Have your fads; but copy me, my boy. Go on as I’ve begun.
Remember, when your table’s spread, the thousands that have none.
So, get your cheque-book out, my boy. Show you’re your father’s son.”
Says Young Christmas, “Well, I don’t mind if I do.”
After all, may it not be safe for us to decide that it is not the spirit but the fashion which alters, that the heart of Old Father Christmas still beats warm under the new garb wherein changing tastes have clothed him? Surely, if we have dropped some of the revellings of the past, we have dropped also the abuses which gradually made distasteful the horse play that attended those revelries.
On the whole the “new-fangled Christmas” has many points that show an improvement over the old-fashioned Christmas while in all essentials the two remain one and the same.
Some humble members of Father Christmas’ family still surviving to a small extent in London are the “waits” or wandering musicians who play dismal tunes under the windows of the well-to-do in the hopes of obtaining a few pennies.
These are direct descendants from the “jongleurs” or minstrels who in the Middle Ages celebrated the birth of Christ on Christmas night with song and dance.
The Christmas Waits.
Drawing by Kenny Meadows.
From the Illustrated London News, December, 1848.