“Of other giving Swift writes: ‘Making agreeable presents ... [is] an affair as delicate as most in the course of life,’ and he never fails to caution Stella against a new danger, that of losing her money in Christmas gaming. Concerning this custom Walpole wrote on twelfth-day in 1752: ‘His Majesty, according to annual custom, offered myrrh, frankincense, and a small bit of gold; and, at night, in commemoration of the three kings or wise men, the King and royal family played at hazard ... his most sacred Majesty won three guineas, and his R. H. the duke, three thousand four hundred pounds.’
“Concerning gifts, Walpole instances the charming presents devised for a little girl of ten by the Duchess of Suffolk and Lord Chetwynd, aged seventy-six and eighty, respectively; and he prescribes the theory, ‘Pray remember not to ruin yourself in presents. A very slight gift of a guinea or two obliges as much, is more fashionable, and not a moment sooner forgotten than a magnificent one; and then you may cheaply oblige the more persons.’”
“Such being the earlier history and tradition of the festival, what should be its modern spirit?” I inquired.
“For that, too,” continued Professor Maturin, “there is no lack of leading. Charles Lamb is frankly for ‘the good old munching system ... ingens gloria apple-pasty-orum,’ and does not hesitate to prescribe for Christmas, 1800, ‘snipes exactly at nine, punch at ten, with argument; difference of opinion expected about eleven, perfect unanimity, with some haziness and dimness, before twelve.’
“Thomas Love Peacock makes his Rev. Dr. Opimian say, about 1860: ‘I think much of Christmas and all its associations. I like the idea of the yule-log. I like the festoons of holly on the walls and windows; the dance under the mistletoe; the gigantic sausage; the baron of beef; the vast globe of plum pudding; the tapping of the old October; the inexhaustible bowl of punch.... I like the idea of what has gone, and I can still enjoy the reality of what remains.’
“Dr. Opimian further prescribes for the season such merry tales as his contemporary ‘Ingoldsby Legends’ provide in the distinguished career, but inglorious end, of ‘The Spectre of Tappington,’ which nightly made away with the trousers of the guest who occupied the haunted room at Christmas. All of these same hearty traditions are perpetuated by Fenimore Cooper in his description of Christmas festivity in ‘The Pioneers.’”
“Does not Washington Irving,” I asked, “have an important place in the tradition?”
“Precisely so,” continued Professor Maturin; “it was reserved for him, from his knowledge of Dutch and English customs, to make a new selection and recombination of Christmas ideals so appealing as to have set the standard ever since. His half-dozen Christmas papers dwell, with his characteristic love of the past, on the superior honesty, kindliness, and joy of the old holiday customs. No refinement of elegance can replace, he maintains, the family gatherings, the perfecting of sympathies, the realization of mutual dependence, and the increase of mutual affection, instinct in the ancient hospitality. To his own question as to the worth of Christmas observances, he gives the most characteristic answer in his philosophy—there is plenty of wisdom in the world, but we need more sound pleasure to beguile care and increase benevolence and good humor.
“It was this ethical intention to reëstablish the old tradition of kindliness that Dickens followed, with the result of again endearing the season, as Mr. Howells has said, ‘to the whole English-speaking world, with a wider and deeper hold than it had ever had before ... the chief agency in universalizing the great Christmas holiday as we now have it.’
“There is no need to remind any one how the whole baker’s dozen of Dickens’s ‘Christmas Stories’ delightfully champion hard work and good cheer, sympathy and benevolence, affection and self-sacrifice, and even the softening effects of suffering and sorrow—sometimes by directly illustrating these blessings, again by picturing the misery of their opposites. His satires at pretended benevolence and commercial greed, and his championship of the common man, answer in advance all later criticisms concerning the burden and the cost of Christmas and current complaints over popular ingratitude.