Christmas decoration

“ Each homestead, and old Christmas brow
Is crowned with evergreen tonight.
A snowy mantle's on the grass—
Old frozen Winter placed it there.
And trooping to the midnight mass,
Our hearts are filled with holy prayer
⁠To welcome blessed Christmas.
The church is all ablaze with light,
And pious hands have placed there
Festoons of brilliant green and white:
The crib arranged with holy Care,
From God's high altar there ascends
A light, like glory's brightest beam;
The organ's peal, that melting blends
Our souls into blissful dream,
⁠To welcome holy Christmas. ”

“ Christmas Present comes in the shape of a giant, with a holly-green robe. Scrooge perceives him seated in his room, with his noble head crowned with holly wreath studded with icicles, reaching to the ceiling. His throne is a wine-cask and his foot-stool a twelfth-cake. In his hand he bears a blazing torch, from which he sprinkles down gladness upon every threshhold he enters. An immense fire glows and crackles in the grate, the walls and ceiling are hung with living green, and all around are heaped up the choice provisions collected to make Christmas glad. The giant leads Scrooge forth. ”

“ One drop trembled upon the wan cheek of the doll. The last sunbeam shot athwart it and made it glisten like a priceless jewel. Its glory grew and filled the room. Gone were the black walls, the darkness and the cold. There was warmth and light and joy. Merry voices and glad faces were all about. A flock of children danced with gleeful shouts about a great Christmas-tree in the middle of the floor. ”

“ Then Rose told her all about jolly Santa Claus, with his red cheeks and white beard and fur coat, and about his reindeer and sleigh full of toys. "Every Christmas Eve," said Rose, "he comes down the chimney, and fills the stockings of all the good children; so, Piccola, you hang up your stocking, and who knows what a beautiful Christmas present you will find when morning comes!" ”

“ Every year the Christmas candles shining down on an addition to our treasures. Every year the gifts of past Christmases gathered about the tree again, bigger and stronger instead of being lost or broken as they would have been if they had been any other kind of gift. ”

“ Large Christmas doles he seeks;
A pannier wide receives the store,
Yet never a word he speaks!
The nougat bells so merrily ring
Yet never a note he hears;
He gathers the gifts the good folk bring,
And onward still he steers. ”

“ I am not, as you thought I was, a hundred years old, but I can conjure up, as anybody can, a picture of Christmas in the good old days of a hundred years ago: the quaint old-fashioned houses, standing deep among the evergreens, with the light twinkling from the windows on the snow; the warmth and comfort within; the great fire roaring on the hearth; the merry guests grouped about its blaze and the little children with their eyes dancing in the Christmas fire- light, waiting for Father Christmas in his fine mummery of red and white and cotton wool to hand the presents from the yule-tide tree. ”

“ No other holiday has so rich an heritage of old customs and observances as Christmas. The Yule Log has from time immemorial been haled to the open fire-place on Christmas Eve, and lighted with the embers of its predecessor to sanctify the roof-tree and protect it against those evil spirits over whom the season is in everyway a triumph. Then the wassail bowl full of swimming roasted apples, goes its merry round. Then the gift-shadowing Christmas tree sheds its divine brilliance down the path of the coming year; or stockings are hung for Santa Claus (St. Nicholas) to fill during the night. ”

“ They each held aloft a sprig of holly, and they all kept time as they sang, "God rest you, merry gentlemen," in their march from the dining-room to the office. And there they must form in circle about the tree, and dance three-times round, singing "The Christmas-tree is an evergreen," before they could touch a single present.
The presents are done up according to custom, packages of every shape and size, but all in white paper and tied with red ribbon, and all marked for somebody with somebody else's best love. They all fall to opening, and the babies' shouts are not the only ones to be heard. ”

“ We all know how, before the Christmas-tree began to flourish in the home-life of our country, a certain "right jolly old elf," with "eight tiny reindeer," used to drive his sleigh-load of toys up to our housetops, and then bound down the chimney to fill the stockings so hopefully hung by the fireplace. His friends called him Santa Claus ”

“ Ay, and at the window sat the little sick boy, and the toy Santa Claus left him seemed to have brought him strength and health, for his eyes sparkled and his cheeks glowed, and it was plain to see his heart was full of happiness.
And, oh! how the chimes did ring out, and how joyfully they sang their Christmas carol that morning! They sang of Bethlehem and the manger and the Babe; they sang of love and charity, till all the Christmas air seemed full of angel voices. ”

“ We had a genuine fire-place in our kitchen, big enough to contain an enormous back-log, and broad enough for eight or ten people to form "a circle wide" before it and enjoy the genial warmth.
The last process before going to bed was to suspend our stockings in the chimney jambs; and then we dreamed of Santa Claus, or if we awoke in the night, we listened for the jingling of his sleigh-bells. At the peep of day we were aroused by the voice of my good grandfather, who planted himself in the stairway and shouted in a stentorian tone, "I wish you all a Merry Christmas!" ”

“ After the ceremony our people came for us and awaited us at the church door with a huge red cotton umbrella, which did us as much honor as the same utensil does a Roman cardinal. We were also provided with an extra pair of wooden shoes half filled with warm ashes. We hastened home, exchanging courtesies with all, but stopping with no one; for there was a Christmas supper in our kitchen,—a supper to which all our friends were invited, and besides them all the servants who had been present at the blessing of the Yule log. ”

“ Who, to fond parents, are rich gifts themselves;
And now I've come, resolved to make a show
In that old mansion with the copper toe,
Where dwells a dame, with children great and small,
Enough to stock a school, or crowd a hall. [162]
If they are worthy of our kind regard,
Christmas shall bring to them a rich reward.
So I have donned for once a meaner dress,
To personate a beggar in distress.
If to my wants they lend a listening ear,
The rough old shoe shall glow with Christmas cheer:
If they are rude, and turn me from the door,
Presto! I vanish, and return no more. Song: Santa Claus ”

“ The Christmas gifts were all ready and safe. An air of mystery and expectation was about all the young people; and a good bustle of preparation occupied the thoughts and the tongues at least of the old. An immense Christmas tree was brought in and planted in a huge green tub in the drawing-room. ”

“ The utter quiet, broken only by a distant wash of waves,—waves that sometimes broke over the stones in the churchyard,—the candles in the chancel, throwing into high relief Constance's Christmas star and touching with light the jonquils banking steps and altar rail; the dusk in the nave of the church half-revealing scattered groups of people as they knelt in silence under the arched vault where clung the limpets dead a thousand years,—all contributed to the age-old Christmas miracle. ”

“ 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 clerk read the beautiful prayers of our Church, which seem more beautiful at Christmas than at any other period. ”

“ Sometimes a carved wooden pigeon is also placed before the ikons—the emblem of the Holy Spirit. The wall in this corner is hung with long towels, either covered with embroidery, or embroidered at the ends. Everyone who enters the room makes an obeisance, and crosses himself, before the ikons. They are specially decorated for Christmas.
Make the towels with stencils, as described in the notes on girls' costumes. ”

“ I filled their stockings and I said to myself, ‘You are a nice collection of youngsters for any mother and any father to be proud of! Dear me! But I’m proud to be old Santa Claus and to have the honor of filling your Christmas stockings.’
“Then I went downstairs where there was a tree and I started a-trimming of the tree. They had left some things for me to use. Some people are kind that way about leaving many of the nice decorations which can be used every Christmas. It saves me room in my pack and I like to see the same old decorations coming out year after year. ”

“ Through a child’s eyes I looked into the child heart, and there standing radiant and beautiful were [Pg 28] seven angels,—the angels which are the builders of Christmas. These are their names: Wonder, Humility, Trust, Simplicity, Purity, Joy, and Affection. By these the first Christmas was constructed, and without these no genuine Christmas can be built. These are strong angels, they dig deep and they mount high. They can build a Christmas covering the year.
Christmas is glorious because it is the creation of a child. Man is not the architect of it. ”

“ The wife and the child and the little brown dog were watching and waiting, and they welcomed the harper with great joy. The holly berries were red in the Christmas wreaths; their Christmas tree was a young green pine; the Christmas pudding was full of plums; and the harper was happier than a king as he sat by his own fireside to sing:
“O glory, glory, glory! ”

“ He will never be satisfied unless we hang it on too."
"Oh, yes," said some one else who was helping to decorate the tree; "we will hang it here on the very top."
So the little star hung on the highest branch of the Christmas-tree.
That evening all the candles were lighted on the Christmas-tree, and there were so many that they fairly dazzled the eyes; and the gold and silver balls, the fairies and the glass fruits, shone and twinkled in the light; and high above them all shone the golden star. ”

“ If the weather should be fine, the principal streets are thronged with ladies shopping in sleighs; and hither and thither sleds shoot by, laden with parcels of painted toys, instruments of mock music and septuagenarian dread, from a penny trumpet to a sheepskin drum.
Christmas seems to be a popular period among the young folk for being mated, and a surprising number approach the altar this morning. ”

“ Of all the pleasant sights that the angels of God, looking from their high homes, saw on earth that Christmas Eve, perhaps not one was dearer in their eyes than the spectacle here described,—the two sturdy men standing with their hands clasped in solemn pledge of the reformation of the one, and the helping sympathy of the other, above that Christmas-box in the cabin in the woods. ”

“ Gradually, more and more of them come to light, and finally by Christmas they are all ready to gather. There they stand, swaying to and fro, and dancing lightly on their slender feet which are connected with the ground, each by a tiny green stem; their dresses of pink, or blue, or white—for their dresses grow with them—flutter in the air. Just about the prettiest sight in the world, is the bed of wax dolls in the garden of the Christmas Monks at Christmas time. ”

“ They also brought him gold and silver and sparkling stones, while the water nymphs gave him pearls and coral and softly tinted shells which Santa Claus and his skillful helpers soon made into beautiful jewelry to give to some of the big, grown-up children on Christmas.
“Everybody is a child at this time,” said Santa Claus to his good wife, “and even if people do feel too large to play with dolls and drums, still they must have their trinkets and things to make them happy.” ”

“ Old as we are, we are most of us mere children in this, that we go on hoping that next Christmas all the delicious happenings we have missed in other Christmases may descend upon us by the old and reliable chimney-route! A Santa Claus that had any bowels of compassion would rush down the narrowest and sootiest chimney in the world to give me my simple wishes. ”

“ As the three wise men rode on that first Christmas night to find the manger-cradled Babe of Bethlehem, they bore gifts on their saddle-bows. Gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. And so the spirit of Christmas giving crept into the world's heart. We bring our gifts to the children. Rich children, poor children! The children of the high and the children of the humble! Poor little sick children—and the ragged children of the slums of our cities. ”

“ With slow processional motion they advance, bearing to the King of Kings their symbolic gifts, gold for His crowning, incense for His worship, myrrh for His mortality, and with them come the mystery, colour, and perfume of the East, the occult wisdom which bows itself before the revelation in the Child.
Above all, as the foregoing pages have shown, it is the childhood of the Redeemer that has won the heart of Europe for Christmas; it is the appeal to the parental instinct, the love for the tender, weak, helpless, yet all-potential babe, that has given the Church's festival its strongest hold. ”

“ There are the most delicious little arched windows with diamond panes peeping out from the mistletoe and evergreen, and always at all times of the year, a little Christmas wreath of ivy and hollyberries is suspended in the center of every window. Over all the doors, which are likewise arched, are Christmas garlands, and over the main entrance Merry Christmas in evergreen letters. ”