Harrisburg telegraph. [volume] (Harrisburg, Pa.) 1879-1948, 1919-12-19
LONG AGO

- year. with Yuletide music by
trained singers, wise men in the
costumes of the ancient East, shep-
herds feeding real fiocks by mght
and all those other scenes ana
incidents attending the Nativity.
Heigh, ho. it's a far cry, isn't II,
this elaborate program, compared
with the old fashioned Christmas
entertainments of our boyhood days
in the Infant department" OF the
little frame church where first we
learned about Christmas and It's
gentle Founder? How it taxes us
back-we who have gray in our hair
and memories of Christmas past
as we'll as anticipations of the Joyous
season just ahead.
You'll recall, of course, with "hat
! pleasurable excitement you looked
ahead toward Christmas Eve ana
that Sunday school entertainment
and not even the awful thought OF
having to appear before the whole
audience to speak n piece coulu
rob the occasion of the joyous thrill
that came with the promise OF santa
Claus on hand to personally pass
out gifts to all present.
They had a way of trimming
Christmas trees in those days that
seems to have become lost art III
the past decade or two. Surely, there
are no such dazzingly colored balls
as used to hang from thousand
branches of the big spruce they set
up in the very front center OF the
Sunday school room of that httle
church of fond recollections; and
there are no such wonderful white
doves now as rested in its brancnes'
no such gaudy chains of glistenlns
rainbow colored beads, no such
airily dressed fairies, no such amaz-
inglv large horns-of- plenty, no such
unbelievably long strings OF pop
corn. Some times we wonder where
they have all gone, and why the
Christmas trees of to-day are so
tawdry as compared with those we
used to have. Perhaps you may
have noticed.
And, oh, those Sunday school
teachers were a cunning lot. Beside
the tree they had built a wonderful
chimney of big red bricks. 1t looked
real enough to have smoked. But
they couldn't fool us. No, sir. We
knew at once that these bricks
really were boxes filled with candy
and at the proper moment old Santa
himself would appear to present
each of us with one. Oh, we were
the wise ones, yes, indeed.
The entertainment was mere
nrelude to this climax, long though
the program always was. Little
colden-haired Mary Magee, who
lisped, led off by reciting the verses
beginning:
Hang up the baby's stocking,
Be sure and don't forget,
The dear little dimpled darling
Never saw Christmas yet"
which you will admit voices a pop
ular sentiment even though it be not
the best of poetry. Then we all
sang:
Jolly old Saint Nicholas.
Lean your ear this way,
| Don't you tell a single
Soul what I'm going to say"
with more volume than harmony,
and a shivering little victim was led
! forward to recite:
."Twas the night before Christmas,
When all through the house,
| Not a creature was stirring,
Not even a mouse"
Only on one tragic occasion he
said it this way:
"Twas the night before Christmas
! When all through the house.
| Not a creature was stirring,
/ Not even a louse,"
and almost got licked on the spot.
After which somebody announced
/ that Santa would appear, and he
did, and you got your candy-flled
brick out of the chimney, and an
orange from the teacher. said
Merry Christmas" all around and
went home joyously to hang up your
| stocking.
Can any modern Christmas enter
| tainment beat that?
Nay, for it lacks the miraculous
habiliments of memory and the
magic of childhood's happiest sea-
son. 1t is "a fine thing to have q
Christmas pageant, but we wouldn't
exchange for it our memories, would