Oh, Comrades! oh, Sweethearts! Let me give you a touch of the time when happiness was the very cheapest thing in the round world: let me give you "a merry Christmas" out of the loneliness!
But children are not out of fashion, and so the world is not bankrupt. Herod—he deserves the compliment and he shall have it—Herod was nothing less than devilish shrewd when he fancied he could quench Christmas in the blood of the children; for if ever two things were made for each other, a merry child and a merry Christmas are the two.
What the poor creatures did that were born and grown before the clock of the Christian era struck "one" nobody can tell. We all need such days—the young that they may never grow old; the old that they may always be young. I think it might be written among the beatitudes:
"Blessed are they whose sons are all boys and whose daughters are all girls."
It was when Cæsar Augustus decreed that "all the world" should be enrolled—an edict never to be repeated on the planet until the coming of the Seventh Angel—and everybody was on the move to report in his native city—for in that country the leap from a howling wilderness to a city was as easy as a panther's—if it didn't howl it had a mayor!
Among those who came to Bethlehem on this errand were a man and his wife from Nazareth, and, as the tavern was crowded, they went to the barn, and there the Chief of Children was born, and cradled in a manger.
And that was the first Christmas.
There were Angels without, who brought their glory with them, and they stood and sang, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to the men of good will!"
And that was the first Christmas Carol.
A few Shepherds watching their flocks not far away came just as they were, in their every-day clothes, and wondered and glorified, and were glad.