New-York tribune., 1910-12-25
Strange Child of Christmas
Hosv Dramatic Quality. Portrayal of
eOinfer and Use of Grofesque Made
Him q Christmas Writer

contradiction and mystical dehance
which gives a quality of manllness anu
/ reality to the old winter feasts WHICH
ic NOT characteristic of the sunny felfci-
ties of the Earthly Paradise And this
curious element has been carried OUT
even in all the trivial jokes and tasks
that have always surrounded sucn oc-
casions as these.
THE object of the jovial customs was
not to make everything artificially easy;
on the contrary, 1t was rather TO make
everything artificially difficult 1dealfsm
is not only expressed by shooting an
arrow at the stars. the fundamental
principle of idealism is also expressed by
putting Il leg of mutton at the top OF
a greasy pole. There is in all such OBJ
servances Il quality which can only be
called the quality of divine obstruction.
For instance, in the game of snapdragon
Ghat admirable occupatiOm the concep-
ton is that raisins taste much nicer If
they are brands saved from the burning
About all Christmas things there is
something a little nObler. if only nObler
i'll form and theory. than mere comfort;
even holly is prickly. 1t is not hard to
see the connection of this kind of his
toric instinct with a romantic writer like
Dickens The healthy novelist must al
ways play snapdragOn with his principal
characters: he must always he snatch
ing the hero and heroine like raisins out
of the fire.
The third great Christmas element is
the element of the grotesque The gro
and all the Utopias and new Edens Of
the poets fail to give a real impression
of cnjoym5 Mt. very largely because they
leave out the grotesque. \ man in most
modern Utopias cannot really he happy:
ne is too disnitied. a man in MoTris's
Earthly Paradise cannot really be enjoy
ing himself: he is too decorative. When
real human beings have real delights
they tend To express them entirely in gro
tcsques-I might almost say entirely in
goblins. On Christmas Eve one may
talk about ghosts 50 long as they are
turnip ghosts. But one would not be
allowed Il hope. in any decent family
to talk on Christmas Eve above astral
bodies. The boar's head of old YuIe-
time was as grotesquc as the donkcy's
head of Bottom the Weaver But there
are only one set of goblins quite Will
enough 30 express the Wild goodwill Of
Christmas Those goblns are the char
aCters of Dickens.
"ArCadian poets and Arcadian paint
ers have striVen To express happiness by
means OF beautiful figures Dickens un-
derstood that happiness is best expressed
by ugly figures. In beauty, perhaps.
there is something allied to sadness: Ger
tainly there is something akin To- joy i'm
the grotesquc, nay. In the uncouth
There is something mysteriously asso-
ciated with happiness not only in the
corpulence of Falstaff and the corpuIenca
of Tony Weller. but even in the red nose
OF Bardoiph or the red nose of MIR. Stig-
gins. thing of beauty is an inspird-
ton forever-a matter of meditation for
ever. 1t Is rather u thing of ugIiness
that Is strictly n joy forever.
All Dickens's books are Christmas
books. But this is still truest of his two
or three famous Yuletide tales-,rhe
Christmas Carol and The Chimes and
Ihe Cricket on the Hearth OF these
The Christmas Carol is beyond compar-
lsOh the best as well as the most popu-