Now, can anyone explain—or defend, in face of all this, our preference for a shallow local myth about St. Nicholas, and the corruption of that into a mere comic supplement character; a bulbous benevolent goblin, red-nosed and gross, doing impossible tricks with reindeers and chimneys, and half the time degraded to a mere adjunct of nursery government? Why do we think it beautiful? Or interesting? Or beneficial? The children like it, we say.
Children like what they are used to, generally. Also, like older people, they are prone to like what isn't good for them. They like brandy-drops among sweetmeats, but that is no reason we should supply them.
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This brings us to a strange characteristic of most of us; we seem to prefer small cheap shallow outside things to the deep glowing beauty of life. We seem afraid to take life at its splendid best; choosing rather to live in a litter of petty ideas and feelings, and save the big ones for Sundays—or annual holidays.
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Yet in our hearts we all love great sweeps of emotion; and children especially. Prof. Thomas, of Chicago, has given us a sidelight on this in his clever book about women, "Sex and Society." He shows how in our long pre-social period we were accustomed to strong excitement, long hours of quivering suspense, mad rushes of blind fear, and orgies of wild triumph. Our nerve channels were like the beds of mountain streams, in dry warm lands; lying shallow or even empty at times; and again roaring torrents. So that nowadays, on the paved levels of our civilized life, the well-graduated dribble of small steady feelings, the organism itself cries out for a change in the pressure.
Children and young people feel this more than older ones; the very old, indeed, resent an unusual emotion. Yet when the young grow restless and fretfully "wish something would happen!" we rebuke them; from the heights of our enforced contentment; and call this natural and healthy feeling a mere "thirst for excitement."
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We need excitement. We have a vast capacity for it. It is a most useful thing—this excitement; and we ought to have more of it, much more. These young people are perfectly right in their uneasy feeling that it would be nice to have something happen!
With all this to bank on, why so overlook the splendid possibilities of Christmas? Why continue to make our helpless children's minds the submissive channels for poor worn-out thin old stories? Are there no gorgeous glowing truths in life—real life—now?