The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1912-12-25
says UNCLE CAV

Upon this one day of all the year
we lay selfishness aside and for the
time forget to ask Am my brothers
keeper" Upon this one day of the
three hundred sixty-five does all the
Christian world seem bound together
by golden chains of sympathy. Now,
if ever, we unblushingly bring forth
from dusty hiding places our loftier
sentiments of altruistic love. our high
ideals of universal kinShip. Today, in
all sincerity we proclaim the doctrine
of good will, the gospel of peace on
earth.
It is a poor heart, suffused with the
Christmas spirit that has not room for
the last and least of human creatures.
For the day we feel how foreign a
thing to human happiness are hate
and strife and greed. In the intoxica
ton of the allpervading spirit. in the
blissful inspiration of resurgent gener-
osity, we dimly wonder at the strange
sort of folk that we were yesterday
the folk that hardened themselves to
the strife of existence, lifted none too
gentle hands against their brothers,
schemed and plotted and connived at
the undoing of the more fortunate, OPP
pressed the underling, and mayhap
lived in a red mist of blind, angry
struggle. Or we wonder at the folk
who yesterday wore our names and
faces, who passed by the unfortunate,
who neglected to smile, who allowed
the milk of human kindness to curdle
from every selfishness and forgot that
there is more trust than treason, more
faith than doubt, more good than bad
in the world.
And while, for a moment, we are
in this frame of mind, it is perhaps
well to remember that the Christmas
spirit is after all, a mockery if it is
only a momentary intoxication, that
the day is unhallowed if it means only a
dinner, more or less compulsory ex-
change of presents, a maudlin ref1ec-
I, ~E
crosby and a shamefaced recollection
upon the morrow that the day has
turned one soft and filled ones brain
with strange, impractical dreams of
universal kindness.
Does your breast surge with the in
SEPARATION of peace on earth ?" What
have you contributed to peace on
earth in the shopping district? Did
you do your shopping early, to your
own comfort and the preservation of
the health of the salespeople? If so,
your dinner should be more tempting
in the recollection of that fact.
Do you for a time feel the thrill
of happiness that all the world is at
peace? Have you been thoughtful of
your smiles and handclasps and kind
words? Have you remembered that
simple kindness sweetens daily inter-
course and that irritable tempers
cause more trouble than all the
crimes of earth?
Do you feel that if your wealth was
unlimited, your gifts would be as the
sands of the sea-? There is no more
common manifestation of the Christ
mas debauch than this. But have you
given yourself with such gifts as you
have made? Does your friendship,
your trust, your unselfish interest go
with every bauble that you have sent
in the name of the seasons cheer?
With the sound of Christmas bells
in your ears do you wonder that any
one would be sad? But have you real
lied that the world was made for hap
piness, have you, in the midst of your
struggles, striven to remember that it
is your first duty to be happy, that
happiness may cover the earth as the
waters cover the sea?
Do the strains Of Christmas music
make envy and malice seem far and
foreign things? Have you remem-
bered, when nights we're thick and
tracks were blind that real success
is not measured by dollars or place or
fame but by human service, and that
he who travels alone has missed
greatness?
Bless us, but this is sober sort of
Christmas sermon, yet you deserve it
you with your Christmas debauch
and your maudlin mounting of sacred
things! Christmas should be the fine
flower of all the year, but you have
made it an artificial bauble! You
drink it's spirit as you drink your wine,
having paid for it with extravagant,
unmeaning gifts. Tomorrow you will
have no more taste for it than for
the fiat dregs lying in a glass that
YOU cannot look upon without a wry