Various

“ Colonel Carter's Christmas Tree
SOON there stole over every one in the room that sense of peace and contentment which always comes when one is at ease in an atmosphere where love and kindness reign. The soft light of the candles, the low, rich color of the simple room with its festoons of cedar and pine, the aroma of the rare wine, and especially the spicy smell of the hemlock warmed by the burning tapers—that rare, unmistakable smell which only Christmas greens give out and which few of us know but once a year, and often not then; all had their effect on host and guests. ”

“ IT is Christmas Eve in a large city of Bavaria. Along the streets, white with snow, in the confusion of the fog, among the rattle of carriages and the ringing of bells, the crowd hurries joyously towards the open-air roast-meat shops, the holiday stalls and booths. Brushing with a light rustling sound the shops decorated with ribbons and flowers, branches of green holly and whole spruce trees covered with pendants move along in the arms of passers-by, rising above all the heads, like a shadow of the Thuringian Forests, a touch of nature in the artificial life of winter. Night is falling. ”

“ In this greater order of time the long line of Christmas fires glows like a great truth binding the fleeting generations into a unity of faith and feeling. When we light our fire, we are one with our ancestors of a thousand years ago; we evade the isolation of our time and escape its provincial narrowness; we rejoin the race from whose growth we have unconsciously separated ourselves; we open long-unused rooms and are amazed to find how large the house of life is and how hospitable. It has hearth room for all experience and for every kind of emotion ”

“ But better than the Leipziger Messe, better even than a summer market at Freiburg or at Heidelberg, is a Christmas market in any one of the old German cities in the hill country, when the streets and the open places are covered with crisp clean snow, and the mountains are white with it, and the moon shines on the ancient houses, and the tinkle of sledge bells reaches you when you escape from the din of the market, and look down at the bustle of it from some silent place, a high window, perhaps, or the high empty steps leading into the cathedral. ”

“ But at each of those heavy groans the Fir Tree thought of a bright summer's day, or a starry winter's night in the forest, of Christmas eve, or of Humpty Dumpty, the only story that he knew and could relate. And at last the Tree was burned.
The boys played about the court; on the bosom of the youngest sparkled the gold star that the Tree had worn on the happiest evening of his life; but that was past, and the Tree was past, and the story also, past! past! for all stories must come to an end, some time or other. ”

“ Don't you think so, you old Fir Tree?"
"I am not old," said the Fir Tree; "there are many who are much older than I am."
"How came you here?" asked the Mice, "and what do you know?" They were most uncommonly curious. "Tell us about the most delightful place on earth. Have you ever been there? Have you been into the store room, where cheeses lie on the shelves, and bacon hangs from the ceiling; where one can dance over tallow candles; where one goes in thin and comes out fat?"
"I know nothing about that," said the Tree, "but I know the forest, where the sun shines and where the birds sing!" ”

“ The Christmas shopper suffers such a perversion of feeling that she hates the season she ought to bless; and the modern Santa Claus is so intent on the ingenuity or the cost of his gifts that he overlooks the only gift that warms the heart and translates Christmas into the vernacular.
If Christmas is to be saved from desecration and kept sacred, not only to faith but to friendship, its sentiment must be revived year by year in the joyful celebration of the old rites. ”

“ But now and then, once in four or five years perhaps, the feathery snow lies a foot deep, fresh-fallen, on the still country side and in the woods; and the waxing moon sheds her large light on all, and Nature holds her breath to wait for the happy day and tries to sleep, but cannot from sheer happiness and peace. Indoors, the fire is glowing on the wide hearth, a great bed of coals that will last all night and be enough, because it is not bitter weather, but only cold and clear and still, as it should be ”

“ Christmas Roses
WHEN our guests were gone Pelleas and I sat for some while beside the drawing-room fire. They had brought us a box of Christmas roses and these made sweet the room as if with a secret Spring—a Little Spring, such as comes to us all, now and then, through the year. And it was the enchanted hour, when Christmas eve has just passed and no one is yet awakened by the universal note of Get-Your-Stocking-Before-Breakfast.
"For that matter," Pelleas said, "every day is a loving cup, only some of us see only one of its handles: Our own." ”

“ Sights and sounds of Christmas there are in plenty in the Bowery. Balsam and hemlock and fir stand in groves along the busy thoroughfare, and garlands of green embower mission and dive impartially. Once a year the old street recalls its youth with an effort. It is true that it is largely a commercial effort; that the evergreen, with an instinct that is not of its native hills, haunts saloon-corners by preference; but the smell of the pine woods is in the air, and—Christmas is not too critical—one is grateful for the effort. ”

“ After nightfall, when the lights are burning in the busy market, and the homeward-bound crowds with baskets and heavy burdens of Christmas greens jostle one another with good-natured banter,—nobody is ever cross down here in the holiday season,—it is good to take a stroll through the Farm, if one has a spot in his heart faithful yet to the hills and the woods in spite of the latter-day city. ”

“ The echoes of ancient song and laughter give it a rich merriment, a ripe and tender wealth of associations. The mirth of one Christmas overflows into another until the sense of an unbroken joy, sinking and rising year after year like the tide of life in the fields, is borne in upon us. This sense of the unity of men in the great experiences steals back again into our hearts when we hear the old songs and read the old stories. ”

“ Of course nothing beautiful is difficult to believe. Even in the windows of the great florists, where the dear flowers pose as if for their portraits, we think that one looking closely through the glass may see in their faces the spirit of the Christmas roses. And when the flowers are made a gift of love the spirit is set free. Who knows? Perhaps the gracious little spirit is in us all, waiting for its liberty in our best gifts. ”

“ But whenever the necessity of their affairs compelled these Christmas guests into the bustling world, they were sure to encounter the young man who had so unaccountably been admitted to the festival. They saw him among the gay and fortunate; they caught the sunny sparkle of his eye; they heard the light and careless tones of his voice, and muttered to themselves with such indignation as only the aristocracy of wretchedness could kindle—"The traitor! The vile impostor! Providence, in its own good time, may give him a right to feast among us!" ”

“ The procession is out of sight, and fainter grow the sounds of the music and of the chanting. The last spectator to depart was a young monk, with a pale face and dreamy eyes, clad in the brown robes of his order, who during all this time had knelt on the cold stones at the monastery gate, his lips moving as his lean fingers grasped his rosary, and an expression of rapt devotion on his wan countenance, that would have done credit to some hermit saint of a thousand years ago when the crown of martyrdom was easy to find. ”

“ But to-day, and for some days past, the sound of hammer and chisel has been silent in the choir. Monks have bustled about the nave, dressing it up with holly boughs and bushes of yew, and preparing a stage for the sacred play they are going to exhibit on the feast-day. Christmas is not like Corpus Christi, and now the market-place stands inches deep in snow, so that the Miracles must be enacted beneath a roof instead of in the open air. And what place so appropriate as the cathedral, where poor people may have warmth and shelter while they see the show? ”

“ It brought the peasant and the peer together, and blended all ranks in one warm generous flow of joy and kindness. The old halls of castles and manor-houses resounded with the harp and the Christmas carol, and their ample boards groaned under the weight of hospitality. Even the poorest cottage welcomed the festive season with green decorations of bay and holly—the cheerful fire glanced its rays through the lattice, inviting the passenger to raise the latch, and join the gossip knot huddled round the hearth, beguiling the long evening with legendary jokes and oft-told Christmas tales. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Had incomparable Thomas Hood had the good fortune to have been born a cousin of ours, how with that fine fancy of his would he have shone at those Christmas festivals, eclipsing us all! Our family, through all its different branches, had ever been famous for bad voices, but good ears; and we think we hear ourselves—all those uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, and cousins—singing now! Easy it is to "warble melody" as to breathe air. But we hope harmony is the most difficult of all things to people in general, for to us it was impossible ”

“ Klutchem, who has honored us with his presence,—befo' I kindle with the torch of my love these little beacons which are to light each one of us on our way until another Christmas season overtakes us; befo', I say, these sparks burst into life, I want you fill yo' glasses (Chad had done that to the brim—even little Katy's) and drink to the health and happiness of the lady on my right, whose presence is always a benediction and whose loyal affection is one of the sweetest treasures of my life! ”

“ 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? ”

“ Christmas in Dreamthorp
THIS, then, is Christmas. Everything is silent in Dreamthorp. The smith's hammer reposes beside the anvil. The weaver's flying shuttle is at rest. Through the clear, wintry sunshine the bells this morning rang from the gray church tower amid the leafless elms, and up the walk the villagers trooped in their best dresses and their best faces—the latter a little reddened by the sharp wind: mere redness in the middle aged; in the maids wonderful bloom to the eyes of their lovers—and took their places decently in the ancient pews. ”

“ The festival, dear to the heart of sixty generations, has survived the commercial uses which it has been compelled to serve; the weariness of buying and selling in the vast bazaar of nations, stocked with all manner of things which stimulate the offerings of friendship; the wide-spread sense of irony which success without happiness breeds; the indifference of feeling and satiety of emotion fostered by great prosperity without that grace of culture which subdues wealth to the finer uses of life. ”

“ It is when the different ages, with their diversities of interest and growth, send their children to sit together before the Christmas fire that we realize how wide life is, and how impossible it is for any age to compass it. The faith against which one age shuts the door stands serene and smiling in the centre of the next age; the joy which one generation denies itself lies radiant on the face of a later generation ”

“ A Book of Christmas is a text-book of piety, friendship, merriment; a record of the real business of the race, which is not to make money, but to make life full and sweet and satisfying. It is a book to put into the hands of young men eager to start on the race and of young women to whom the future holds out a dazzling vision of a prosperity of pleasure and success ”

“ Over there, behind the gardens of the "Résidence," one sees still a glow of the setting sun, deep red through the fog; and throughout the city there is such gayety, so many festive preparations, that every light that flames up at a window seems to hang on a Christmas tree. But this is no ordinary Christmas. We are in the year of Grace 1870; and the birth of Christ is but a pretext the more to drink to the illustrious Van der Than, and to celebrate the triumph of Bavarian arms. Noël! Noël! Even the Jews in the lower city join in the merriment. ”