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SATURDAY, DECEMBER 24, 1932,
Dickens Founded Modern Christmas
Influence Of Great Literary Figure
CHESTERTON'S PRAISES
This great Englishman has been aion." It is a tale of winter with described hs the founder of our ita comfort saved from enervation modern Christmas, and as the by a tingle of something bitter and apostle of the true spirit of brother- bracing in the weather. It exem- hood and good fellowship. To his plifies the Kinship between gaiety emotional and sentimental nature and the picturesque, "Everybody the season of gladness and cheer is happy because nobody is digni- made a great appeal; he was fied." saturated with the spirit of the
Heason;
THE CHINA MAIL.
re-
Chinese Pantam Lamb's view of this great fes- tival is reflected in a delightful let- ter to Manning, the friend of his boyhood. This is what he wrote:
Scrooge, the miser, and his Christ- mas conversion. 'I am not sure that the allegory is a very complete one, and protest, with the classica, against the use of blank verse in prose; but here all objections stop. Dear Old Friend and Absentee. Who can listen to objections This is Christmas Day with us; garding such a book as this? .It what it may be with you don't seems to me a national benefit, and know the twelfth of June next to every man or woman who reads year, perhaps and if it should be it; a personal kindness.
the consecrated season I don't see "The last two people I board how you can keep it. You have speak of it were women; neither no turkeys. You would not de- knew the other or the author, and socrate the season by offering up both said, by way of criticism, 'God a withered Chinesa bantam Bless him! A Scotch philosopher, instead of the savoury grand Nor- who nationally does not keep folkian holocaust, that smokes all Christmas, on reading the book, around my neatrils at the moment sent out for a turkey, and naked from a thousand firesides. Then we friends to dine-this is a fact! what puddings have you? Where Many men were known to sit down will you get holly to stick in your after perusing it, and write off let-churches, or churches to stick ters to their friends, not about your dried tea-leaves (that must business, but out of their fullness be the substitute) in? What of heart, and to wish old acquain-memorials you can have of the boly tances a happy Christmas .
"What a feeling is this for writer to be able to inspire what a reward to reap!"
tima I see not. A chopped mis- asionary or two may keep up a thin. and idea of Lent and the wilderness,
fra-
but what standing evidence have you of the Nativity?. 'Tis our rosy "God Bless Him."
checked home-stalled divines whose Nevertheless, for all the Carol's faces shine to the tune of "Unto instantaneous success and popula- us a Child is born"-faces rity it did not prove to be the finan-grant with the mince-ples of half cial success Dickens had expected.ja century, that alone can elucidate Philosopher-like he wrote of his the holy mystery. I feel refreshed
ful thing it la that such a great great against the unedified heathen. success should occasion me such Down with the idols. Ching Chang Intolerable anxiety and disappoint- |Fo. ment.",
to
Unquakerish Season
Dickens was thirty-one when he it suffused his heart wrote this book, and as he "never with a rich glow, And what a loft home before the owls went out, wonderful spell has he cast about and led quite a solitary life," he this great festival! With what finished it in five or six weeks. He lasting halo has he invested it! has confessed to having wept,
"I will honour Christmas in and laughed, and
wept again my heart, I will live in the Past, over it; to have walked about the the Present, and the Future. streets in the slums for many an The spirit of all shali atrive hour when sober of London on disappointment; "What a wonder with the Holy tide. My zeal is within me. I will ant shut. out many a night and folks had gone the lessons which they teach." to bed. The story completely ob- So said his Master of Character sessed him. Sketches nearly a century ago,
Praised Indeed!
Manning, that year, was station- been calling, upon us all. And he The book was published shortly. And to-day, shall we not say, ed in Canton. Hence the referen- called, and bas since especially at before Christmas, 1813. Its success 26 Thackeray's women said, "God ees to tea-loaves, chopped mis- Christmastide, to make the world was instantaneous. "Prodigious bless him!" Shall we not do as sienaries, and Ching Chang Fo. better and happier, not only for the greatest, I think, I have ever Thackeray'a Scotch philosopher ourselves and our own friends, but achieved," is how Dickens describ- did? Shall we not respond for the sick and the poor, theed it. All manner of strangers Dickens' appeal to try to make Again, writing to Coleridge wrote about it appreciatively; but the world a better and happier just before Christmas 1818 he it was Lord Jeffery who crystallis-place? And that not only when says: Now how came Dickens to have jed general public opinion and feel- the holly and misletoe add gaiety "We are sorry it never lies in his name associated with this fea-ing when he wrote to the author to our lives, but throughout the your way to come to us, dear tival? G. K. Chesterton. has an- that you may be sure you have year and every year.
Mahomet but we will come to swered the question for us. He done more good by this little Lamb and Christmas Christmaas you.
I have but one holiday specifies three qualities which ex-publication, fostered more kindly and Lamb! What a choice blend which is Christmas Day nakedly plain the hold Christmas exerts feelings, and prompted more posi-of good things! No less choice in--no pretty garnish and fringes of upon the human sense of happiness tive acts of beneficence, than can telectually than good culinarily. St. John's Day, Holy Innocenta, etc., the dramatic quality, the contrast be, traved to all the pulpits and And the savour lasts for all time. A that used to bestud the calender." of indoor feasting and revelry with confessionals in Christendom since right royal Christmas feast. May Yes! Lamb loved Christmas 'the discomforts of exterior wintry 1842." That was praise indeed! one not also say, the acme of a passionately. He loved its. social weather, and the element of the gro-And how proud and satisfied must chef's highest artistic creation? pleasures, its good cheer, ita tesque. And each of these three Dickens have felt with his child! This distinguished Londoner, no spirit, and the very atmosphere qualities are to be found unmistak- But, perhaps, the greatest tri- less than his compeer Dickens--by that goes to make up this Day of ably visible in The Christmas bute of all came from Thackeray. the way, another Charles-has loft days. But, above all, he knew how Carol.
He wrote:
an indelible impress on this half-to say "Thank you!" as it should "In fact, one might as well de-pagan and half-catholic festival. be said.
friendless and the fallen.
The "Carol,"
The Carol, says Chesterton, is
a happy story because it describes tall the plot of The Merry Wives of Both loved Christmas, and all t For him the charming claim an abrupt and dramatic change. It Windsor' or 'Robinson Crusoe, as stands for, passionately; and in artist in the very gracious, and is the story of a "sudden conver- recapitulate here the adventures of way that to-day seems to a lost art. |
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