Christmas Giving
GROWLS from the elders of a certain class and the sarcasms of cynical youth remind us, perhaps more forcibly every year, that in our modern world there is a deal of enmity against the old spirit of Christmas. Moscow denounces it, while America, through its store- bazaars and electric-light displays and standardized telegrams, turns everything connected with the day to good business account. The city-dweller's manner of living increasingly drives him away from the traditions of the family celebration as Europe has known it since the Middle Ages. His household is no longer large and various. He tends to dwell in exiguous quarters with the minimum of domestic service ; his kitchen cannot cope with any Christmas dinner worth talking of ; his offspring have their own plans which, even when patriotism and the foreign exchanges put a ban upon Alpine sports, have little enough to do with the con- ventions of " Yuletide," and when all is said the elders themselves are quite ready to seek some means of escape from a festival which too often rings no bells in the soul. Modernism and mechanism and speed have done their work for many millions of us, and we cannot doubt that the social forces of another decade or two will, in the great centres especially, do further despite to the surviving customs of the most wonderful festa ever established among men.
And yet the plain fact is that Christmas is Christmas still, the season of affectionate goodwill when every normal person in our world responds to the spirit of giving. In the family group nothing alters or will alter the custom which has long been second nature. So long as the English family endures its members will exchange gifts, and to the end of this dispensation they will continue to send messages to those of the clan scattered over this or other lands. Nor will it be other- wise with colleagues and friends. However far they may have drifted from the faith and sentiment of an earlier time, and even if they have come to feel an active dislike of the season and its accompaniments, their practice will in some degree, and in certain personal rela- tions, be maintained. He is a curmudgeon indeed who can go through the closing week of the year without knowing once again that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
But such impulses and actions, after all, are limited and personal. There is more in Christmas than this. The opportunity of Christmas giving is a matter of citizenship, of public obligation, to which no man or woman of goodwill can be insensitive. The spirit of charity, in its widest and finest sense, pervades the season, and by long practice and association appeals are made during this month by almost all the voluntary agencies of public service throughout the country. They come, as the householder and taxpayer complains, from every quarter and in unmanageable numbers. They fill his letter-box. They cumber his breakfast.. table. What is he to do with them ? How is he to dis- criminate between them, how decide upon the most fruitful and satisfactory way of bestowing the money or the goods which he feels himself able to give ? There was a time when to choose among institutions and societies was a matter of genuine perplexity, when the cause of philanthropy was villainously exploited and the name of charity soiled with all ignoble use. That time in England is happily past. No land has a finer system of voluntary service than our own ; in no country are the agencies of public charity more efficiently organized, more capably directed or more strictly held to account in _management and finance. The citizen with gifts to dispenSe can free himself from all misgiving, and should find it a relatively simple matter to decide. The established institutions of Britain are known and tried. If he has, as is probable and right, a personal inclination to help some one particular class of sufferers —the old, the blind, the crippled, the lonely women, the children—his way is easy ; a very little inquiry will yield the needed information and advice.
There is one aspect of this subject upon which in the present season a definite and urgent word should be said. This is a black Christmas. We have to face the fact that there exists to-day in Britain a greater mass of poverty and bitter need than at any time since the framework of the national social services was com- pleted twenty years ago. Workers' insurance covers only a portion of the great territory of unemployment, and the new system of Public Asiistance is, of necessity, so administered as to lay down sharply defined limits in the work of relief and to bring out all the evidences of destitution and of pitiful struggle in the homes of the people in the stricken industrial areas—homes from which, in many thousands of cases, the hope of any resumption of work has long since faded away. This stark situation makes an appeal to which the well-to-do classes of Britain cannot refuse their response. It is the plainest duty of all to give, in some measure and with a purpose of positive help. Many years ago the Spectator took occasion in a Christmas article to throw out the suggestion that every household in comfortable circumstances should charge itself with the care of at least one indigent family through the season of excep- tional need. The idea is worth reviving in these days of overwhelming stress. It may have to be carried out by proxy, but abundant agencies for carrying it out exist.
One other final reflection. The most remarkable and encouraging sign of social awakening in Britain during the past year has been seen in the wide and rapid spread of local efforts in voluntary service for and with the unemployed. Started by members of the Society of Friends in South Wales, and by kindred groups of pioneers in various districts of the North, the movement received a fresh impetus from the Prince of Wales's notable address at the Albert Hall last Feb- ruary. It now comprises hundreds of neighbourhood centres over the country and has received the express sanction and support of the Government. At the festival of goodwill no man or woman can wish to be left outside the great companionship of mutual aid. And in our judgement there is, in this hottr of our country's trial, no surer way of lending a hand tha a to do it through the nearest centre-of redemptive com- munity service.
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