The "Good Night" in Spain
WHO is he that has seen a Nativity and has not felt it? Who has not found himself in his own home, in his own domain, there in that fantastic world of cork and gummed paper, with its shadowy caves, where a saintly anchorite prays before a crucifix—sweet and simple anachronism, like that of the hunter who in a thicket of rosemary shrubs aims his gun at a partridge large as a stork perched on the tower of a hermitage, or that of the smuggler with his Spanish cloak and slouch hat, who with a load of tobacco hides behind a paper rock to give free passage to the three kings journeying in all their glory along the lofty summits of those cork Alps? Who does not feel an inexplicable pleasure at seeing that little donkey, laden with firewood, passing over a proud bridge of paper stone? And that meadow of milled green baize in which feed so tranquilly those little white lambs! Does not that hoar frost so well imitated with steel filings turn you cold? Do you not take comfort in the heat of that ruddy bonfire which the shepherds are kindling to warm the Holy Child? Who is not startled to discover, under the strips of glass which represent so well a frozen river, the fish, the tortoises, the crabs, reposing with all ease upon a bed of golden sand and swollen to dimensions unknown to naturalists? Here is a crab under whose claws can pass an eel, his neighbor, as under the arch of a bridge. Here is a colossal rat regarding with a bullying air a diminutive and peaceful kitten. Over yonder a donkey is disputing with a rabbit about the respective magnificence of their ears, which are, in fact, of the same size, and a bull is holding a similar discussion, on the subject of horns, with a snail, while a stout duck refuses to yield the honors to a rickety swan. And these birds of all colors, gladdening that profound forest of little evergreens which forms the background of this enchanting scene, would you not think that they had gathered here from the four quarters of the earth? Does it not make you happy to see the shepherds dance? And, above all, do you not adore with tender reverence the Divine Mystery contained in that humble porch with its thatch of straw and, in its depths, a halo or glory of light? I say it frankly,—on that holy and merry Christmas Eve, all these things seem to me to live and feel; these little figures of clay, shaped by clumsy hands, placed there with such faith and such devotion, seem to me to receive breath and being from the joy and enthusiasm that reign. The star which guides the Magi, tinsel and glass though it is, seems to me to shine and shoot forth rays. The aureole surrounding the manger where the Holy Child is lying seems to glow not as a transparency with candles placed behind it, but with a reflection of celestial light. The tambourines and drums and songs give out melodies as simple and as pleasing as if they were echoes of those heard by the shepherds on that first blest Christmas Eve.
Could there be a festival more joyous, more natural, more tender in appeal and at the same time more exalted in significance—the birth of the Child in the rude stable, with only shepherds to wish him joy; innocence, poverty, simplicity, the very foundations of the magnificent structure of Christianity? Well may children and the poor keep a merry Christmas. They bring to God the gifts which please him best,—purity, faith and love. O, night, well called in Spain "The Good Night," blither than the carnival and holy as Holy Week itself!
From Holy Night, by Fernan Caballero. Translated
by Katharine Lee Bates
Christmas in Rome
WHAT is the meaning of our English Christmas? What makes it seem so truly Northern, national, and homely, that we do not like to keep the feast upon a foreign shore? These questions grew upon me as I stood one Advent afternoon beneath the Dome of Florence....
The same thought pursued me as I drove to Rome by Siena, still and brown, uplifted mid her russet hills and wilderness of rolling plain; by Chiusi, with its sepulchral city of a dead and unknown people; through the chestnut forests of the Apennines; by Orvieto's rock, Viterbo's fountains, and the oak-grown solitudes of the Ciminian heights, from which one looks across the broad Lake of Bolsena and the Roman plain. Brilliant sunlight, like that of a day in late September, shone upon the landscape, and I thought—Can this be Christmas? Are they bringing mistletoe and holly on the country carts into the towns in far-off England? Is it clear and frosty there, with the tramp of heels upon the flag, or snowing silently, or foggy, with a round red sun and cries of warning at the corners of the streets?
I reached Rome on Christmas-eve in time to hear midnight services in the Sistine Chapel and St. John Lateran, to breathe the dust of decayed shrines, to wonder at doting cardinals begrimed with snuff, and to resent the open-mouthed bad taste of my countrymen, who made a mockery of these palsy-stricken ceremonies. Nine cardinals going to sleep, nine train-bearers talking scandal, twenty huge, handsome Switzers in the dress devised by Michael Angelo, some ushers, a choir caged off by gilded railings, the insolence and eagerness of polyglot tourists, plenty of wax candles dripping on people's heads, and a continual nasal drone proceeding from the gilded cage, out of which were caught at intervals these words, and these only—"Sæcula Sæculorum, amen." Such was the celebrated Sistine service. The chapel blazed with light, and very strange did Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, his Sibyls, and his Prophets appear upon the roof and wall above this motley and unmeaning crowd.