CHAPTER XXI
THE BABOUSHKA
There is a woman and she was wise,
Wofully wise was she.—ROBERT SERVICE.
Now Judea was a Province too, only smaller than Canada, and it was subject to Rome. In Judea, there was a town called Bethlehem, which means a house of bread. It must have been that wheat was plentiful.
But this Bethlehem was a small, small place, and the Romans cared not so much as one finger's fillip that a strange white star waited there for a little while to light up a birth-bed.
I do not know if the star did wait, but it should have, for this was the most momentous birth which history has recorded in that, for all time, it changed the world's ideals. Its influence could only be weighed with planets in the balances. The baby's name was to be Dayspring, and Wonderful, and Emmanuel.
... It is well the baby lay in a manger else a bullock might have crushed him with its hoof...
And having for its central symbols a mother and a baby, this cult of the Christ can never perish. Its ethics may change; its authority may wane; its history be impugned, but its symbols are eternal.
Our idea of gift-giving at the Christ-mass-tide has grown up from the offering made at the manger by the three wise men who came out from the East, Casper, Melchior, and Balthasar. The myrrh they offered to a mortal; the gold to a king, the frankincense to God.