Dodge City times. [volume] (Dodge City, Kan.) 1876-1892, 1879-12-27
Christmas.

The holiday season this year will b.
peculiarly pleasant, because the Ion:
prostration of industry is ended, ant
business everywhere revives. The good
will of the season will be even NOR
cheerful and cordial. and the wish of ;
happy New Year will have the charm o
sincere expectation. But whatever tn,
situation, the magic of the time is resist
less.
Some say that ever 'gainst that season come
Wherein our Saviours birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;
And then. they say, no spirit dare> stir abroad
The nights are wholesome; then no planet
strike,
No fairy takes nor witch hath power to charm
So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.
This is the ever fresh and recurrin!
sentiment of the season, and although
Christendom is wide, and embrace
many nationalities, there is always ;
feeling that Christmas-tide is peculiarly
an English season. Certainly our owl
associations with it, its family reunions
its boundless good cheer, its ample hos
pitality, the waits, the Yule-log, tn,
morris-dancers, the mistletoe, are espe
cially English. Our Northern ancestor,
celebrated every thing with feasting
with huge eating and deep drinking, ano
Father Christmas comes in, preceded
indeed, by the cantors intoning hymn
but closely followed by the boar's head
wreathed with rosemary, and the plum
pudding smoking hot not far away.
The great success of Dickens's Christ
mas stories lay in their felicitous ex
preston of this national feeling. Their.
was vague .sideal' of Christmas how.
ering in the popular mind, traditions OF
the good old hearty time of popular
games and Christmas carols and uni
versal benignity and well-being. No.
body knew exactly when or exactly
where this miracle of changing England
into Arcadia was wrought. But that
the vision was a mirage nobody be.
lieved. The old song was true history
man might then behold
At Christmas i'm each hall
Good fires to curb the cold,
And meat for great and small;
The neighbors were friendly hidden,
And all had welcome true;
The poor from the gates were not chidden
When this old cap was new.
1t was a No Mans Land, land OF
Cockaigne, during the rest of the year,
but at Christmas it was good old Eng.
land.
This was the generous and wholesome
feeling which makes Irving's Christmas
sketches so delightful They are full of
the breath of hallowed and gracious
time. There is an inexpressible glamour
over the simple narrative, and there are
no passages in his books more familiar
or more justly popular. 1t was this
poetic aura over very substantial facts
to which Dickens gave such exquisite
He treats Christmas as a
season when Christianity may be repre-
sented as really practicable when SIM
pie generosity and forgiveness and re-
pentance may be depicted as natural
and actual, and when it is fair to give
glimpses of what this modern world, the
world of London or New York, would be
if people were governed by Christian
rules. and practiced the faith which they
profess.
Dickens does this, of course, in a
and sympathetic way.
good cheer is a large part of his
Christmas. 1t is practical Christianity
which his blithe pen breaches and de-
scribes-feeding the hungry. soothing
the sick, raising the fallen, visiting the
fatherless and the widow-a homely,
hearty. beautiful Christianity, a season
in which the bird of dawning slngeth
all night long. Thackeray followed in
his own way. His little Christmas sto-
ries preach less than those of Dickens,
but they have prodigious moral. He
felt deeply the benediction of season
which the traditions of his race had
to the simple and sturdy
virtues, and the tender pensiveness of
his genius has singularly touching ex-
preston in the little Christmas verses
Of various kinds that he wrote. Among
these the most familiar are the delight