Woods and hills and everything
Bear witness we are merry.”
Or Master Milton, again, Latin secretary to the council, author of the famous Iconoclastes, shield (or, as some would have put it, official scold) of the Commonwealth, the scourge of prelacy and conqueror of Salmasius—he was orthodox surely; yet what of Arcades and Cornus? Master Milton, too, had written holiday masques, and, what is more, they had been acted; nay, he had even been known more than once, on no less authority than his worshipful nephew, Master Philips, “to make so bold with his body as to take a gaudy-day” with the gay sparks of Gray’s Inn. Alas! such carnal-minded effusions belonged to the unregenerate days of both these worthy brethren, when they still dwelt in the tents of the ungodly, before they had girded on the sword of Gideon and gone forth to smite the Amalekite hip and thigh. Vainly might the menaced festival look for aid in that direction. So far from saying a word in its favor, they would now have been fiercest in condemnation, if only to cover their early backsliding; if only to avert any suspicion that they still hankered after the fleshpots. Poor Christmas was doomed.
So, by act of Parliament, “our joyful’st feast” was solemnly stricken out of the calendar, cashiered from its high pre-eminence among the holidays of the year, and degraded to the ranks of common days. All its quaint bravery of holly-berries and ivy-leaves was stripped from it, its jolly retinue of boars’ heads and wassail-bowls, of Yule-clogs and mistletoe-boughs, of maskers and mummers, of waits and carols, Lords of Misrule and Princes of Christmas, sent packing. Then began “the fiery persecution of poor mince-pie throughout the land; plum-porridge was denounced as mere popery, and roast-beef as anti-Christian.” ’Twas a fatal, a perfidious, a short-lived triumph. The nation, shocked in its most cherished traditions, repudiated the hideous doctrine; the British stomach, deprived of its holiday beef and pudding, so to speak, revolted. The reign of the righteous was speedily at an end. History, with her usual shallowness, ascribes to General Monk the chief part in the Restoration; it was really brought about by that short-sighted edict of the 24th of December, 1652. Charles or Cromwell, king or protector—what cared honest Hodge who ruled and robbed him? But to forego his Christmas porridge—that was a different matter; and Britons never should be slaves. So, just eight years after it had been banished, Christmas was brought back again with manifold rejoicing and bigger wassail-bowls and Yule-clogs than ever; and, as if to make honorable amends for its brief exile, the Lord of Misrule himself was crowned and seated on the throne, where, as we all know, to do justice to his office, if he never said a foolish thing he never did a wise one.
And from that time to this Christmas has remained a thoroughly British institution, as firmly entrenched in the national affections, as generally respected, and perhaps as widely appreciated as Magna Charta itself. Sit on Christmas day! A British Parliament now would as soon think of sitting on the Derby day. To how many of their constituents have the two festivals any widely differing significance perhaps it would be wise not to inquire too closely. Each is a holiday—that is, a day off work, a synonym for “a good time,” a little better dinner than usual, and considerably more beer. Like the children, “they reflect nothing at all about the matter, nor understand anything in it beyond the cake and orange.” “La justice elle-même,” says Balzac, “se traduit aux yeux de la halle par le commissaire—personage avec lequel elle se familiarise.” His epigram the author of Ginx’s Baby may translate for us—English epigrams, like English plays, being for the most part matter of importation free of duty; e.g., that famous one in Lothair about the critic being a man who has failed in literature or art, another consignment from Balzac—when he makes Ginx’s theory of government epitomize itself as a policeman. So Ginx’s notion of Christmas, we suspect, is apt to be beef and beer and Boxing-night—with perhaps a little more beer.
Certainly the attachment of the British public to these features of the day—we are considering it for the moment in the light in which a majority of non-Catholics look upon it, apparently, as a merely social festival, and not at all in its religious aspect (though to a Catholic, of course, the two are as indistinguishably blended as the rose and the perfume of the rose)—has never been shaken. If one may judge from a large amount of the English fiction which at this season finds its way to the American market—and the novels of to-day, among a novel-reading people, are as straight and sure a guide to its heart as were ever its ballads in the time of old Fletcher of Saltoun—if one may judge from much of English Christmas literature, these incidents of the day are, if not the most important, certainly the most prominent and popular. What we may call the Beef and Beer aspect of the season these stories are never tired of glorifying and exalting. Dickens is the archpriest of this idolatry, which, indeed, he in a measure invented, or at least brought into vogue; and his Christmas Stories, as most of his stories, fairly reek with the odors of the kitchen and the tap-room. Material comfort, and that, too, usually of a rather coarse kind, is the universal theme, and even the charity they are supposed to inculcate can scarcely be called a moral impulse, so much as the instinct of a physical good-nature, well-fed and content with itself and the world—of a good-humored selfishness willing to make others comfortable, because thereby it puts away from itself the discomfort of seeing them otherwise. It is a kind of charity which, in another sense than that of Scripture, has to cover a multitude of sins.
One may say this of Dickens, without at all detracting from his many great qualities as a writer, that he has done more, perhaps, than any other writer to demoralize and coarsen the popular notion of what Christmas is and means; to make of his readers at best but good-humored pagans with lusty appetites for all manner of victuals and an open-handed readiness to share their good things with the first comer. These are no doubt admirable traits; but one gets a little tired of having them for ever set forth as the crown and completion of Christian excellence, the sum and substance of all that is noble and exalted in the sentiment of the season. Let us enjoy our Christmas dinner by all means; let the plum-pudding be properly boiled and the turkey done to a turn, and may we all have enough to spare a slice or two for a poorer neighbor! But must we therefore sit down and gobble turkey and pudding from morning till night? Should we hang up a sirloin and fall down and worship it? Is that all that Christmas means? Turn from the best of these books to this exquisite little picture of Christmas Eve in a Catholic land:
“Christmas is come—the beautiful festival, the one I love most, and which gives me the same joy as it gave the shepherds of Bethlehem. In real truth, one’s whole soul sings with joy at this beautiful coming of God upon earth—a coming which here is announced on all sides of us by music and by our charming nadalet[[110]] Nothing at Paris can give you a notion of what Christmas is with us. You have not even the midnight Mass. We all of us went to it, papa at our head, on the most perfect night possible. Never was there a finer sky than ours was that midnight—so fine that papa kept perpetually throwing back the hood of his cloak, that he might look up at the sky. The ground was white with hoar-frost, but we were not cold; besides, the air, as we met it, was warmed by the bundles of blazing torchwood which our servants carried in front of us to light us on our way. It was delightful, I do assure you; and I should like you to have seen us there on our road to church, in those lanes with the bushes along their banks as white as if they were in flower. The hoar-frost makes the most lovely flowers. We saw a long spray so beautiful that we wanted to take it with us as a garland for the communion-table, but it melted in our hands; all flowers fade so soon! I was very sorry about my garland; it was mournful to see it drop away and get smaller and smaller every minute.”
It is Eugénie de Guérin who writes thus—that pure and delicate spirit so well fitted to feel and value all that is beautiful and touching in this most beautiful and touching service of the church. To come from the one reading to the other is like being lifted suddenly out of a narrow valley to the free air and boundless views of a mountain-top; like coming from the gaslight into the starlight; it is like hearing the song of the skylark after the twitter of the robin—a sound pleasant and cheery enough in itself, but not elevating, not inspiring, not in any way satisfying to that hunger after ideal excellence which is the true life of the spirit, and which strikes the true key-note of this festal time.
But Eugénie de Guérin is perhaps too habitual a dweller on those serene heights to furnish a fair comparison; let us take a homelier picture from a lower level. It is still in France; this time in Burgundy, as the other was in Languedoc: