The Bossier banner. [volume] (Bellevue, Bossier Parish, La.) 1859-1952, 1880-01-01
Christmas.

SMI MIISthudSs
The holiday season this year win be
peculiarly pleasant, because the long
prostration of industry is ended, and
business everywhere revives. The good
will OF the season will be even more
cheerful and cordial, and the wish of a
happy New Year will have the charm of
sincere expectation. But whatever the
situation, the magic of the time is resist
less.
son some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
| wherein our SaviOur's birth is celebrated
me Dlrd OF dawning singeth all night long;
ana tnen, they say, no spirit dares stir abroad
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 recurring
sentiment of the season, and although
Christendom is wide, and embraces
many nationalities, there is always a
feeling that Christmas-tide is peculiarly
an English season. Certainly our own
associations with it, its family reunions,
its boundless good cheer, its ample hos
pitality, the waits, the Yule-log, the
morris-dancers, the mistletoe, are espe-
cially English. Our Northern ancestors
scelebrated every thing with feasting,
with huge eating and deep drinking, and
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. There
was vague "ideal'' of Christmas hoy
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 exactlw
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:
A man might then behold
At Christmas in each hall
Good fires to curb the cold,
And meat for great and small;
Ihe neighbors We're friendly hidden,
And all had welcome true;
The poor from the gates were not chidden.
When this old cap was new.
1t was 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 Irying's Christmas
sketches SO delightful. They are full of
the breath of hallowed and gracious
time. There is an inexpressible glamour
oyer the simple narrative, and there are
no passages in his books more familiar
or mores justly popular 1t was this
poetic aura over very substantial facts
to which Dickens gave such exquisite
expression. He treats Christmas as
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
characteristic and sympathetic way
Honest good cheer is 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, season
in which the bird of dawning singeth
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
consecrated to the simple and sturdy
virtues, and the tender pensiveness of
his genius has a singularly touching ex-
preston in the little Christmas verses
of various kinds that he wrote Among
these the most familiar are the delight
full " Mahogany Tree"
Christmas is here: 5.,
p Winds whistle shrill,
ls sa Icy and chill,
Little care we;
Little we fear
Weather without,
sheltered about
The mahogany tree;
and the Epilogue to DIR. Birch:
The play is done, the curtain drops
Thackeray also, in his lecture upon
'' 'Charity and Humor,'' pays generous
tribute to the character and influence of
Dickens's Christmas literature as re-
awakening the hearty spirit of old En-
glish Christmas, which had fallen rather
into slumber and forgetfulness.
! But in New York and this year no
Islumber or forgetfulness has overtaken
the gracious season. The long ranges
iof Christmas trees, as if Birnam wood
of evergreens had garrisoned the town;
the beWildering piles and masses Of
Christmas gifts in miles of window,
which by their infinite contrariety of
temptation are sure to hold the eager
youthful buyer in suspense the markets
solid with beeves and poultry and game,
recalling the pictures in the old Ill,1s-
trated Ne,cs of the London markets at
Christmas, and the poulterers with three
or four. nries of solid nn11lf1.,1 co,zarinor