“Mysticism,”—life is clothed in mystery! The birth of the poorest, meanest child, in the shabbiest attic of your street of ill repute, is a mystery far too sacred for man to divine. How shall we smile at those who find in Christmas the consummate Mystery, the holiest miracle that the weary, wondering earth has known?
The holiest, the deepest, and yet the simplest! For Christmas Day is pre-eminently a day for entering the kingdom as a child. The door of the stable is low; and we must stoop as we enter hand in hand with little folk,—so sweet, so humble, so dear to everyday, plain home-living is this Christian season of merrymaking.
The august features of the wise astrologers of the East relax, as they turn from the Star to the face of the Child. The tax-gatherer forgets his calling, and at last joins the throng of Christmas joy-makers and joy-receivers, who find kindly impersonation in “Santa Claus.”
Let the card-dealers, then, and the writers of pretty fancies—the students of folk-lore, the devotees of mystic rite—have their way; let the tradesman prosper in the time of gift-giving; and every toiler in the wide business field reap his golden harvest or glean his few sheaves, as he may. We will not cast out from the Spirit of Christmas Present its solemnity, its prosperity, its simple and innocent gayety. There is no danger at present that Christmas shall be too much observed in America: there is only the danger that its good cheer and deeper thought, its impulse of benevolence and good will toward men, shall be confined to a few days or weeks of the year.
Extremes of enthusiasm will ripen into earnest living. It is narrowness and coldness, the mere humanitarian spirit of good morals, the sneer at Christmas sentiment, that are to be dreaded. It is the spirit of “Christmas all the year round” that is to be prayed for.
