SOME CHRISTMAS THOUGHTS.
CHRISTMAS brings the annual list of good Christmas dinners sent by benevolent rich people to inmates of cottages and union workhouses. The list is accompanied by the annual commen- tary—how pleasant it is to think that so many poor people have enjoyed a good dinner on Christmas ! A more appropriate re- mark would be—how melancholy to think that it is their only good dinner throughout the year A good dinner is important only to those with whom it is a rarity. When eating and drink- ing are the most important feature of festivals, be sure that pri- vation is the rule with the revellers. A bellyful is the summum bonum of a savage : he gorges himself to repletion, not knowing when the opportunity may recur. The unction with which old chroniclers and village bards dilate on the ale and beef of Christ- mas-tide, betray a state of society in which a full meal was a god- send. An English Christmas dinner in 1845 differs little from the daily dinner among almost all the comfortable classes. We make believe to feed fatter on Christmas than on any other day of the year because it is the custom—because we think we ought to do so. The sirloins, turkies, candied fruit, and cakes of the season, are insipid to the palates of those who can afford them; they are only enjoyed in imagination by the ragged urchins, the mud-larks, and errand-men, who gather round the shops where they are exposed for sale, wondering, and doubting their senses, which tell them there are so many good things in existence. Yet is Christmas as happy a time, for those to whom Fortune gives to enjoy it, as in the days when a dinner was a dinner indeed. It is a reproach to a society abounding in necessaries and luxuries, like that to which we belong, that there is still a class in it to
whom one good dinner in the year is matter for rejoicing. It shows how much has yet to be learned in the economy of social happiness—in the art of distributing the blessings we have earned. We who can earn something owe tithe of our increase to God —that is, to the poor ; and we do not clear our scores by sending them lumps of roast-beef and pounds of plum-pudding once a year. It is good that there should be fixed seasons at which an interchange of graceful acts of kindness renews the warmth of affection. Also, eating and drinking are good things in their way. But where the means are so abundant—or might be made so abundant—it is to be desired that they should be kept in their proper place, as subordinate to higher and more spiritual pleasures.
Higher pleasures—Christmas is a religious as well as a secular festival. The season set apart to perpetuate the remembrance of the Nativity is the season which in all time has been devoted to rest and enjoyment. The amiable and imaginative few who of late years have endeavoured to resuscitate the old English Christmas, are sensible of this. They would preserve the reli- gious character of the festival. Perhaps they have erred in at- tributing too much importance to forms : perhaps this mistake deprives them on other occasions of the power to extend much more widely their sphere of influence. The forms of old religion are beautiful ; but where the spirit really is it can create new forms for itself. To seek to reassume anti- quated formulte of devotion, is as if the snake were to seek to creep again into its last year's skin. While part of the creature's self, that skin was pliant and comfortable ; it is hard and narrow now. We all admire the amiable features of the Quaker charac- ter, but in despite of the formal cut of the drab coat. That coat would equally prevent the wearer from having the whole of our sympathy were it made of the most gorgeous embroidered silk ever worn by the petit-maitre of the age when its cut was so common as to be thought natural. Puseyism is merely dandy Quakerism : it rustles in lutestrings and whalebone like the belles of former Fenerations ; women are now thought more charming in flowing muslin. Instead of crying out for more church and more forms, it would be well if we made sufficient use of what we have. Secular business in this age and country is more developed, takes up more of the public eye, than it did in those times upon which the Puseyite imagination loves to dwell. The Church is not so incessantly visible; but whoever walks the streets of London about mid-day on a Sunday, and sees so many churches pouring out such crowded congregations, and reflects that week after week the same parties repair to the same church at the same time, feels the strong hold that the Church has upon the thoughts and actions of the dominant class in society. The power of the Church in England is like the power of that natural law by which every seed of grass vegetates into the same form, not the less pervading and inevitable that it is unseen and un- thought of. And the forms now observed by the Church (using the word in a truly Catholic sense, as comprehending all Chris- tian communions) are sufficient for the edification of those who conform to them. It is scarcely uncharitable to suspect that the cry for more church and more form proceeds as often from a defi- cient power of joining in public worship as from a stronger. con- viction of its importance. Men of literary tastes and habits are more liable to contract habits of nonconformity than others. Milton, and Richardson, (a much more commonplace mind, and therefore less predisposed to revolt against the periodical repetition of set forms,) recommended regular attendance on religious ordi- nances to others, but never went to church themselves. Many a pod man who is eager to restore all the splendour of the ritual is animated by a consciousness that he himself is little edified by the more modest forms into which it has contracted. He may rest assured that it is his own fastidiousness, and not the dish set before him, that is to blame if his appetite is insufficiently stimu- lated and gratified. Christmas is and will be Christmas still, even though circum- stances should enable all classes to revel with less of mere animal gratification in its good cheer; and though modern habits of thought should continue to favour more simple and unobtrusive forms of worship. The mass of Englishmen will enjoy them- selves at times, and from natural staidness of disposition will "join trembling with their mirth." The great danger to which the true orthodox celebration of Christmas is exposed, springs from the inability of the men of this generation to give them- selves breathing-time or repose. We have made short cuts to everything ; but the time gained is only made use of to take more burdens on our shoulders. The real desecration of Christ- mas is when the man well to do in the world encroaches on its forenoon to bring up arrears of correspondence, and Bits at the head of his dinner-table—present in the body but absent in spirit —thinking of the speculations that are to be resumed tomorrow morning. The habit of toil and forethought is so strong that men cannot rest. If with an effort they dismiss images a busi- ness from their imagination, habitual anxiety continues to be the temper of the vacant mind. This is the fault of some, the mis- fortune of others. Poor Sir Robert Peel, how he must envy Lord John Russell! Sir Robert, amid his Christmas merriment, will have thoughts of Cabinet difficulties coming back upon him like ghosts unlaid. Lord John has cast business and care to the winds—returned to Minto House—and resumed his readings to Lady John, in the middle of the sentence interrupted by the arrival of the Queen's messenger.
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