CHAPTER XXIX.
CHRISTMAS FESTIVITIES AND HOME-MADE CHRISTMAS GIFTS.
AMONG all the days we celebrate Christmas stands first and foremost in our thoughts, the holiday of holidays. Coming in the season of frost and snow it brings a cheering warmth to our hearts that defies the icy atmosphere, and the feeling of kindliness and good will toward everyone, which it awakens, seems in response to the words the angels sang on our first Christmas, “On earth peace, good will toward men.”
Christmas is not merely a day set apart for feasting, giving and receiving presents, and for merrymaking. The day on which we celebrate the birth of our Lord is a time of rejoicing for rich and poor alike, and Christmas is Christmas still, although we may receive and can offer no presents and our feast is humble indeed.
Feeling this, let us keep the Christmas festival as it should be kept, right happily and merrily. Let us decorate our homes to the best of our ability in honor of the day, and supply all deficiencies with happy hearts and smiling faces.
A friend of the writer’s once remarked, as she busied herself with some Christmas-cards she was preparing to send to the hospitals, “I always like to tie a sprig of evergreen on each card; it looks and smells so Christmasy.” And so it does. Even a few pieces of evergreen, tacked over doorways or branching out from behind picture-frames, give a room a festive, Christmas-like appearance that nothing else can, and as evergreens are so plentiful here in America there are few houses that need be without their Christmas decorations. Holly, too, with its brilliant red berries peeping cheerily forth from their shelter of prickly leaves, adds brightness to the other adornments, and when the white-berried mistletoe can also be obtained all the time-honored materials for the Christmas decorations are supplied.
Though we are Americans, our ancestors came from many nations, and we have therefore a right and claim to any custom we may admire in other countries. We may take our Christmas celebrations from any people who observe the day and combining many, evolve a celebration which in its variety will be truly American.
From Germany we have already taken our Christmas-tree; from Belgium our Christmas-stocking; Santa Claus hails from Holland, and old England sends us the cheery greeting, Merry Christmas!