The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-11-15
THANKSGIVING AND CHRISTMAS.
Two Days of Good Cheer-The Former Fest
val a Protest Against Gloom.

Two Days of Good Cheer-The Former Festi-
val a Protest Against Gloom.
George William Curtis, in December Harper.
Like a voyager coastng along the continent.b by
day. to whom, as one headland is rounded,
another appears, and by night, as one light is
passed, another little candle throws it's beams
across the dark waters SO, circling the year. as
the flowers leave US. the fruits appear, and as
the summer holidays vanish, Christmas begins
to rise, the noblest festival of all. AS He whom
it commentaries cheered the shrinking spirit
and gathering shadow of declining life with the
promise of brighter day, so prospective Christ
mas, with lite high blazing fires and generous
good will, consumes the melancholy of autumn;
and the Indian summer which closes with tran
quill warmth and tendery luminous air the pa
geant of the year, may we'll seem the promise
and dawn of that most happy season which
itself forecasts celestial joys.
The word to describe Christmas is the word
cheerful. In its strictest fullest, and most GEN
erous sense it is cheerful Christmas 1t is the
day of good cheer for soul and body, and the de-
lights OF good living upon this happy day merely
symbolic the spiritual joy which attends it,
consequently 1t Is not the ascetic nor the pietist
VINO most truly appreciates it, but the man who
as fully enjoys this world as he reverently hopes
to enjoy better
Inc irresistible tendency to cheerfrlness
which was suppressed by the laws of the English
Puritan commonwealth against Christmas burst
out again in the New England THANKSGIVING
This was a Puritan Christmas an autumnal
Christmas, and in New England it has gathered
around itself much of the traditional Observance
of the older day.
There Is sly stroke of humor in Edmund
quincy capital sketch of IAN Octogenarv Fifty
years Since" which represents THANKSGIVING as
conquerer the junior feast day bearing off the
saVory spolls OF the elder branch A Young
undergraduate at'Harvard, not long after the
revolution, pays a visit of duty to a venerable
TREND OF the family at some distance from Bos-
-
The Astounding banquet is described with the
gusto OF an aesthetic gourmet, and after the pre-
posterans excess of tautog, and roast turkey
and beef la mode, and boiled chickens .'oys-
tered. and jelied venison, and Wild ducks, and
partridges: and lesser game had paid due
trloute and passed along; at last ''the table is
cleared ard anxious expectation sits impatient
on every brow. pause ensues. TIL door
opens, and 10! ne comes, the Pudding of the
- r!um-1hanksglving days acknowledged chief.
Incomes attended, conqueror- like, by the de-
ehroned monarch of Christmas Day, Mince Pie,
who follows crestfallen in his trumphal train.
Apple Pie. too rears his honest, soncy face in
sturdy yeoman pride. Custard, no longer bias
phemed through the nose receives the respect
full difference due to fallen greatnes. And thou
Pumpkin Pie, my country's boast, when | forget
thee, may my right hand forget its cunning And
Squash Pie, too, when refuse to celebrate thy
praise. may my tongue cleave to the roof of my
mouth"
This euogy of dainty dishes might be Choctaw
to Brillat Savarin, and Ude might stare at the
barbaric menu But the passage shows how in
the mind of New England humorist Thanks
giving may have appropriated the honors of
| Christmas, which to him. scholar and gentle
man, is apparently no more than King James,
! the Pretender to Captain John Gilpin, of the
| Georgian era. With fine audacity or absolving
| innocence our author blithely lays hands upon
| the very smybol Of old Christmas the Pudding of
| the Plum, and graveiy and with an absolute
| air OF indlsputabity, as If announcing an
| axiom of mathematics, declares it to
| be Thanksgiving Days acknowledged chief.
| What delightful arrangement of eptaphs and
whimsical confusion of ideas! This humorous
| conoclast might as we'll have robbed Michael
mas of its goose and given it to Martinmas, or
bestowed the pancakes of Shrove Tuesday upon
the modest Ember days, or garlanded the eve of
| st. Sylvester with Easter eggs, or celebrated
| gracious Whitsuntde with hot cross buns, as
have stripped Christmas of its peculiar and dis
| tinctive gustatory delight and bestowed it upon
any other day, even were it 80 meritorious as
| Thanksgiving
| How ready. nevertheless Edmund Quincy
| would have been to maintain his thesis, and how
| dexterously he would have done it'll He would
! willingly have nailed it upon any dining room
| door. and defed all corners. He had always a
reason for his faith, and in debates of this
| dainty kind his culver of facts was full.
| charming bonhomie, certain tenderness of feel
| ing, racy vigor, and a high bred courtesy
with keen relish for the quaint and romantic
aspects of old New England life and history, a
higEly-cultivated taste and generous literary
accomplishment, with pleasant bumor suffus
ing all, and a conscious exquisteness of style il
writing-these all belonged to Edmund Quincy
He was a man for Christmas guest or a Christ
| mas host No man at table or by the fire would
have told merrier jest in happier way. ant
with that sense of mirthfu appreciation which
causes everybody else to enjoy. 1t would hav,
been nimble wit which excelled his repartee
| and reader memory that outstripped his in
apt allusion and happy quotation.