THE FESTIVAL

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIII, Issue 14, 14 December 1932, Page 13

THE FESTIVAL

MEANING OF CHRISTMAS. “There are some tilings whose antiquity proves that they are dying, there are some others whose antiquity only proves they cannot die.” Christmas is in the latter class. It never loses its appeal, nor its power to throw sunshine into the darkest surroundings, and lighten the most depressing hours. We dare to question, however, whether Chesterton is right when he goes on to explain the hold of Christmas as due to three qualities, three elements, the first the dramatic quality, the second the fact of winter, and the third, the element of grotesqueness (writes the Bishop of Armidale in the Sydney Morning Herald).

We may well grant him the importance of the first element. For there is indeed in Christmas that restraint and expectation that add a thrill to'any experience. “The hour has come or it has not come; the parcels are undone or they are not' undone; there is no evolution of Christmas presents.” But this has but sharpened the keenness and the enjoyment of the festival—it is not tho basal aspiration that has made for men the meaning of their happiest day. And as for liis other elements, well here, at least, below “the Line,” we keep the festival full joyously without the aid of winter, nor does the grotesque find place with as it did with the Cratcliits or the Peerybingles of an earlier day. MYSTERY OF HAPPINESS. No 1 There is something deeper still than any of all of these that gives to Christmastide its hold upon our hearts; and for the cine we turn again to Dickens. As Chesterton says, lie devoted liis genius in a somewhat special sense to the description of happiness. Happiness is a mystery —almost a will o’ the wisp—not to be found by looking lor it; like all of life’s beauties and perfections, it is not easy to describe. For agony is easier to picture than is happiness, sickness than health, sin tlxan saintliness, and ugliness than

beauty, simply because the ill proportions of the former lend themselves ever more to catch tho eye than does tlie balanced completeness of any of tho latter. It may ho that Dickens could not tell us, what Christmas means —he may not have known; yet ho has led us l>y the way of symbol in liis matchless stories to the secret of his grip upon the minds and hearts of men. Christmas grips because, for a day at least —may be unconsciously—men have caught in it the secret of happiness. As Scrooge’s nephew says, it is “the only time I know of, in tho long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely”; and in that day of thought for others, and in that hour of giving, do we find our happiness; and we have found the meaning of Christmas.

GIVING. The loneliness of life is gone in the hour of kindly fellowship; the jtfy of giving, and lighting up another face, is ours, and life’s wealth which is never in things, but in friends, lias come to' us in tlio hour when we had learned to, give away. But more than that 1 In Christmas do we lose ourselves. Tho self-consciousness of adult years, the protective armour woven by antagonisms, slips from our lives, and childhood, that spirit of eternity, becomes the soul that looks out through all eyes' and smiles oil every face. “Giving” and a “life that’s ever young.” Surely here lies the meaning of our festival. Whence came it? Christmas is one of the many old European feasts of which the essence is the combination of religion ancl merry-making. Is it just a chance connection? By no means —it is the secret of the character of humanity—it is the origin of Christmas in its beginnings when “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” “Giving” and an “eternal Child.” There men were shown the secret of life’s happiness and life’s meaning. Therein are men and women God-like when they give, and live as children. Once a year at least we see the idea, and catch it for a moment as it seems to flit across the stage of lifehut if we could but realise its origin and gain it for the year —not just the day, imprison it for the future, and give it a body in the life of action, of the home, the world of business, and tlie Church, we should have, in our deeper fellowships, our solved antagonisms, our carefree lives, and our touch with God’s undying life, not only a merry Christmas, hut in the truest sense tlie happiest of New Years.