Loki’s Grandma, after the fashion of a lady in a recent celebrated lawsuit, likes to choose her own presents. But she is not so indelicate as to demand money and buy it herself—No, she drops an absent hint, as Christmastide draws near. If this is not satisfactory, she abandons diplomacy for an engaging frankness.... But she is always overwhelmed with surprise and delight when “the very thing she wanted” duly appears about the Tree. The Master of the Villino, on his side, has had all the pleasure of purchasing; and, being of a guileless nature, is often quite persuaded that the choice was his own.
In fact we all become like children again at Christmas; and this, after all, cannot be displeasing to the Christ Child. It is a time of hectic preparation, of pleasurable brain-racking over the suitability of gifts; of endless tying up of parcels for foreign and home dispatch. We decorate the Villino with round compact Holly-wreaths, which Adam makes with rare raste and adroitness. Never was such a year as the last for Hollies; and some of the trees were still scarlet with them in the late Spring.
HUES OF WINTER
As for Juvenal, he shows a recrudescence of genius in the devising of table decoration with unthought-of evergreens; with rich-toned leaves in the sear and the brown and purpling hues of Winter, brightened with an astonishing variety of haws, hips, and berries.
In the little Chapel a crib is built up in a stone manger brought from Rome. Therein lies the Italian Bambino, purchased two generations ago by a dear one who has now gone from us. It is the quaintest little wax figure imaginable, with its painted red curls and one wax foot uplifted in the act of kicking.—The story goes that the original much venerated image in a certain Roman church, the object of yearly pilgrimages, was purloined, or for some reason moved to another Church, to the woe and indignation of the faithful of the district. But on the first Christmas night after this translation, a loud knocking was heard at the door of the original Church, and the small figure was discovered, kicking with all its might for re-admittance. Captured and carried in with devotion and joy, it was re-established with much pomp in its old quarters, but ever after remained with a little kicking leg in the air!
Our Crib, surrounded with Roman Hyacinths and White Narcissus and Primulas, is fragrant and poetic; but we do not attempt to show anything more than the one image. Want of space prevents it. Our ambition, however, finds larger scope in the village Chapel. There Juvenal has built a very noble stable, thatched with heather; and all the figures of those first scenes of the Greatest Story in the World will take their place this year.
Last year the tragedy happened that the St. Joseph and Our Lady; the Ox and the Ass; the Kings and Shepherds, which had been ordered in secret to surprise every one, remained on the high seas detained by December gales, until too late.—But our coming Noel will be the richer for the enforced postponement of the Holy Picture.
At the last Yuletide the Mistress of Villino was unable, after a long year’s illness, to join the family party at Midnight Mass in the village below the hill. ‹Midnight Mass, be it noted in parenthesis, has an extraordinary charm for the household and indeed for the neighbourhood. And, when all is said and done, it certainly is as picturesque and touching a ceremony as ever men of goodwill are happy to join in. It seems to bring one in direct touch with the simplicity of the shepherds of those far-off hills.› But as the excluded padrona was lying quietly in bed waiting for the sounds of departure, she was touched and charmed to hear the strains of a carol rising softly from the terrace beneath her windows:
See amid the winter’s snow,