Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1926-12-21
Editors Letter Box
The True Spirit of Christmas

The whole of Christmas is built
around the love of a mother for her
babe. Centuries have since rolled by;
dynasties have risen and fallen; con-
querors have waxed and waned: but
none of these have stilled that cradle
song in the quiet Judean starlight.
Nor have the two thousand years
broken the communicable spirit of
sympathy between that mother at
Bethlehem and the mother of today.
AS heaven lay around that infancy in
the Bethlehem stable, so heaven lies
around the cradle of every infant of
today.
We say wrongly sometimes that
Christ asks that we shall bring Him
gifts on His birthday. Nowhere in His
words does He ask this. He asks us to
bestow what we may have. good gifts
or tokens upon other children For He
is in every child. ard what we give to
a child we give to Him.
"Inasmuch," He said, "as We have
done 1t unto one of the least of these
my brethren, We have did 1t unto me-
80 when we minister unto a child, be
IL our own child or some ones else
child, we minister unto Him.
1t follows so naturally and SO con.
ciusively that Christmas should be
for the children. We elders may enjoy
Christmas in a way. but what is our
enjoyment of the day compared to the
thrills that the day brought us when
we We're children?
Let us remember back to the time
when we struggled timorously be-
meath the coverlet our hearts athrob
with the hope of what would come on
'tiptoe in the night after the Sandman
went away.
There hung the stockings. empty
and in row. but before the gray
glimmer of the earliest dawn there
would be a miracle,
Where now the stocking mouth
gaped in limp detection, there would
glitter in the quickly kindled light of
lamp, candle or freight, tasseled
norm, or the bright eyes of a doll with
arms outstretched in greeting, the red
and white candy cane or some tissue
wrapped parcel with the transparent
promise of soul-Satisfying contents.
There is no Juvenile experience COM
pared with the ecstatic thrill of that
hrst nour of Christmas morning, as
you burrowed all the way down TO
the toe of the stocking stuffed out
round and large with the conclusive
orange.
We take pleasure now in the Christ
mas tree. but how? Is it not with the
admiring but delicate gaze of one who
helped in it's decoration, studying il
with artistic eye and concluding that
the picture 1t makes is successful
one?
But what is that compared To Tho
time when you looked at the tree as if
1t were a vision right out of the won
der-book of Fairyland? A tree that
never stood rooted in any forest in
the world; waited into the room as
palaces used to be whisked about on a
magic carpet.
That was the real Christmas to you
that is the real Christmas TODAY to
some other child.
Let us, then, cut ourselves, we eld-
ers-out of the day except as givers.
and give it over to the children. But
sanely. Let us remember that this
great day would never have found it's
way to almost every hearthstone in
Christendom If it were time of TAX
ing instead of giving.
NO holiday conferred in selfishness
could survive, with undimmed light,
for 20 centuries. So the children
SHoulu De taught not to take, but to
give to other children; and particular
~ to children whose nests are less
downy than their own. There is no
harder thing in chiit1's life than to
be forgotten on Christmas day
Christ's day for children! To be dis
regarded when others are remembered.
Is there any picture on earth so APP
pealing as to see a child at one of our
shop windows with less than half of
transparent inch between their pinched
nose and pointing finger and a high
plled world of dolls and drums and
skates and picture books?
Can the mind imagine keener
pang, a more sorrowful thing, than
the unanswered prayer of the little
child at Christmastide
Yet merely to buy and give are not
enough. 1.-THE gift without the giver
10 bare. With what we give must