Christmas builders

by Charles Edward Jefferson

One cannot very well manufacture gifts himself, and therefore some one else must make them. One cannot carry gifts himself,—at least not all of them,—and therefore some one else must carry them. As Christmas was just a day and as it came only once a year, all the days preceding Christmas became frenzied and feverish, and men and women by the thousands were compelled to work so fast and through such long hours that they were not able to reach the palace at all. They had their faces in the direction of it, but they were all so jaded and out of breath that when the palace came in sight they had not energy sufficient to enjoy the beauty of it, and could only look on half dazed and benumbed at the more fortunate mortals who had been able to get inside of its golden doors.

Letter-carriers, knowing by experience what Christmas really was, began to lament long before the month of December came, seeing in their imagination the huge bundles of letters and papers and packages which must be carried up the crowded roadway of the days which led to the Christmas palace. Expressmen also never spoke enthusiastically of Christmas, but scowled at the mere mention of it, as though it were a prison instead of a palace, a sort of punishment which was inexorably inflicted on them at the end of every year. Dressmakers were also sickened even by the thought of Christmas, for just before that beautiful day every woman wanted a new coat or a new waist or a new skirt, and everybody wanted it at once, so that she would be ready for Christmas, the result being that the dressmakers and all the girls in their shops were so driven and so roundly scolded by impatient and sharp-tongued customers that it was really difficult on the twenty-fifth of December to feel charitable and forgiving and kind to all. Christmas Day was a palace filled with beautiful sights and sounds, but the fact is that many people never got into it, but sat down fagged and despondent at the door. Clerks in the big stores had no good word for Christmas, notwithstanding its beauty and its hallowed associations. Some of them, I fear, hated it, especially the young women clerks, for the hours were so long and the crowds in the store were so big and the air was so bad, and so many of the people were so unreasonable and inconsiderate and crotchety, and the cars at evening were so crowded and the nights seemed so short, that clerks were heard saying to one another, “Won’t you be glad when Christmas is over?”

Many children even grew to be afraid of Christmas. They dreaded it as though it were a huge goblin or monster casting a shadow over the days which preceded it. The little delivery boys at the grocery stores became so weary lugging good things for Christmas dinners that they could not laugh real heartily or enjoy their own dinner when Christmas Day came. It was so late the night before when the last basket was delivered that the boys fell into a sleep too deep even for dreams. They lost the rare and radiant pleasure which is the birthright of boys,—the joy of dreaming of what a good time is coming on Christmas. And as for the little girls who worked all day long tying up bundles in the basements of the great stores, they did their best to keep alive in their hearts a genuine love of the birthday of Jesus, but, alas, in many cases their heroic efforts were in vain. “I just hate Christmas!” said one little girl to another at the end of a long and wearisome day.

Things have indeed come to a tragic pass when a thought of the one most splendid and gorgeous day of the entire year quenches the sparkle in a child’s eyes and crushes every feeling of ecstatic anticipation out of a child’s heart. It was indeed a spectacle to cause one to stop and ponder, this widespread shrinking and shuddering at the very thought of Christmas, this long-drawn sigh of relief when Christmas was really over.

And when I looked around and saw how all the days immediately preceding Christmas were thrown into tumult and confusion in which thousands of men and women and boys and girls were wounded, and many of them hurt with an injury that was deep; and when I looked at the days succeeding Christmas and saw them covered with the wreckage which Christmas had created, the holiday season resembling indeed a great battlefield on which a terrific battle had been fought, the maimed and bleeding lying moaning, waiting for the healing influences of a new year, I began to ask myself, What is the cause of this great tragedy, and how can humanity be delivered from so great a scourge?

It seemed unendurable that the anniversary of the birthday of Jesus should be permitted to wreck the happiness of so many hearts and homes. If Christmas stands for anything it stands for joy. “Peace and good will”—this is the heart of Christmas. The first Christmas was ushered in by a burst of song, and the last Christmas to be celebrated on our planet will no doubt dawn in the same heavenly way. “Peace on earth, good will toward men,” so the angels sang, and keep on singing, and will continue to sing forever. “Do not be afraid,” said the visitor from the skies, “for I bring you good tidings of great joy.” Fear was banished when Jesus came, and so were all the dark and dismal spectres of the mind. The shepherds were glad, and so were the aged saints in the temple, and so were the scholars from the East, and so was everybody—except Herod—who came to know of the arrival of the wonderful baby. Human hearts began to sing when Jesus came, and nothing must be allowed to reduce the volume or the sweetness of the music. What is wrong, I asked, with Christmas that it has become a sort of discord in the harmony of the year? Why should the one most lustrous day of all the months loom dark and terrible before so many eyes? Why should pain and sorrow flow like swollen and dismal streams from a day created by infinite love for making human hearts rejoice?

On investigation I discovered that Christmas had simply become too small to accommodate the Christmas sentiment of the world. The dimensions of the palace were not sufficiently spacious to allow all of us to get in without treading on one another. One day was not large enough for the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Twenty-four hours were not sufficient to allow everybody to practise the precept of Jesus, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” The Christmas heart had outgrown the narrow limits of the Christmas day, and the problem of the world in the first decade of the twentieth century was, How can Christmas be enlarged?

The query raised a host of interesting questions wherever it was propounded. Men began to ask, Is it possible to expand the limits of Christmas, to extend the dimensions of its golden rooms, to widen the area on which it stands? For instance, would it be possible to make Christmas cover two days instead of one? How would it do to say that Christmas is the 24th and 25th of December, or the 25th and 26th of December? At first glance one would declare that this is quite impossible, for the reason that Jesus was born on the 25th of December and therefore we have no right to include in our Christmas celebration any other day. But right here we face a curious and puzzling fact. Nobody knows on what particular day of December Jesus of Nazareth was born.

The question has always been a matter of dispute, even among those who might presumably be best fitted to know. He may have been born the 24th or the 26th, or even the 27th or 28th. Indeed, for all we know he may have been born on any day of our month of December, so that we have a right to build the palace of Christmas on any day of the month, for every day is equally eligible for consecration, and in order to be sure that we have the right day, why not allow Christmas to cover the entire month? The ancients were so fearful of slighting one of the gods that after they had erected altars to all the gods whose names they knew, they sometimes erected an altar to the unknown god, in this way being sure of not omitting from the scope of their reverence any god who had a right to be included. Why not make sure of having the right day in December by building the Christmas palace upon them all? Thirty-one foundation stones instead of one would support a really royal structure, and surely a palace filling the dimensions of a month would be none too large for the commemoration of the most stupendous event in human history—the birth of Jesus.

By thus expanding Christmas we should not get into such a pet and fury as some of us now do. We should have time to think about the meaning of this great event for which Christmas stands, and we should also become more accustomed to the exercise of the Christmas virtues. As things now are we have scarcely time enough to bring the Christmas graces to fullest bloom. One day is quite too short. To entertain and nourish beautiful and charitable thoughts, to kindle and foster kind and forgiving feelings, to set the heart singing and the spirit adoring, for all this a single day is hardly long enough. If we should think such thoughts every day for a week and a month, our minds would get accustomed to these high altitudes and would not sink back so readily to lower and unworthy levels of mental and emotional conduct. If we should go right on for a month forgiving our enemies and breathing charity for all, we might get so habituated to these heavenly feelings as never again to be willing to give them up. A month is none too large as a foundation on which to build a mansion spacious enough fitly to commemorate the coming of our Lord.