Los Angeles herald., 1906-12-25

The most wonderfully beautiful
Christmas i'm all the world of the out
doors is California's. The snow and the
sleet and the billiards. and the slush
| and the lowering skles-al these are
| lacking, all these which make Christ
| mas a season of budding beside smol-
dering CRATES and smoking stoves in
that dear down east" whence most Of
us came.
But instead Of this, without which
the first few Christmases we passed in
| the west seemed unreal and Illusion
| airy, there is exactly the world into
which the Christ child was born long
ago amid the pale Judean hills. Here,
as there, Christmas Is really the be-
ginning of the new year, the opening
of that new year which comes to South
ern California garlanded with flowers
and kissed by such breezes as blow
only in the Italian realms of the orient
Mountain and valley, mesa and roll
ing foothill, laughing waterfall and
singing sea are breathing paeans of
praise that the long dry season at last
is gone, that the moon Of falling wa
ters has come to the land of sunshine
and just i'm the midst of all the glad
ness and joy I'm the wildwood Christ
mas falls across the world of the hu
mans, and they, too, are glad.
The chronicler, do we but take tho
old, old story in most material sense,
selected the very time of transforma-
tion in the land to which he came for
the arrival of that one whose natal
day we celebrate. Do we, with that
sublime faith for which hosts have
died, yield to the divine plan, we must
believe that he brought spring with
him-and that it has remained hover
ing round the day of his memory in
the lands of the sun ever since.
And it is difficult to tell which part
of California responds most readily to
the touch of the hand of the rain
which is sure to fall a bit before or
just around the Christmastide. This
year it came a bit early and the hills
and the valleys, even the slopes of the
real mountain, are beginning to put on
their summers garb of green.
Not at Christmas come forth the
flowers, or but very few of them; it is
the time of promise, or springing leaf,
of bud swollen to bursting, all waiting
for the magic hour when they shall
answer the call of life and spread the
floor of the universe with starry tap
estry.
In the mountains every waterfall is
risen anew to twice the size it was
month ago. To the pines and the
redwoods and the spruces and the rest
of the green kings of it's homeland it
sings of the crowning joy of the year
How it hurries, humming to itself in
faintest lullaby of the lands 1t is to
see when at last 1t bursts from what
it considers it's bondage in the rock
walled hills. Again it breaks into a
triumphant song of victory as it winds
its way over great bolders that have
for ages lain within its bed, and when
it falls IN headlong plunge across the
rim of some river crag its haste be-
comes a wild roar of joy and happiness. |
All this is a song of Christmas, just
as much a carol of yuletide as ever
sang vested choir in the solemn half |
light of turreted cathedral. But there
are other songs of Christmas, too, songs
of the hills and Of the valleys and of
the plains. He who has missed the
rain wind among the pines, the norther
above the level mesa, the voice of the
night on the shore of the sea, has
never heard the music of the Spheres
the tune to which the universe was set
in motion cons upon cons of dead
years ago.
Songs of the Wind at YuIetide
1t may be that the sweet sounds of
California's out of doors are not heard
at Christmas-but to one who has ever
wintered in the mountains there can
be no question that the rain wind
among the needles of the swaying
pines is the most perfect tune ever set
to music by the hand of nature.
There is music in the patter of the
rain, in the wind breathing through
snow-laden forests, in the call of the
first robin of the new year. but the
best and the truest of all is the never
varying song of the wind. And be-
cause it is always the same, always
pitched in the same key, constant and
true to its master, whoever he may be.
there is no monotony in it. On its
breast it bears a thousand sounds
noises of the night or of the day.. as
the chance may be- but no wind playing