If there isn't any Santa Claus, what does he put all the sample toys in the stores for every Christmas so boys and girls can see what they want? If he doesn't fill the stockings, who does, I'd like to know. Some folks say that father and mother do it—but s'posin, they do, it's only to help Santa Claus sometimes when he's late or overworked, or something like that.
The Spirit of Christmas is Santa Claus—else how could he get around to everybody in the whole world at exactly the same time of the night?
There is a new high-power motor in my garage. It came to me yesterday—Christmas. It is very beautiful, and it cost a great deal of money, a very great deal. If we were in the Little Old Town it would take us all out to Aunt Em's farm in ten minutes. (It always took her an hour to drive in with the old spotted white mare.)
I am quite happy to have this wonderful new horse of today, and there is some warmth inside of me as I walk around it in the garage while Henry, its keeper, flicks with his chamois every last vestige of dust from its shiny sides.
And yet ... how gladly would I give it up if only I could have been in my feather bed last night—if I could have awakened at daybreak and crept softly, red-flanneled and barefooted, to the parlor door—if I could have groped for grandmother's stocking and felt its lumpy shape respond to my eager touch—and if I could have known the thrill of that dapple-grey rocking-horse when I flung my arms around its neck and buried my face in its silken mane!
Butter, Eggs, Ducks, Geese
It seems mighty convenient to telephone your grocer to send up a pound of butter and have it come all squeezed tight into a nice square-cornered cardboard box whose bright and multi-colored label assures you that the butter has been properly deodorized fumigated, washed, sterilized, antisepticized and conforms in every other respect to the Food and Drugs Act, Serial 1762973-A. You read the label again and feel reasonably safe at meals.
Huh! Precious little grandmother knew about that kind of butter!
Hers came in a basket—a great big worn-brown-and-shiny, round bottom, willow basket, hand-wove. It didn't come in any white-and-gold delivery wagon, either. It was delivered by a round-faced, rosy-checked, gingham-gowned picture of health, whose apron-strings barely met around the middle—for Frau Hummel brought it herself—after having first milked the cows with her own hands and wielded the churning-stick with her own stout German arms. She had the butter all covered up with fresh, sweet, white-linen cloths-and hand-moulded into big rolls—each roll wrapped in its own immaculate cloth—and when that cloth was slowly pulled away so that grandmother could stick the point of a knife in the butter and test it on her tongue, you could see the white salt all over the roll—and even the imprint of the cloth-threads ... Good? ... Why, you could eat it without bread!