmed us of a sudden by their
return, not to any act of recollection, but of themselves, sometimes
wretchedly out of place and season, the mournful obtruding upon the
merry, and worse, the merry upon the mournful--confusion, by no fault of
ours, of piteous and gladsome faces--tears where smiles were a duty as
well as a delight, and smiles where nature demanded, and religion
hallowed, a sacrifice of tears.
For a good many years we have been tied to town in winter by fetters as
fine as frost-work filigree, 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 declare 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 clouds have a homely look as
they hang over the happy families of houses, and seem as if they loved
their birthplace;--all unlike those heartless clouds that keep
_stravaiging_ 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, hole 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 undying beauty over
the "one perfect chrysolite," of blessed Windermere!
Our meaning is transparent now as the hand of an 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.
* * * * *
KEEPING CHRISTMAS
Romans, xiv, 6: _He that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord,_
HENRY VAN DYKE
[From "The Spirit of Christmas."]
It is a good thing to observe Christmas day. The mere marking of times
and seasons, when men agree to stop work and make merry together, is a
wise and wholesome custom. It helps one to feel the supremacy of the
common life over the individual life. It reminds a man to set his own
little watch, now and then, by the great clock of humanity which runs on
sun time.
But there is a better thing than the observance of Christmas day, and
that is, keeping Christmas.
Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and to
remember what other people have done for you; to ignore what the world
owes you, and to think what you owe the world; to put your rights in the
background, and your duties in the middle distance, and your chances to
do a little more than your duty in the foreground; to see that your
fellowmen are just as real as you are, and try to look behind their
faces to their hearts, hungry for joy; to own that probably the only
good reason for your existence is not what you are going to get out of
life, but what you are going to give to life; to close your book of
complaints against the management of the universe, and look around you
for a place where you can sow a few seeds of happiness--are you willing
to do these things even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.
Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and the desires of
little children; to remember the weakness and loneliness of people who
are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you, and ask
yourself whether you love them enough; to bear in mind the things that
other people have to bear in their hearts; to try to understand what
those who live in the same house with you really want, without waiting
for them to tell you; to trim your lamp so that it will give more light
and less smoke, and to carry it in front so that your shadow will fall
behind you; to make a grave for your ugly thoughts and a garden for your
kindly feelings, with the gate open--are you willing to do these things
even for a day? Then you can keep Christmas.
Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the
world--stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than death--and
that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen hundred years
ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love? Then you can keep
Christmas.
And if you keep it for a day, why not always?
But you can never keep it alone.
* * * * *
MARK WELL MY HEAVY DOLEFUL TALE
ANONYMOUS
Mark well my heavy doleful tale,
For Twelfth-day now is come,
And now I must no longer sing,
And say no words but mum;
For I perforce must take my leave
Of all my dainty cheer,
Plum-porridge, roast beef, and minced pies,
My strong ale and my beer.
Kind-hearted Christmas, now adieu,
For I with thee must part,
And for to take my leave of thee
Doth grieve me at the heart;
Thou wert an ancient housekeeper,
And mirth with meat didst keep,
But thou art going out of town,
Which makes me for to weep.
God knoweth whether I again
Thy merry face shall see,
Which to good-fellows and the poor
That was so frank and free.
Thou lovedst pastime with thy heart,
And eke good company;
Pray hold me up for fear I swoon,
For I am like to die.
Come, butler, fill a brimmer up
To cheer my fainting heart,
That to old Christmas I may drink
Before he doth depart;
And let each one that's in this room
With me likewise condole,
And for to cheer their spirits sad
Let each one drink a bowl.
And when the same it hath gone round
Then fall unto your cheer,
For you do know that Christmas time
It comes but once a year.
But this good draught which I have drunk
Hath comforted my heart,
For I was very fearful that
My stomach would depart.
Thanks to my master and my dame
That doth such cheer afford;
God bless them, that each Christmas they
May furnish thus their board.
My stomach having come to me,
I mean to have a bout,
Intending to eat most heartily;
Good friends, I do not flout.
* * * * *
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
CHRISTINA G. ROSSETTI
In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago.
Our God, Heaven cannot hold him
Nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away,
When he comes to reign.
In the bleak mid-winter
A stable-place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.
Angels and archangels
May have gathered there;
Cherubim and seraphim
Thronged the air.
But only His Mother,
In her maiden bliss,
Worshipped her Beloved
With a kiss.
What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a wise man,
I would do my part,--
Yet what I can I give Him,
Give my heart.
* * * * *
THE GLORIOUS SONG OF OLD
EDMUND H. SEARS
It came upon the midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,
From angels bending near the earth
To touch their harps of gold,
"Peace on the earth, good-will to men,
From heaven's all-gracious King"--
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.
But 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 which they bring;
Oh, hush the noise, ye men of strife,
And hear the angels sing!
And 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 the hastening on
By prophet-bards foretold,
When with the ever-circling years
Comes round the age of gold;
When peace shall over all the earth
Its ancient splendors fling,
And the whole world give back the song
Which now the angels sing.
* * * * *
A CHRISTMAS CAROL FOR CHILDREN
MARTIN LUTHER
Good 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.
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 thousand 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.
* * * * *
ON SANTA CLAUS
GEORGE A. BAKER, JR.
Brave old times those were. In the first half of the seventeenth
century, we mean; before there was any such place as New York and
Manhattan Island was occupied mostly by woods, and had a funny little
Dutch town, known as New Amsterdam, sprouting out of the southern end of
it. Those were the days of solid comfort, of mighty pipes, and unctuous
doughnuts. Winter had not yet been so much affected by artificiality as
he is now-a-days, and was contented to be what he is, not trying to pass
himself off for Spring; and Christmas--well, it was Christmas. Do you
know why? Because in those times Santa Claus used to live in a great old
house in the midst of an evergreen forest, just back of the Hudson, and
about half-way between New Amsterdam and Albany. A house built out of
funny little Dutch bricks, with gables whose sides looked like
stair-cases, and a roof of red tiles with more weathercocks and chimneys
sticking out of it than you could count. Phew, how cold it was there!
The wind roared and shouted around the house, and the snow fell steadily
half the year, so that the summers never melted it away till winter came
again. And Santa Claus thought that was the greatest pleasure in life:
for he loved to have enormous fires in the great fire-places, and the
colder it was, the bigger fires he would have, and the louder the winds
roared around his chimney. There he sat and worked away all the year
round, making dolls, and soldiers, and Noah's arks, and witches, and
every other sort of toy you can think of. When Christmas Eve came he'd
harness up his reindeers, Dasher, and Prancer, and Vixen, and the rest
of them, and wrap himself up in furs, and light his big pipe, and cram
his sled full of the doll-babies and Noah's arks, and all the other toys
he'd been making, and off he'd go with a great shout and tremendous
ringing of sleigh-bells. Before morning he'd be up and down every
chimney in New Amsterdam, filling the stout grey yarn stockings with
toys, and apples, and ginger-bread, laughing and chuckling so all the
while, that the laughs and chuckles didn't get out of the air for a week
afterwards.