Christmas Dreams
The Professor's Christmas Sermon
Awaiting the King
Elizabeth's Christmas Sermon
Nichola's "Reason Why"
The Changing Spirit of Christmastide
A Prayer for Christmas Peace
Under the Holly Bough
Christmas Music
A Christmas Sermon
[Illustration]
As little children in a darkened hall
At Christmas-tide await the opening door,
Eager to tread the fairy-haunted floor
About the tree with goodly gifts for all,
And into the dark unto each other call--
Trying to guess their happiness before,--
Or of their elders eagerly implore
Hints of what fortune unto them may fall:
So wait we in Time's dim and narrow room,
And with strange fancies, or another's thought,
Try to divine, before the curtain rise,
The wondrous scene. Yet soon shall fly the gloom,
And we shall see what patient ages sought,
The Father's long-planned gift of Paradise.
CHARLES HENRY CRANDALL in _Wayside Music_
Published by G. P. Putnam's Sons
Christmas Dreams
To-morrow is Merry Christmas; and when its night descends there will
be mirth and music, and the light sounds of the merry-twinkling feet
within these now so melancholy walls--and sleep now reigning over all
the house save this one room, will be banished far over the sea--and
morning will be reluctant to allow her light to break up the innocent
orgies.
Were every Christmas of which we have been present at the celebration,
painted according to nature--what a Gallery of Pictures! True that a
sameness would pervade them all--but only that kind of sameness that
pervades the nocturnal heavens. One clear night always is, to common
eyes, just like another; for what hath any night to show but one moon
and some stars--a blue vault, with here a few braided, and there a few
castellated, clouds? yet no two nights ever bore more than a family
resemblance to each other before the studious and instructed eye of him
who has long communed with Nature, and is familiar with every smile and
frown on her changeful, but not capricious, countenance. Even so with
the Annual Festivals of the heart. Then our thoughts are the stars that
illumine those skies--and on ourselves it depends whether they shall be
black as Erebus, or brighter than Aurora.
"Thoughts! that like spirits trackless come and go"--is a fine line of
Charles Lloyd's. But no bird skims, no arrow pierces the air, without
producing some change in the Universe, which will last to the day of
doom. No coming and going is absolutely trackless; nor irrecoverable
by Nature's law is any consciousness, however ghostlike; though many
a one, even the most blissful, never does return, but seems to be
buried among the dead. But they are not dead--but only sleep; though
to us who recall them not, they are as they had never been, and we,
wretched ingrates, let them lie for ever in oblivion! How passing sweet
when of our own accord they arise to greet us in our solitude!--as a
friend who, having sailed away to a foreign land in our youth, has been
thought to have died many long years ago, may suddenly stand before us,
with face still familiar and name reviving in a moment, and all that he
once was to us brought from utter forgetfulness close upon our heart.
My Father's House! How it is ringing like a grove in spring, with the
din of creatures happier, a thousand times happier, than all the birds
on earth. It is the Christmas holidays--Christmas Day itself--Christmas
Night--and Joy in every bosom intensifies Love. Never before were we
brothers and sisters so dear to one another--never before had our
hearts so yearned towards the authors of our being--our blissful
being! There they sat--silent in all that outcry--composed in all
that disarray--still in all that tumult; yet, as one or other flying
imp sweeps round the chair, a father's hand will playfully strive to
catch a prisoner--a mother's gentler touch on some sylph's disordered
symar be felt almost as a reproof, and for a moment slacken the fairy
flight. One old game treads on the heels of another--twenty within
the hour--and many a new game never heard of before nor since, struck
out by the collision of kindred spirits in their glee, the transitory
fancies of genius inventive through very delight. Then, all at once,
there is a hush, profound as ever falls on some little plat within a
forest when the moon drops behind the mountain, and small green-robed
People of Peace at once cease their pastime, and vanish. For she--the
Silver-Tongued--is about to sing an old ballad, words and air alike
hundreds of years old--and sing she doth, while tears begin to fall,
with a voice too mournfully beautiful long to breathe below--and, ere
another Christmas shall have come with the falling snows, doomed to be
mute on earth--but to be hymning in Heaven....
Then came a New Series of Christmases, celebrated, one year in this
family, another year in that--none present but those whom Charles
Lamb the Delightful calleth the "old familiar faces"; something in
all features, and all tones of voice, and all manners, betokening
origin from one root--relations all, happy, and with no reason either
to be ashamed or proud of their neither high nor humble birth, their
lot being cast within that pleasant realm, "the Golden Mean," where
the dwellings are connecting links between the hut and the hall--fair
edifices resembling manse or mansionhouse, according as the atmosphere
expands or contracts their dimensions--in which Competence is
next-door neighbor to Wealth, and both of them within the daily walk
of Contentment. Merry Christmases they were indeed--one Lady always
presiding, with a figure that once had been the stateliest among the
stately, but then somewhat bent, without being bowed down, beneath an
easy weight of most venerable years. Sweet was her tremulous voice to
all her grandchildren's ears. Nor did these solemn eyes, bedimmed into
a pathetic beauty, in any degree restrain the glee that sparkled in
orbs that have as yet shed not many tears, but tears of joy or pity.
Dearly she loved all those mortal creatures whom she was soon about to
leave; but she sat in sunshine even within the shadow of death; and the
"voice that called her home" had so long been whispering in her ear,
that its accents had become dear to her, and consolatory every word
that was heard in the silence, as from another world.
Whether we were indeed all so witty as we thought ourselves--uncles,
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, had 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 "Wildcap!"--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 dancing, 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
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....
For a good many years we have been tied to town in winter by fetters
as fine as frost-work, 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, bole 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.
CHRISTOPHER NORTH
The Professor's Christmas Sermon
Take all in a word: the truth in God's breast
Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed;
Though he is so bright and we so dim,
We are made in his image to witness him:
And were no eye in us to tell,
Instructed by no inner sense,
The light of heaven from the dark of hell,
That light would want its evidence,--
Though justice, good and truth were still
Divine, if, by some demon's will,
Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed
Law through the worlds, and right misnamed.
No mere exposition of morality
Made or in part or in totality,
Should win you to give it worship, therefore:
And, if no better proof you will care for,
Whom do you count the worst man upon earth?
Be sure, he knows, in his conscience, more
Of right what is, than arrives at birth
In the best man's acts that we bow before:
This last knows better--true, but my fact is,
'Tis one thing to know, and another to practise.
And thence I conclude that the real God-function
Is to furnish a motive and injunction
For practising what we know already.
And such an injunction and such a motive
As the God in Christ, do you waive, and "heady,
High-minded," hang your tablet-votive
Outside the fane on a finger-post?
Morality to the uttermost,
Supreme in Christ as we all confess,
Why need we prove would avail no jot
To make him God, if God he were not?
What is the point where himself lays stress?
Does the precept run "Believe in good,
"In justice, truth now understood
"For the first time?"--or, "Believe in me,
"Who lived and died, yet essentially
"Am Lord of Life?" Whoever can take
The same to his heart and for mere love's sake
Conceive of the love,--that man obtains
A new truth; no conviction gains
Of an old one only, made intense
By a fresh appeal to his faded sense.
ROBERT BROWNING from _Christmas Eve_
Awaiting the King
That sweetly prophetic evening silence, before the great feast of
Good-Will, does not come over everything each year, even in a lonely
cottage on an abandoned farm in Connecticut, than which you cannot
possibly imagine anything more silent or more remote from the noise of
the world. Sometimes it rains in torrents just on that night, sometimes
it blows a raging gale that twists the leafless birches and elms and
hickory trees like dry grass and bends the dark firs and spruces as if
they were feathers, and you can hardly be heard unless you shout, for
the howling and screaming and whistling of the blast.
But now and then, once in four or five years perhaps, the feathery snow
lies a foot deep, fresh-fallen, on the still country side and in the
woods; and the waxing moon sheds her large light on all, and Nature
holds her breath to wait for the happy day and tries to sleep, but
cannot from sheer happiness and peace. Indoors, the fire is glowing
on the wide hearth, a great bed of coals that will last all night and
be enough, because it is not bitter weather, but only cold and clear
and still, as it should be; or if there is only a poor stove, like
Overholt's, the iron door is open and a comfortable, cheery red light
shines out from within upon the battered iron plate and the wooden
floor beyond; and the older people sit round it, not saying much, and
thinking with their hearts rather than with their heads, but small
boys and girls know that interesting things have been happening in the
kitchen all the afternoon, and are rather glad that the supper was not
very good, because there will be more room for good things to-morrow;
and the grown-ups and the children have made up any little differences
of opinion they may have had, before supper time, because Good-Will
must reign, and reign alone, like Alexander; so that there is nothing
at all to regret, and nothing hurts anybody any more, and they are all
happy in just waiting for King Christmas to open the door softly and
make them all great people in his kingdom. But if it is the right sort
of house, he is already looking in through the window, to be sure that
everyone is all ready for him, and that nothing has been forgotten.
F. MARION CRAWFORD in _The Little City of Hope_
Elizabeth's Christmas Sermon
I cannot see that there was anything gross about our Christmas, and
we were perfectly merry without any need to pretend, and for at least
two days it brought us a little nearer together, and made us kind.
Happiness is so wholesome; it invigorates and warms me into piety
far more effectually than any amount of trials and griefs, and an
unexpected pleasure is the surest means of bringing me to my knees. In
spite of the protestations of some peculiarly constructed persons that
they are the better for trials, I don't believe it. Such things must
sour us, just as happiness must sweeten us, and make us kinder, and
more gentle. And will anybody affirm that it behooves us to be more
thankful for trials than for blessings? We were meant to be happy,
and to accept all the happiness offered with thankfulness--indeed,
we are none of us ever thankful enough, and yet we each get so much,
so very much, more than we deserve. I know a woman--she stayed with
me last summer--who rejoices grimly when those she loves suffer. She
believes that it is our lot, and that it braces us and does us good,
and she would shield no one from even unnecessary pain; she weeps
with the sufferer, but is convinced it is all for the best. Well, let
her continue in her dreary beliefs; she has no garden to teach her
the beauty and the happiness of holiness, nor does she in the least
desire to possess one; her convictions have the sad gray colouring
of the dingy streets and houses she lives amongst--the sad colour
of humanity in masses. Submission to what people call their "lot" is
simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid
of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don't listen to the
shrieks of your relations, to their gibes or their entreaties; don't
let your own microscopic set prescribe your goings-out and comings-in;
don't be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neighbour in
the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining, and
everything is possible, if you only be energetic and independent and
seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck.
From _Elizabeth and her German Garden_
Nichola Expounds "the Reason Why" on Christmas Eve
"But the whole world helps along," she said shrilly, "or else we should
tear each other's eyes out. What do I do, me? I do not put fruit peel
in the waste paper to worrit the ragman. I do not put potato jackets in
the stove to worrit the ashman. I do not burn the bones because I think
of the next poor dog. What crumbs are left I lay always, always on the
back fence for the birds. I kill no living thing but spiders--which the
devil made. Our Lady knows I do very little. But if I was the men with
pockets on I'd find a way! I'd find a way, me," said Nichola, wagging
her old gray head.
"Pockets?" Hobart repeated, puzzled.
"For the love of heaven, yes!" Nichola cried. "Pockets--money--give!"
she illustrated in pantomime. "What can I do? On Thursday nights I
take what sweets are in this house, what flowers are on all the plants,
and I carry them to a hospital I know. If you could see how they wait
for me on the beds! What can I do? The good God gave me almost no
pockets. It is as he says," she nodded to Pelleas, "_Helping is why._
Yah! None of what you say is so. Mem, I didn't get no time to frost the
nutcakes."
ZONA GALE in _The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre_
The Changing Spirit of Christmastide
The English, from the great prevalence of rural habit throughout every
class of society, have always been fond of those festivals and holidays
which agreeably interrupt the stillness of country life; and they were,
in former days, particularly observant of the religious and social
rites of Christmas. It is inspiring to read even the dry details which
some antiquarians have given of the quaint humours, the burlesque
pageants, the complete abandonment to mirth and good-fellowship, with
which this festival was celebrated. It seemed to throw open every door,
and unlock every heart. It brought the peasant and the peer together,
and blended all ranks in one warm generous flow of joy and kindness.
The old halls of castles and manor-houses resounded with the harp and
the Christmas carol, and their ample boards groaned under the weight
of hospitality. Even the poorest cottage welcomed the festive season
with green decorations of bay and holly--the cheerful fire glanced its
rays through the lattice, inviting the passenger to raise the latch,
and join the gossip knot huddled round the hearth, beguiling the long
evening with legendary jokes and oft-told Christmas tales.
One of the least pleasing effects of modern refinement is the havoc it
has made among the hearty old holiday customs! It has completely taken
off the sharp touchings and spirited reliefs of these embellishments
of life, and has worn down society into a more smooth and polished,
but certainly a less characteristic surface. Many of the games and
ceremonials of Christmas have entirely disappeared, and like the
sherris sack of old Falstaff, are become matters of speculation and
dispute among commentators. They flourished in times full of spirit and
lustihood, when men enjoyed life roughly, but heartily and vigorously;
times wild and picturesque, which have furnished poetry with its
richest materials, and the drama with its most attractive variety of
characters and manners. The world has become more worldly. There is
more of dissipation, and less of enjoyment. Pleasure has expanded into
a broader, but shallower stream, and has forsaken many of those deep
and quiet channels where it flowed sweetly through the calm bosom of
domestic life. Society has acquired a more enlightened and elegant
tone; but it has lost many of its strong local peculiarities, its
home-bred feelings, its honest fireside delights. The traditionary
customs of golden-hearted antiquity, its feudal hospitalities, and
lordly wassailings, have passed away with the baronial castles and
stately manor-houses in which they were celebrated. They comported with
the shadowy hall, the great oaken gallery, and the tapestried parlour,
but are unfitted to the light showy saloons and gay drawing-rooms of
the modern villa.