The Vancouver independent. (Vancouver, W.T. [Wash.]) 1875-1910, 1877-10-11
The Happy Holiday.

Happiness on Christmas day is both a
tradition and habit. Of old, when men
were rougher than they are now, and enjoy
ment was of more boisterous sort than
it is in our time, it was the custom to
cultivate merriment more than now, and
we have a survival of the old notion of
happiness in the universal Christmas sal
utation which is still in use among us; but
whether we are literally "merry" or not,
there are very few tolerably we'll consti-
tuted persons who fail to draw some kind
of genuine happiness from the day of our
great feast.
We do good deeds on that day for one
thing, and the doing brings delight. We
remember the poor and endeavor in some
way to brighten the day for them; we
give gifts to our friends and have joy in
the giving; we warm our hearts in the
glow of the, Christmas fires, and there is
comfort in such warmth. The traditions
of the day are all unselfsh, and even
without inten ding it we grow generous at
this season, making ourselves happy in
trying to make others so. Above all, we
rejoice in the glee of the children, catch
ing something of their keen zest for sim
pie pleasure, and softening for the time
the crusts of hard worldliness in which
the years contact with life encases us.
We enter into the sports of the little peo-
pie, and forget that we are grave men and
women, with the cares and the dignities
of years upon our heads. 1t is good for
us, too, that we can thus revert once q
year to something like childhood, draw
ing thence new stores of youthfulness.
1t is a curious fact that Christmas alone,
of all our holidays, is moss-grown with
pretty traditions. The others are OBJ
served formally, mechanically or cOnven-
tionally; Christmas alone has its customs
which have grown out of the soil of hu-
man nature, as it were. On New Years
Day we have calls, of course, and the
custom was pretty and hospitable one
in the days of the old Dutch dynasty,
but the fashion, dress coats and formality
have robbed it of much of its genial sig
nifcance. We injure our drums on
the Fourth of July with senseless din.
Our other holidays are local, provincial,
or at least strictly American still. Christ
mas only, of those which may be classed
with it, has distinct and definite char
acter Of its own. Its customs are the
natural growth of centuries. All nations
have contributed to the general store OF
them, and the observances with which the
day is marked in different countries are
sufficiently like each other to make OF
them a sort of Christmas freemasonry,
through which every keeper of Christmas
recognizes brother in every other OBJ
server of the day.
In this country, we owe much OF our
Christmas enjoyment to Charles Dickens,
who, if he did not introduce the day to
us, first taught US how to enter fully into
its spirit. II we were not quite Scrooges,
we were at least given over to thoughts
of thrift, and had too little of the Christ
mas habit Of abandoning ourselves to the
childlike Christmas customs in the spirit
of childhood, until his Tiny Tins and
their fellows taught US what delight there
may be in family feast when good will
sits all around the board.-Neao York
Post.