Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1886-12-22
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rushing Christmas we are in danger of
wearing it out in a decade or two more. II
is already period from which too many
people date nervous prostration. Instead
of making the season simple and enjoy.
able holiday, we are in danger of making
it an intolerable burden.
1t is because the Drawer desires to pre-
serve this Christmas season az one of gay
ETY. and frolic and simple pleasures, and
widening and deepening Christian charity,
| that it makes these unwelcome observa-
| tions. There are no more engaging crsa-
| lures than children, unless it be maidens at
| the age when, on holidays. they pose as
first or second cousins, or serene and lovely
elderly people in the midst of an affection
ate family. But it cuts across the spirit Of
| the holiday when the children are more
eager for costly gift than for game Of
blind-man's buff, and the maidens do not
| value the salute under the mistlstoe unless
| it is accompanied by diamond bracelet
and the elderly people, disturbed by this
| cultivated habit of greedy expectation, are
| grum bling about the expense of the season.
There is small danger that charity to the
poor will be overdone, that the spirit of the
day in regard to interfamily and interstate
and international goodwill may go to
excess, or that the leaven of the Sermon on
the Mount will work too powerfully in a
society that would be a mass of selfishness
without it. 1t is incalculabls what Christ
mas and the spirit of Christmas has done
and is doing for the world. The sun that
rises on that day in our Northern latitudes
may not melt the ice in the streams or
the frost on the window-panes, but there
is no sun like it for thawing the human
heart throughout Christendom. There is
no day like it for assuaging enmities, and
reviving tender memories, and drawing to-
gether the estranged, and narrowing tho
gulf between classes. During this day the
world is a brotherhood. In the wondrous
Birth of Child all the world renews for
some hours its childish faith and simplici-
ty. The spirit of this event prevails far
beyond the circles where it is regarded as
a reality.
Why overlay it with artifciality? Why
make it an expense hard to be borne WHY
put into the preparation for it an amount of
labor and worry that ends in WEAKNESS and
exhaustion? Costly gifts are the least
necessary part of it, worry is foreign to its
spirit, and both together may make it in
time a burden, and as distasteful as the
noise and incendiarism of the Fourth Of
July. The perpetuity of ths best ins .iiIu-
ton depends upon moderation. Children
are the hope of the world. We should not
undervalue them because they are plenty.
Home Rule is just now the most popular
doctrine in the world. But it may be Just
as we'll for the next generation if the chill
dren are not now all Home Rulers. Give the
parents chance they will be all the better
for it. Let us ease up a little on the worry
and cost of Christmas, and keep the best
holiday Of the ages in the oldsspirit of un-
ostentatious charity and the exercise of
mirth and good will that refreshes and does
not weary.-CHARLEs DUDLEY WARNER,
in Harper's Magazine for December.