New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1885-12-25
CHRISVN1S.

Christmas festivities lack originality in
America. There is an abundance of good cheer
and open-handcd hospitality. but there is little
in the observance of the day that is distinctive.
Holiday customs are the outgrowth of tradi-
tons Americans, even if they could boast of
more than single century of separate nation
atty, live too fast and too exclusively in the
present and the future 10 accumulate tIad-
tions. But while the observance of the time
honorcd feast is essentially imitatiyc-its
characteristics being either English or German
| there is no lack of religious fcrvor and kindly
| human feeling. IT there be anything
distinctive in the American Christmas it is the
Inunifccncc of its charity. Nowhere in
ChrstendOm are the poor remembered at this
season with such lavish generosity as in
American cities, especially New York. Who
can say how many fires will be lighted to-day
in cherries tencmcnts, or how many whole
some dinners will be served in asylums,
lOdging-hOuses and mission schools New
York. with its widesprcading tenement
districts, its hauntS of vice and its appalling
records of crime, seems on every other day in
the year the worst city in the land, but on this
day il enjoys an honorable pre-cminence as one
of the best. Metropolitan charity is as pains
taking and intelligent as it is whOlc-sOuled. 1t
employs experienced agents in distributing It's
bounty and is systematic in its ysitations
The magnitude of the benefactions to the poor
takes away the reproach of extravaganza in
holiday presents for which New Workers, and
Americans generally, are conspicuous.
In this matter of extravaganza, however,
there has been marked reform in recent
rho, hn, l.. 60,
families of moderate means to make holiday
purchases so economically as during the present
season. Christmas shoppers have prohted by
the same era of low prices which has reduced
the staples Of food to the lowest level known
since the civil war. Books, silveIware, china,
glass, fabrics of all kinds, and all the thousand
apd-one ornaments and knick- knacks sought
for at this season have been astonishing for
cheapness. Never has there been n time when
a little money could be made to go so far in
the purchase of handsome books or ornaments
us well us articles of common utility. The
requirements of people with moderate incomes
have created Il special holiday traffic in goods
of real worth at low prices. The book trade
illustrates this tendency. Publishing houses
have issued immense editions in good type and
handsome bindings, of popular novels and
juvenile stores-in some cases 100000 or
100000 copics-and these have been placed on
the market at bare advance upon the cost of
manufacture. Some of the dry-goods houses
in New York, Brooklyn and other cities have
given enormous orders, and the consequence
has been that valuable works by standard
authors have been offered to Christmas
shoppers at remarkably low prices. There
have been similar "driyes" in silverware. and
especially in handsome china. This cheapenine
of holiday goods has not only facilitated
exchanges of presents among buyers of small
means, but it has also tended to scale down
the expenditures of weather. people.
The best-spent Christmas Is one that is LAVISH