"Oh, the mad days that I have spent," says old Justice Shallow, "and to see how many of mine old acquaintance are dead!" Yet still we love these commemorations and hail them, each and all, as the year restores them to us, shorn and scarred as they are. And though many and many a time the welcome has faltered on our lips as we "turned from all they brought to all they could not bring," still by God's help we will enjoy them, as yet we may,—drawing closer to us, and with the more reason, the friends that still remain, and draining to the last—
"One draught, in memory of many
A joyous banquet past."
The revels of merry England are fast subsiding into silence, and her many customs wearing gradually away. The affectations and frivolities of society, as well as its more grave and solemn pursuits,—the exigences of fashion, and the tongue of the pedagogue,—are alike arrayed against them; and, one by one, they are retreating from the great assemblies where mankind "most do congregate," to hide themselves in remote solitudes and rural nooks. In fact, that social change which has enlarged and filled the towns at the expense of the country, which has annihilated the yeomanry of England, and drawn the estated gentleman from the shelter of his ancestral oaks, to live upon their produce in the haunts of dissipation, has been, in itself, the circumstance most unfavorable to the existence of many of them, which delight in bye-ways and sheltered places, which had their appropriate homes in the old manor house or the baronial hall. Yet do they pass lingeringly away. Traces of most of them still exist, and from time to time reappear even in our cities and towns; and there are probably scarcely any which have not found some remote district or other of these islands in which their influence is still acknowledged, and their rites duly performed. There is something in the mind of man which attaches him to ancient superstitions even for the sake of their antiquity, and endears to him old traditions even because they are old. We cannot readily shake off our reverence for that which our fathers have reverenced so long, even where the causes in which that reverence originated are not very obvious or not very satisfactory. We believe that he who shall aid in preserving the records of these vanishing observances, ere it be too late, will do good and acceptable service in his generation; and such contribution to that end as we have in our power it is the purpose of these volumes to bestow. Of that taste for hunting out the obsolete which originates in the mere dry spirit of antiquarianism, or is pursued as a display of gladiatorial skill in the use of the intellectual weapons, we profess ourselves no admirers. But he who pursues in the track of a receding custom,—which is valuable either as an historical illustration or because of its intrinsic beauty, moral or picturesque,—is an antiquary of the beneficent kind; and he who assists in restoring observances which had a direct tendency to propagate a feeling of brotherhood and a spirit of benevolence, is a higher benefactor still. Right joyous festivals there have been amongst us, which England will be none the merrier—and kindly ones which she will be none the better—for losing. The following pages will give some account of that season which has, at all times since the establishment of Christianity, been most crowded with observances, and whose celebration is still the most conspicuous and universal with us, as well as throughout the whole of Christendom.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The late John Malcolm, of Edinburgh.
Part First.
THE CHRISTMAS SEASON.
