The New York herald., 1872-12-25


spends his jolly eternity in the invention of
toys and the preparation of gift books. He is
more trustworthy than the fairy godmother
and less capricious than the fantastic c-mooded
sprites that haunt the lonely glen. He is the
authentic patron and abettor of all the favor
ite characters of youthful fiction. He it was
who gave Fortunatus his cap and Jack the
Giant Killer his seven-league boots; who pro-
vided Cinderella with slippers of glass and
foiled the relentlessness Of Bluebeard. To
him we ascribe the realization of all the fc-
tions which enchanted us in the nursery and
sheep and the wolf that ate Red Riding Hood
were not less actual to us than Kris Kringles
reindeer and when we wept over the children
in the wood we were glad to think that no leaf
with which the birds sought to cover them
could have come from Christmas tree. King
Cole and he are brothers. Kris Kringle wrote
the "Arabian Nights" He is the genuine
author of Robinson Crusoe." None but he
could have given birth to ''Sandford and Mer-
ton" "The Children of the Abbey" came
from his prolific pen, and there is
even suspicion that the ''Moral
Tales of Maria Edgeworth emanated
from the same quarter. There is Kris Krin-
gle streak in Peter Farley and Mrs. Barbould.
Many years ago he wrote those "Songs for
Infant Minds" which popular tradition has
ignorantly ascribed to DR.. Watts. The anus
ing author Of "How to Be a Man." ''How to
Be Woman" "How to Feel" elbow to
Think and other harmless, self-educational
treatises, is only Kris Kringlein disguise. This
children's god invented the velocipede and
educed from it the bicycle through processes
of evolution which Darwin himself might
admire. To him humanity is indebted for
the jewsharp, the child's drum and the penny
whistle: The Fourth Of July is merely Christ
mas in midsummer sort Of let up" which
the old man is obliged to give himself in order
to preserve his festive balance. He devised
the shooting cracker and the 'snake," and
other blessings to civilization. In the Fourth
of July orator we discern Kris Kringle be-
meath the motley livery of politics. Thanks
giving Day is but preliminary snack with
which this great gourmand of merriment whets
his anniversary appetite. And when the
twelvemonth has rolled past, and time has cast
the cuticle Of the year as serpent its skin and
the golden stars glow with yellower fire
against the frosty blackness in which they are
set, our children sit on Christmas Eve, with
finger on lip and listening head. straining
after the crack Of his whip and the jingle of
his bells, as his bounding reindeer paw the
crisp and snow faxed air.
Let us take another view of the subject
We ore told that we cannot serve God and
Mammon; that we cannot make secularism and
sanctity coincide. Surely the history of the
world does not offer more picturesque and
epigrammatic refutation of this doctrine than is
to be found in the celebrations during Christmas
tide. Upon religious basis, broader and
firmer than mankind had previously known,
we build a prodigious edifce Of mirth and
laughter. Christ was born in manger, and so
we kill and eat the stalled OK that fed beside
Him. The illuminated Christmas tree calls
up no image Of the radiant altar, and the
tletoe boughs and the hollys crimson berry.
Charades and forfeits are superimposed upon
the agony and bloody sweat, and, while we
merrily feast among friends, we forget the
fast in the wilderness. The very occasion of
the day is ignored in that days festivities.
Centuries ago pleasure began to break the reli-
gious shell in which Christmas encased it.
People had moro sympathy with carols than
with masses, and prayers dwindled, by de-
scending spiral, into dramatic mysteries and
moralities The songs of the Judean shep-
herds became TRANSPORTED into carols, sang
from door to door by minstrels who had often
taken more than was good for them, and reli-
gious realism demanded On objective represen-
tation of the Virgin and st. Joseph, the Christ
child and the cradle, amid q pro-
cession of bulls heads, cherubs and east
ern magi. Later, the midnight worshippers
in France and England required handsome
named o rfveulon, to sustain them
under the pious burden of the masses said at
dead midnight. This concession probably
opened the way for the Feasts of Fools and
Asses, which, in some form or other, spread
all over Europe, lasted for some centuries, and
would have reached this country had they not
been sanctimoniously repressed by the Puri-
tans The history Of Christmas seems to be
the history of the effort made by humanity to
shake off pain and sorrow, and make actual,
if only for few hours or days, that happiness
which is the ideal of us oil. But certainly the
antithesis between the primitive significance
of the day and the secondary character it has
acquired will strike all who reflect upon it.
Looking back for one hundred years, what
means this holocaust of capons, hens, turkeys,
geese, ducks, beef, mutton, pork pies, pud-
dings, nuts, plums and sweetmeats what sig
Nifty the music and dancing, the conjuring and
the riddles, the forfeits and laughter and
repartee; what portend the hot cookies and
foot-plough, the snap-dragon and wassail-