The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-12-23
YuLETIpE AGAIN.

Day after tomorrow will be Christmas
the holiday the children have been
waiting for so eagerly, the holiday they
have been talking and planning about
these many weeks. The time has seemed
long to them, ages long. To the chill
dren of maturer years-for, after all,
every one of US is a child at Christmas
1t seems but yesterday that the last
Christmas was celebrated. The time
is not far distant when the children of
today will see the Christmases come
along so swiftly that there seems but a
little while between them, but to their
children the distance between the holi-
days will seem just as long as it does
to them today.
How the holiday does carry one back,
back to the days of childhood. You
think of the old home, the dear mother
who long since has passed into and
through the shadows to the perfect
peace. 1t requires no effort of memory
to recall the brothers and sisters who
hung up their stockings with yours by
the big open fireplace, confident that the
patron saint of Christmas would, in the
quiet hours of the night, come and ill
them to overlooking with things dear
to the heart of childhood.
You oven remember how tickled Bill
was over that pair of red mittens he
got one Christmas. and how Mary re-
Joiced over her new shawl. The littlest
brother had rattle that he cIasped In
his chubby fingers all day, and the
small sister refused to be separated for
a moment from her precious dolly.
Where are the children now? Scat
tered, perhaps, to the four corners of
the earth. Some have gone to their
long home, some have gone to their
own around them.
Don't you remember how little it took
to make the children of your day Wild
ly. deliriously happy? Doesn't it seem
TO you sometimes as If the children of
this time require too much? Why, you
know that the man who could spend
ten or fifteen dollars on his children
at Christmas time in the old days was
regarded as something of a Dlutocrat
Most people didn't use much of the
store stuff. With their own hands they
made the little gifts, and who shall say
the recipients did not enjoy and appre-
ciate them as much as recipients now
enjoy the most expensive presents.
These memories, though, are but
fleeing, dissolving views on reconec-
tons canvas. 1t is this Christmas that
We are enjoying, if we have the proper
spirit, and let us all enjoy it to the ut
termost. An old bachelor said the other
day that bachelors cumber the earth al
Christmas. Our own opinion is that
they cumber the earth at all times, but
they certainly need not be cumberer,
at Christmas. Let each and every one
of them hunt up somebody else's chill
dren and devote a few hours to making
them happy. If that doesn't give then
returns, full, pressed down and run
ming over in measure. for any outlay
they may make then they are indeed
cumberers all the year round.
It is pleasant to have children about
you at Christmas, for Christmas is es
sentially the children's holiday. But
if man wills, he can have a merry
Christmas over pile of burning chip:
in the heart Of desert; or he can have
a gloomy Christmas in the middle of E
Sunday school primary class. The spiri
is everything.
So here's merry Christmas to all o.
you, whether you dwell in cottage or ii
palace. And, in the words of Tiny Tim
God bless US every one"