Till the world with glad hosannas,
Usher in the Prince of Peace!
CHRISTMAS DANGERS AND CHRISTMAS HINTS.
BY HELEN CAMPBELL.
Not that involved in the old saying, “A green Yule makes a fat churchyard,” nor even a hint at what Christmas cramming for both children and their elders may include. The physical results of either case are but a small portion of the evil that year by year has grown, so silently, so unsuspected, that to name evil in connection with the day seems both a misnomer and an outrage.
Is it climate or temperament, or simple inherited tendency that makes a golden mean impossible to the average American? A combination probably, combinations being the one thing to be taken for granted in any analysis of causes in man or nature. Life for Americans began in a reaction. Form and ceremony had hampered thought and hindered growth, and the earnest Puritan swept both aside once for all. A comfortable certainty was his that the question had but one side. His doxy was the only orthodoxy, and his doxy rejected Christmas as popish and owning the mark of the scarlet woman. We all know the joylessness, the somberness of those early days, in which human struggle was the only aim; never human delight or human pleasure in anything God had made. And we know as well, beyond any need of outline here, the sharp reaction from such numbing relief, and the conviction coming more and more surely to the surface, that enjoyment is as much our destiny as struggle, and that strength for the one comes in full acceptance of all legitimate forms of the other. But when enjoyment becomes a struggle, and we find distracted men and exhausted women crying as the holidays end, “Thank fortune Christmas is over with!” it seems high time to inquire why the friend whose entrance was hailed with acclamation suddenly appears in the character of the old man of the sea.