“Silent night! Holy night,
All is calm. All is light.
’Round young Virgin mother and child
Holy infant so tender and mild,
Sleep in heavenly peace.”
Finally the car started off, moving slowly down the road with the music creeping back to us through the clear air:
“Hark, the Herald angels sing.”
Our folks heard them at the next neighbor’s, far down the road. I have no doubt many a weary and troubled soul waking in the night at the sound went back to happier dreams of a better tomorrow. It was a beautiful thing to do, and never before did Christmas morning come to us so happily as this year.
I thought of these things all day, and the conviction has grown upon me that what we people who live in the country need more than anything else is something of this spirit which binds people together and holds them. We need it in our work, our play and in our battles. It is another name for patriotism, which means the unselfish love of country. The Duke of Wellington said the battle of Waterloo was won on the playgrounds of England, where boys were trained in manly sports. He told only half of it, for the spirit which turned that play into war came from the singers who in English villages sang Christmas carols or English folk songs. In like manner the wonderful national spirit which the German nation has shown has been developed largely through the singing societies which have expressed German feeling in song. In 1792 a band of Frenchmen marched from the south of France to Paris dragging cannon through a cloud of dust and singing the Marseillaise hymn, and even to this day the loyal spirit of France traces down from those dusty singers. Do I mean to say that farmers can come together and sing their troubles away? No, for some of the troubles have grown so strong and penetrated so deep that they must be pulled out by the roots. What I do say is that before we can hope to remove these troubles and make our conditions what they should be we must feel toward our friends and neighbors the sentiments which are expressed in these beautiful old songs. The time has gone by when we can hope to obtain what we should have from society as individuals playing a cold, selfish game of personal interest. We have tried that for many years and steadily lost out on it. The only hope for us now is in a true community spirit of loyalty and sacrifice, instead of the effort to get all we can for ourselves. That is why I say that there should be something of Christmas in every day of the year, and why I give these holiday memories.