The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1899-12-17
Some Christmas
Digresstons.
yHEN, more than 300 years ago,
WI Thomas Tusser, poet, scholar

he sized up the modern idea of Christ
mas with triteness and accuracy. But
it was Dickens VINO doomed the idea
into the hearts OF the English-speaking
people. Dickens rooted for Christmas
as nobody had ever rooted for it be-
fore. He started the entire grand stand
roofing. Time was when, aside from
its observance by the church, Christ
mas didn't amount to much. In all
Shakespeare it is mentioned only three
times; and for generations later it
didn't receive very many honorable
mentions outside of sermons and
hymns
Dickens looked and saw that Christ
mas was good thing; and, more than
that was capable of being made a
warm thing. Dickens interest in
Christmas was absorbing and voluptu-
Gus. He reveled and gloried in Christ
mas. If he could, he would have made
life one continual Christmas. He would
have had Christmas last the year
around. One Christmas was no sooner
gone than he longed for the next. He
could not see Christmas at distance
In his Christmas stories he romps and
gambols with it. He plays ball and
cuts all sorts of capers with it, he
whirls in the merry go-round with it,
he executes all manner of wing dancing
and cake walking with it, he wines and
dimes and shines with it, he toasts and
eulogizes it in words bright and warm
as the summer sun streaming over the
hilltops in the morning.
Other novelists and story writer's re-
fer to Christmas, hint at Christmas, &C.
casionally make an incident of Christ
mas. Thackeray will entertain you
few minutes with children's box
party at Christmas pantomime. Bret
Harte will beguile and amuse you with
the crude Christmas doings of a pioneer
mining camp. Thomas Hardy will take
you of Christmas eve out along with
a country church choir chanting hymns
and carols under farm house windows.
There are scores of writer's who go at
Christmas in a dilettante sort of way,
just as they might address themselves
to a corn husking bee or Sunday
school picnic. All these fellows
with their and-water descrip-
tons of Christmas are mere side
shows; Dickens is the circus, the whole
circus and nothing but the circus.
Dickens is Christmas specialist.
When you go to Dickens you go to the
greatest Christmas expert in the
world. If he can't tone up your system
and put some Christmas thought and
feeling into you, your case is hopeless.
True, Dickens practices other branches
of the profession of novelist, and with
more or less ability and skill. He is
pretty good, all-around, general prac-
titioner But he is prominently
Christmasologist, and as such his fame
is worldwide and enduring. When
Christmas has been here ten thousand
years, bright, shining as the sun,
Dickens celebrity as it's promoter.
boomer. booster, rooter and mascot
combined will, relatively speaking,
have just begun.
You take in Dickens Christmas fes-
tivities as you take in grand opera.
The curtain goes up and the show be-
gins, with only a few minor vocalists
on the stage, and they, perhaps. sing
ing pretty small. But the action never
drags-it goes along gathering cumula-
tive force until bye and bye the stage
is crowded, and the chorus bursts upon
you like the crashing Of the thunder
mingling with Niagara's stupendous
roar Dickens almost invariably pre-
sents few preliminary scenes leading
UP to his Christmas climax. 1t is the
day or the evening before Christmas;
he grabs you by the arm and rushes
you forth to the market place and
there you behold turkeys. geese, game,
chickens, great joints of meat. suck
ling pigs long wreaths of sausages,
plum buildings, barrels of oysters,
plump, brown chestnuts, cherry-cheek-
ed apples, juicy oranges and luscious
pears. The day Is cold, tbs nipping
and an eager air; Dickens always pre-
sents an icy Christmas in order that
the cracking, sparkling fire in the
hearth may the better warm up to the
occasion. Usually, too, there has just
been a heavy fall of snow, and he
shows you men and boys shoveling
away Oh SlucWdih anu AouoS ttp, JoF"
ial and full Of glee." After he has
played upon your appetite by exhibit
ing and extolling everything in market
until you feel the ravenous hunger Of
a starving wolf, he whisks you away
to drawing rooms and dining rooms,
whose walls and ceilings are so hung
with living green that 1t looks a per-
feet grove; from every part of which
bright, cleaning berries glisten. 1.-The
crisp leaves of holly, mistletoe and ivy
reflect back the light as II SO many
little mirrors had been scattered there;
and such mighty blaze goes roaring
up the chimney" and SO on. There is
always Christmas dance. of course:
but Dickens comes out strongest and
best at the Christmas dinner. Here he
would make the mouth Of an idol of
wood or stone water. His tables groan
perfect Jeremiads under their burdens
and l1v,,r,o,