About once a year we give thought to it. About once a year we seek to express it; and, pitiful and limited though that expression be, its forms are right.
These main forms of Christmas expressions are two-fold: the Spirit of Joy, of Celebration, of High Festival—the highest of all; and the Spirit of Giving. These are found wherever Christmas is kept, and make it, as it should be, the glory of the year. In joy and in giving we are most absolutely in line with the mainspring of the Universe: unmeasured happiness—happiness that cannot be quenched—cannot be kept to ourselves. What must run over and pour forth on other people: that is real Love, Christmas Love—and that, of course, finds physical expression in gay festivities and showering gifts.
Light, color, music—all that is sweet and gay and comforting; games, dances and performances that show the happy heart; and always the overflow—giving, giving, giving. That is the Spirit of Life.
It is the children's festival because children are more in line with the Life Spirit than weazened old folk: the child has the passionate thirst for joy which marks his high parentage.
Whatever else is true about the Central Power of the Universe, this is true: it is power. And it pours forth in Radiant Energy. All "inanimate nature," so called, expresses this Power, each form after its kind; and all animate nature, crowned with consciousness, not only expresses it, but feels it,—which is called "Living."
We human beings are the highest, finest, subtlest instrument on this planet to receive and to transmit these waves of pouring Power. When we feel it most we call it Happiness. In two ways it reaches our consciousness, as it comes in and as it goes out, via the sensory and motor nerves. The joy of receiving power is great: "stimulus" we call it. It comes to us along the avenues of sense and thrills us with increased well being. But this kind of pleasure is sadly limited by those sense nerves of ours. We are but a little tea-cup: we cannot hold much. The Music of the Spheres might pour round us; the light of a thousand suns, the sweetness of piled banks of flowers, and all honey and sugar and rich food: every sense can be fed to its little limit only—and there the Happiness stops.
We can only feel so much—coming in. But there seems to be no limit to the joy we feel when Power goes out through us. It seems so self-evident, so needless, to say "It is more blessed to give than to receive." Why of course it is: any child even knows that.
True, a child, having a fresh, unsated sensorium, can receive with more vivid pleasure than an adult—for a while. But it is easily over-tired, easily over-fed with sensation, easily bored and weary with receiving.
Not with giving! Every child delights to let out the Power which is in him—in her; delights to make and delights to give. Therefore, to children is this their festival: the busy weeks of happiness in making gifts, the swelling, glowing pride of giving them!
It's all right as far as it goes, but why, when such a thing is such transcendent splendid blessedness, why only once a year? Why should this beautiful experience in which we not only remember the birth of the man who taught the world most of love but even try to practise what He preached—why should it be limited to a mere memorial of His birthday, plastered over the remnants of ancient festivals of the return of the Sun God—the Goodness of the Earth Mother?