The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1888-12-19
Christmas.

The open house and hall which the
Christmas ballads celebrate are sym
bolical. 1t is the day on which nobody
shall 90 starving or cold, because it j.
the nativity of the Teacher who tells us
to feed the hungry and to clothe the
naked. 1t is the day of fraternity, and
perhaps before it is over, before the
wassail- bow is wholly dry, and while a
few forfeits yet remain to be redeemed
it may occur to some of us TO ask. If
the open house and hall are symbolcal,
why should not Christmas itself be SYM
bolical, and since it is day of frater-
nifty, why should not every day be It
day of fraternity? The effervescence
of good feeling which sparkles and
rustles through Dickens Christmas
Carol, the spirit which mets old
Scrooge not only into human sympathy,
but into a hilarity which makes him
whisper something to the old gentle
man, his terrified debtor, that causes
the old gentleman to say, Lord bless
mel" as if his breath were taken
away, and then to add, 81 don't know
what to say to such munif-;' the
spirit which stirs Scrooge to give Bob
Cratchit dig in the wastcoat and to
announce that his salary is about to be
raised" Ill raise your salary, and en-
deavor to assist your struggling family
and we will discuss your affairs over u
Christmas bowl of smoking bishop,
Bob this is the spirit of Christmas
in lis largest sense, the spirit not of a
day only, but of life, for it is good
will to man. 1t is not probable that the
millennium will be brought about BY
employers raising the salaries of their
clerks, but it is certain that there will
| be no millennium without that spirit
Scrooge's Christmas did not end with
sunset; it lasted all the year round
That Christmas, indeed, is an imposter
which ceases to be Christmas because
the twenty-ffth day of December is
gone. Its reality can be tested only by
watching closely the twenty-fifth Of
May and the tv enty fifth of Sci tamber,
and If they are full of the same kindll-
ness, the same good cheer, for every
body and everything. with which the
twenty-tfth of December overflow : j.,
then that day is not donkey masquer-
aiding as lion, but a genuine Christ
mas. Once there was Maid Marian
who played at forfcits and snap-dragon,
and watched the morris-dancers and
hobby-horse, and heard the waits sing
ing under the cold moon, and at last g,
caught beneath the mistletoe, she paid
the sweetest forfeit of all. And in the
bottom of her heart, despite her rosy
cheeks, she felt that she paid it will
ingly, and secretly sighed to think
that Christmas comes but once year.
But long afterward, when for many a
year she had been married to the youth
who caught her beneath the sacr, d
bush, as she made the plum-pudding
every Christmas, and helped to hang
the little stockings by the freside, and
hunted the slipper, and gayly bluff, j
the blind man, she RENE mbered that il
was not the snap-dragon nor the waits,
nor even that happy forfeit, which
made the old Christmas, but something
that did not set with the sun nor die
with the carol of the waits. She was
caught now under the ly
that youth only, but by little fellows
with pudgy arms who covered her all
over with kisses; and when she was
tired of romping, and the little fellows
with pudgy arms were fast asleep, hold
ing their dolls and horses and elephants
and dogs, she said to that youth of other
years, " 1t was not the games and the
pudding and the mistletoe that made
the old Christmas, it was l)ve and love
makes Christmas all the year. y George
William Curtis, an Harper's Mdgazine