The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1904-12-17
A NEW OBSERVANCE
OF CRAFTSMANSHIP.
TIME custom of gift giving at
Christmas has been overdone till
If hecama a tax so great that

| TIME custom of gift giving at
Christmas has been overdone till
it became a tax so great that
there has been rebellion against it. In
| the cities letter carriers were over
worked for two weeks. Mail packages
due on Christmas day many a time
| could not be delivered till a week after
ward. Instead of being a season of joy
| to mail service employees Christmas
] time was the period of the year to
| which they looked forward with dread.
| Expressmen and their horses were worn
/ out and on duty all hours of the night.
Even the ladies of the rich class, who
could obtain whatever they desired for
presents were frequently made ill with
the shopping and the heavy work of
getting ready for the great Christian
holiday.
Being so overdone, the gift giving
custom partially fell to pieces by its
own weight. In fashionable quarters
for the past year or two it has been
proclaimed that sit is no longer good
form to give presents to any but mem
bers of ones own family and to depend
ents." Even elaborate and cumbersome
Christmas cards have gone out. A
mere visiting card bearing good will
and the good wishes of the season are a
sufficient token that we have our
friends and acquaintance in mind.
The overdone Christmas gift custom
had reached the point where it fostered
greed in the vulgar minded. And it is
astonishing how many of the vulgar
minded there are at Christmas time
Where they should have been grateful
that anybody cared enough for them to
give them any present at all the vulgar
minded grumbled because the gift was
not valuable enough. Again, Christmas
giving had come to be a matter of
swap" If Mary gave Jane a pair of
gloves one Christmas Jane felt bound
next holiday season to send Mary some
thing a little more valuable than Mary's
gift had been or incur the suspicion
that she was "a stingy thing" Often
times Jane could not really afford this
SO was obliged to do without something
she herself needed very much in order
to give Mary an article which probably
Mary did not need at all.
So it is well that the heavy old Christ
mas giving is going cut. But there is
something that this poor human race ia
all the millions of years it has been la
existence has never yet had enough OF,
something that, though it survive a bill
lion years more, it never will have too
much of. That is pure good will and af-
lection. Did you ever think how very
little manifestation of genuine sympa-
thy and sincere friendly interest there
is among the human race?
Somehow-heavens knows how-an
idea obtained, especially among English
speaking peoples, that expressions of
affection in a family are weakminded,
even silly. Fathers put out around
themselves an atmosphere of sternness
mothers were cautioned against spoil
ing" their children by too much tender
ness after they had passed babyhood
60 In1 hot 1of
when growing boys and girls most
needed all the manifestation of affection
their parents could bestow they were
left without it. Members of families
formed the habit of being brusque and
blunt to one another, of swapping rudely
at one another.
So were extinguished the tender and