INTRODUCTION

CAROLS are still sung in almost numberless churches, lights glow on altars bound and wreathed with spruce and holly, trees are set up in innumerable homes, and mobs of merry children sing and dance around them, stockings take on grotesque shapes and hang gaping with treasures for early marauders on Christmas morning, and hosts of men and women keep the day in their hearts in all peace and piety.

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 has survived the cynical spirit that distrusts sentiment and sneers at emotion as weaknesses which have no place in a scientific age and among men and women who know life. It has survived that preoccupation with affairs which leaves little time for feelings, and that resolute determination to make men good which leaves scant room for efforts to make them happy.

But even in this age of hard-headed practical sagacity and hard-minded goodness ruthlessly bent on doing the Lord's work by the methods of a police magistrate, Christmas carols are still sung; and the organization of virtue in numberless societies with presidents and secretaries, and, above all, with treasurers, has not dimmed the glow of the love which bears fruit in a forest of Christmas trees, with mobs of merry children shouting around them.

The plain truth is that the world is not half so heartless as it pretends to be. In its desire to wear that air of weary omniscience which is supposed to bear witness to a wide experience of life it often pooh-poohs appeals which make its well-regulated heart beat with painful irregularity. There is as much hypocrisy in the scornful as in the sentimental; and the worldly-wise man often sniffles behind the handkerchief with which he pretends to stifle a sneeze. We pretend to have become too wise to be moved by lighted candles or stirred by children's voices singing of angels and shepherds; but in our heart of hearts the old story is dear to us, and we are eager eavesdroppers when the ancient mysteries of love and sympathy and friendship are talked about by the poets or novelists.

We speak patronizingly of those old-fashioned Christmas essays in the "Sketch Book," and we pretend to be amused by the recollection that "The Christmas Carol" once filled us with an almost insane desire to make somebody happy. But it is noticeable that the old text-books of Christmas sentiment reappear year after year in an almost endless variety of forms; and that in an age when the strong man boasts of his distrust of emotion, and the strong woman holds sentiment in the contempt one feels for out-grown toys, books that have to do with Christmas are read with surreptitious pleasure. We apologize publicly for our interest in them and deprecate the attempt to revive a faded interest and recall a decayed tradition; but in private we read with avidity these survivals of archaic feeling and prehistoric emotion. When "The Birds' Christmas Carol" appeared, we laughed over it so as to hide our tears. Mr. Janvier's charming account of Christmas ways in Provence captivated us, and we found excuse for its tender regard for old habits and observances in the fact that Mr. Janvier has been in the habit of spending a good deal of time with a group of unworldly old poets who still dream of joy and beauty as the precious things of life, and hold to the fellowship of artists instead of forming a labor union. Mr. Thomas Nelson Page, Mr. F. Marion Crawford, and Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith have written undisguised Christmas stories with as little sense of detachment from modern life as if they were telling detective tales; and, what is more astonishing to the worldly-wise man, these stories have a glow of life, a vitality of charm and sweetness in them, that make scorn and cynicism seem cheap and vulgar. And here comes Dr. Crothers and stirs the smouldering Christmas fire into a blaze and sits down before it as if it were real logs in combustion and not a trick with gas, and makes gentle sport of the wisdom of the sceptic. These recent revivals of Christmas literature show a surprising vitality, and have met with a surprising response from a generation popularly believed to be given over to the making of money and the extirpation of human feeling. It is even said that there are men and women of such insistent hopefulness that they anticipate a time when the aged in feeling, the worn-out in sentiment, the infirm in imagination, and the crippled in heart will be brought again within sound of Christmas bells.

There is little hope of bringing in the reign of good feeling by lighting a single Christmas fire, but a long line of such fires touching the receding horizon of the past with a happy glow is like a revival of a fading memory; it makes us suddenly aware of half-forgotten associations with the days that were once full of life and rippling with merriment like a mountain stream suffused with sunlight. We surrender ourselves so completely to the noisy activities of our own age that we forget how infinitesimal a portion of time it is and how misleading its emphasis often is. It is only a point on the face of the dial; but we accept it as if it were a present eternity, a final stage in the evolution of men. That many of its sacred texts are the maxims of a short-sighted prudence, many of its major interests as short-lived as the passions of children, many of its ideas of life the cheapest parvenus in the world of thought, does not occur to us; its cynicisms are often reflections of its spiritual shallowness, and its scepticisms mere records of its meanness or corruption. Like all the times that have gone before it, it is a fragment of a fragment, and the only way to see life whole is to get away from it and look down on it as it takes its little place in the larger order of history.

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; for the thoughts that move in the order of logic; for the emotions that rise and fall like great tides that flow in from the infinite; for the vigor that is born of will, and for the power evoked by discipline. 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; the imagination which the reign of logic in one epoch sends into the wilderness returns with full hands to be the master of a wiser period.

Before the Christmas fire that for two thousand years has sunk into embers to blaze again into a great light at the end of the twelfth month, men are not only reunited in the unbroken continuity of their fortunes, but in the wholeness of their life; in their power of vision as well as of sight, in their power of feeling as well as of thought, in their power of love as well as of action.

This large hospitality of the Christmas fire, before which kings and beggars sit at ease and every human faculty finds its place, makes room for every gift and grace; for reason, with severe and wrinkled face; for sentiment, tender and reverent of all sweet and beautiful things; for the imagination, seeing heavenly visions, and the fancy catching glimpses of quaint or grotesque or fairy-like images, in the flame; for poetry, singing full-throated with Milton, or homely, familiar and domestic with the makers of the carols; for the story-tellers, spinning their fascinating tales within the circle of the embracing glow; for humor, full of smiles or filling the room with Homeric laughter; for the players, whose mimic art shows the manger, the shepherds and the kings to successive generations crowding the playhouse with the eager joy of children or with the sacred memories of age; for the preachers, to whom the season brings a text apart from the disputes and antagonisms of the schools and churches; for companies of children, impatiently waiting for the mysterious noise in the chimney; and for graybeards recalling old days and ways,—yule logs, country dances, waits singing under the frosty sky, stage coaches bearing guests and hampers filled with dainties to country houses standing with open doors and broad hearths for the fun and frolic, the tenderness and sentiment, the poetry and piety, of Christmas-tide.

At the end of nearly two thousand years Christmas shows no signs of decrepitude or weariness; its danger lies not in forgetfulness but in perverted uses and overstimulated activities. Its commercial availability is pushed so far that its sentiment often loses spontaneity and charm in excessive organization and prodigal distribution. 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. We have been so eager of late years to rid ourselves of superstition and "see things as they are," that we have lost that vision of the large relations of things in which alone their meaning and use is revealed. We have studied the field at our doorsteps so thoroughly that we have lost sight of the landscape in which its little cup of fruitfulness is poured as into a great bowl rimmed by the horizon. One day out of three hundred and sixty-five, detached from its ancient history and isolated from the celebrations of centuries, cannot keep our hearts and hearths warm; we must rekindle the old fires and join hands with the vanished companies of friends who have kept the day and made it merry in the long ago. 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. Alexander Smith, whose book of essays, "Dreamthorp," is one of the books of the heart,—for there are books of the heart as well as books of knowledge and books of power,—kindled his imagination into a responsive glow by rereading every Christmas Day Milton's "Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity." When one opens the volume at this great song, it is like going into a church and hearing the organ played by unseen hands; the silence is flooded by a vast music which lifts the heart into the presence of great mysteries. But there is a time for private devotions as well as for public worship, for domestic as well as religious celebrations; and for every hour and place and mood there is a song and story. There are tender hymns for the devout, and spirited songs for those who celebrate together old days and ancient friendships; there are quaint carols for those whose hearts long for the quiet and pleasant ways of an olden time, and there are roaring catches for those whose gayety rises to the flood; there are meditations for the solitary, and there are stories for the little groups about the fire.

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; for it translates the word on all lips into its only comprehensible terms. In the glow of the Christmas fire the man who has made a fortune without making friends is a tragic failure, and the woman who has won the place and power she saw shining with delusive splendor on the far horizon and missed happiness faces one of life's bitterest ironies. It is a book for those who have fallen under the delusion that action is the only form of effective expression, and that to be useful one must rush along the road with the ruthless speed of an automobile; forgetting that action is only a path to being, and that the joy of life is largely found by the way. It is a book for those ardent spirits to whom the one interest in life is making people over and fitting them into their places in a rigid order of arbitrary goodness, forgetting that to the heart of a child the Kingdom of Heaven is always open, and the ultimate grace of it is the purity which is free and unconscious. It is a book for the sceptical and cynical, whose blighted sympathy and insight regain their vitality in the atmosphere of its love and kindness, its fun and frolic, its fellowship of loyal hearts and true.

Above all, the Book of Christmas is a book of joy in the sadness of the world, a book of play in the work of the world, a book of consolation in the sorrow of the world.

Hamilton W. Mabie

CONTENTS

PAGE

Introduction Hamilton W. Mabie v

I

SIGNS OF THE SEASON

"The Time draws near the Birth of Christ" Alfred Tennyson 4

An Hue and Cry after Christmas Old English Tract 5

The Doge's Christmas Shooting F. Marion Crawford 6

Thursday Processions in Advent William S. Walsh 7

The Glastonbury Thorn Alexander F. Chamberlain 9

In the Kitchen Old English Ballad 11

Christmas in England Washington Irving 12

Christmas Invitation William Barnes 16

A Christmas Market Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick 17

The Star of Bethlehem in Holland Bow-Bells Annual 18

The Pickwick Club goes down to Dingley Dell Charles Dickens 19

A Visit from St. Nicholas Clement C. Moore 24

Crowded Out Rosalie M. Jonas 26

II

HOLIDAY SAINTS AND LORDS

My Lord of Misrule T. K. Hervey 31

St. Nicholas Collated 32

An Old Saint in a New World Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer 33

St. Thomas Collated, W. P. R. 35

Kriss Kringle Thomas Bailey Aldrich 36

Il Santissimo Bambino Collated, W. P. R. 37

The Christ Child Elise Traut 38

The April Baby is Thankful "Elizabeth" 38

Good King Wenceslas Old English Carol 41

Jean Valjean plays the Christmas Saint Victor Hugo 42

St. Brandan Matthew Arnold 45

St. Stephen's, or Boxing Day Collated, W. P. R. 47

St. Basil in Trikkola J. Theodore Bent 48

III

CHRISTMAS CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS

The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ From "The Golden Legend" 55

Folk-lore of Christmas Tide Collected by A. F. Chamberlain 58

Hunting the Wren Quoted by T. K. Hervey 61

The Presepio Hone's Year Book 64

Hodening in Kent Contributed to The Church Times 65

Origin of the Christmas Tree William S. Walsh 66

Origin of the Christmas Card William S. Walsh 67

The Yule Clog T. K. Hervey 68

"Come bring with a Noise" Robert Herrick 69

Shoe or Stocking Edith M. Thomas 70

Jule-Nissen Jacob Riis 71

"Lame Needles" in Eubœa J. Theodore Bent 73

Who Rides behind the Bells? Zona Gale 76

Guests at Yule Edmund Clarence Stedman 78

IV

CHRISTMAS CAROLS

"I saw Three Ships" Old English Carol 83

"Lordings, listen to Our Lay" Earliest Existing Carol 84

The Cherry-Tree Carol Old English Carol 86

"In Excelsis Gloria" From the Harleian MSS. 87

"God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" Old English Carol 87

The Golden Carol Old English Carol 89

Caput apri refero resonens laudes domino From a Balliol MS. of about 1540 90

"Villagers All, this Frosty Tide" Kenneth Grahame 90

Holly Song William Shakespeare 92

"Before the Paling of the Stars" Christina G. Rossetti 92

The Minstrels played their Christmas Tune William Wordsworth 93

A Carol from the Old French Henry W. Longfellow 95

"From Far Away we come to you" Old English Carol 97

A Christmas Carol James Russell Lowell 98

A Christmas Carol for Children Martin Luther 99

V

CHRISTMAS DAY

The Unbroken Song Henry W. Longfellow 104

A Scene of Mediæval Christmas John Addington Symonds 105

Christmas in Dreamthorp Alexander Smith 111

By the Christmas Fire Hamilton W. Mabie 113

Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity John Milton 114

Christmas Church Washington Irving 119

Dolly urges Silas Marner to go to Church George Eliot 124

Yule in the Old Town Jacob Riis 127

The Mahogany Tree William Makepeace Thackeray 132

The Holly and the Ivy Old English Song 134

Ballade of Christmas Ghosts Andrew Lang 135

Christmas Treasures Eugene Field 136

Wassailer's Song Robert Southwell 138

VI

CHRISTMAS HYMNS

A Hymn on the Nativity Ben Jonson 143

While Shepherds Watched Nahum Tate 144

O, Little Town of Bethlehem Phillips Brooks 145

The First, Best Christmas Night Margaret Deland 146

It Came upon the Midnight Clear Edmund H. Sears 147

A Christmas Hymn Eugene Field 149

The Song of the Shepherds Edwin Markham 150

A Christmas Hymn Richard Watson Gilder 152

A Christmas Hymn for Children Josephine Daskam Bacon 153

Slumber-Songs of the Madonna Alfred Noyes 154

VII

CHRISTMAS REVELS

"Make me Merry both More and Less" Old Balliol MS. of about 1540 164

The Feast of Saint Stephen in Venice F. Marion Crawford 165

The Feast of Fools William Hone 167

The Feast of the Ass William Hone 168

The Revel of Sir Hugonin de Guisay William S. Walsh 170

Revels of the Inns of Court T. K. Hervey 172

King Witlaf's Drinking-Horn Henry W. Longfellow 175

Old Christmastide Sir Walter Scott 176

Christmas Games in "Old Wardle's" Kitchen Charles Dickens 179

A "Mystery" as performed in Mexico Bayard Taylor 183

VIII

WHEN ALL THE WORLD IS KIN

Christmas Night of '62 William Gordon McCabe 191

Merry Christmas in the Tenements Jacob Riis 192

Christmas at Sea Robert Louis Stevenson 200

The First Christmas Tree in the Legation Compound, Tokyo Mary Crawford Fraser 202

Christmas in India Rudyard Kipling 208

A Belgian Christmas Eve Procession All the Year Round 210

Christmas at the Cape John Runcie 215

The "Good Night" in Spain Fernan Caballero 216

Christmas in Rome John Addington Symonds 218

Christmas in Burgundy M. Fertiault 222

Christmas in Germany Amy Fay 225

Christmas Dinner in a Clipper's Fo'c'sle Herbert Elliot Hamblen 227

Christmas in Jail Rolf Boldrewood 229

Colonel Carter's Christmas Tree F. Hopkinson Smith 231

IX

CHRISTMAS STORIES

Christmas Roses Zona Gale 241

The Fir Tree Hans Christian Andersen 245

The Christmas Banquet Nathaniel Hawthorne 257

A Christmas Eve in Exile Alphonse Daudet 275

The Rehearsal of the Mummers' Play Eden Phillpotts 280

X

NEW YEAR

New Year Richard Watson Gilder 298

Midnight Mass for the Dying Year Henry W. Longfellow 299

The Death of the Old Year Alfred Tennyson 301

A New Year's Carol Martin Luther 303

New Year's Resolutions "Elizabeth" 303

Love and Joy come to You Old English Carol 305

Ring Out, Wild Bells Alfred Tennyson 307

New Year's Eve, 1850 James Russell Lowell 308

Rejoicings upon the New Year's Coming of Age Charles Lamb 309

New Year's Rites in the Highlands Charles Rogers 315

The Chinese New Year H. C. Sirr 316

New Year's Gifts in Thessaly J. Theodore Bent 319

"Smashing" in the New Year Jacob Riis 322

New Year Calls in Old New York William S. Walsh 323

Sylvester Abend in Davos John Addington Symonds 325

XI

TWELFTH NIGHT—EPIPHANY

"Now have Good Day!" Old English Carol 337

A Twelfth Night Superstition Barnaby Googe 338

Twelfth-Day Table Diversion John Nott 339

The Blessing of the Waters J. Theodore Bent 341

La Galette du Roi William Hone 344

Drawing King and Queen Universal Magazine 345

St. Distaff's Day and Plough Monday Hone's Year Book 346

XII

THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

"As Little Children in a Darkened Hall" Charles Henry Crandall 350

Christmas Dreams Christopher North 351

The Professor's Christmas Sermon Robert Browning 358

Awaiting the King F. Marion Crawford 359

Elizabeth's Christmas Sermon "Elizabeth" 361

Nichola's "Reason Why" Zona Gale 362

The Changing Spirit of Christmastide Washington Irving 363

A Prayer for Christmas Peace Charles Kingsley 365

Under the Holly Bough Charles Mackay 366

Christmas Music John Addington Symonds 367

A Christmas Sermon Robert Louis Stevenson 368

LIST OF PLATES

The Holy Night Correggio Frontispiece

PAGE

The Holy Night C. Müller facing 16

The Arrival of the Shepherds Lerolle " 40

The Bells Blashfield " 72

The Madonna Bellini " 96

The Virgin adoring the Infant Christ Correggio " 120

The Madonna Murillo " 152

Holy Night Van Ulade " 184

The Holy Family with the Shepherds Titian " 216

Madonna della Sedia Raphael " 272

The Adoration of the Magi Paolo Veronese " 304

The Adoration of the Magi Memling " 344