Christmas! And the bells are clanging! Christmas! And the goose is
hanging high and joy’s abroad! Christmas is the happy season! Though
the weather may be freezin’, human hearts are thawed! Here we see
the ancient codger sporting like an artful dodger with the laughing
kids; here we see the haughty chappie smiling broadly and as happy
as the katydids. Every one has shed his sorrow, dropped his burden
till tomorrow, dropped the world and care; Christmas is no time for
sadness--all the world is full of gladness, each should have his share.
Therefore, if you deal in lumber, let your business rest and slumber,
till the day is o’er; think no more of lath and plaster; frolic fast
and frolic faster till you split the floor. Cast aside all thoughts of
timber; show the folks your legs are limber, and your soul unspoiled;
show your heart has not been toughened, show your nature’s not been
roughened, by the years you’ve toiled. Let no thoughts of sash and
siding your attention be dividing on this day of grace; help to fill
with glee your shanty, till grandmother, sister, auntie, bless your
cheer-up face.
Christmas! When the reindeer travel, and Old Santa scratches gravel,
making good his dates! Men who don’t get good and mellow when is due
that brave old fellow, surely are cheap skates. When the Christmas
music’s rollin’, and the children’s socks are swollen, we should all
be young; young as when we watched and waited for those reindeer,
rapid-gaited, by the night wind stung. We can be as young in spirit as
the kids, or pretty near it, if we only try, though our heads are gray
and dusty and our joints are worn and rusty, and no longer spry. Then
when Christmas time is ended and we to our tasks have wended, we shall
bear away something of the youth we captured when the whole world was
enraptured with its Christmas day.