Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-12-22
CHRISTMAS OF YORE
Romance Gone From a World
Grown Practical.
ANCESTORS BECAME YOUNG
Wassail Bowl, Mummers, Minuet, Mis-
tletoe and Carols.
FREEDOM AND HEARTINESS
Customs That Survive Have Been
Modernized Out of All Resem-
blance to Themselves.
ANCESTORS BECAME YOUNG
FREEDOM AND HEARTINESS
Written for The Star.

Written for The Star
Much of the poetry has undoubtedly
passed from Christmas.
The greatest of holidays is no longer
celebrated it in the old days
To the children, it is still the happiest
day in the calendar and it's festivities sat
isfy the last longing of pleasure that the
infantile heart can know.
But it is somewhat changed for the
grown-ups. Years ago adults became chill
dren at the Yuletide, and celebrated the
holiday season with rotous mirth but the
world grows steiner, more practical, more
matter of fact and laughs less as time
wears on.
Still we have with us the Christmas
dinner, but it is occasion for con-
ventional correctness where men and wom-
en- wear evening clothes, and talk in polite
~ rncdulated voices, the men about money,
stocks and bonds, the women of fashions.
This dinner is only pale shadow of the
joyous feast of our forefatheTs.
No longer do they drag III the yule log to
the salute of songs and cheers. The was
sail bowl has passed with the hoop skirts
of half a century ago. The great punch
bowl has given way to the unpoetic and
costly wine bottle.
Gone are munnlers who used to so from
house 10 house at Christmas time to cling
merry song and exchange greet ngs. Father
Christmas tae Christmas -hotnef inu lie
Lord of Ns-Glc no longer masquerade to
the joy Of adults and children alike The
carry home the children from SCHOOL Tor the
holidays have yielded 10 the unromantic,
if more comfortable Pullman seat
Gone from the roadside inns are the gay
parties OF relocated, rotund hunters VINO
used to drink in the great winter holiday
with rotations whose amount would appal
the convivialist of today.
A Practical World.
This is a practical moneymakng world
and the romance of the daily life has per-
haps suffered more shocks in our hustling
United States than anywhere else.
Christmas in the southland was once the
dream of every man, woman and child,
from master to humblest slave on the plan
tation. The celebration began on Christ
mas when there was a grand ball for
the slaves. 1t usually took place in the big
barn, decorated for the occasion, and in
the dancing and revelry the black children
of the sun had the sympathy and encour-
agement of their masters, who always paid
the ball visit and often even joined in the
dancing.
And when the dance ended came a grand
feast, for which the master of the planta-
ton stinted nothing. There was ample to
eat and drink
In the morning of the holiday the slaves
would gather in front of the mansion, per-
maps 10 make some little gut 10 the owner
and his family, or maybe just to wish them
all Merry Christmas.
All this is gone to return nevermore. The
black man has his freedom. He is his own
master. In winning this boon he has
estranged from himself many of those who
were once his protectors. He is in the midst
of a time of trial. when in working out his
destiny he must battle against race hatred
and explain away the crimes committed by
men of his own color.
Forgetting the race problem, taking no
sides, 1t must nevertheless be true that
many aged darby, working for little or
almost nothing in mental capacity in some
cold northern city. bemoans that merry
beautiful Christmas of the long ago in the
south, where the winter was always soft