1929-12-13 — Page 25

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CHINA MAIL CHRISTMAS SUPPLEMENT, 1929.

A Christmas

Festival

By MARJORIE HOWE DIXON

HE following outline is suggested for a Christmas programme, for a clúb, or It is assumed that a for a school room.. piano will be available. Organ music would be of great assistance.

Prelude Pastoral Symphony from the Messiah.

Chorus O Little Town of Bethlehem. Tableau The Three Wise Men. (Joseph and Mary with the Christ Child. Three wise men presenting gifts)..

-

Music We three kings of Orient Are. Quartet or Chorus It came upon the Midnight Clear; O Come all ye faithful.

Tableau The Yule Log. (Children dragging in the log)..

May Use Tennyson's Poem This might be inserted on the pro- gramme immediately following the first tableau. Another recitation that would end the programme in a fitting manner is Tenny son's "Ring out Wild Bells to the Wild Sky." The last verse makes an appropriate bene- diction.

If this were to be held in a church, the somewhat pagan character of the tableau, The Yule Log, might be an objection. This could be omitted and the Carol "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” be inserted. Readings from the Scriptures about the Birth of Christ could be given.

tion.

A manger can be forward, beside Mary. Mary in blue with the Christ Child on her knee, with Joseph in dark red stand- ing behind her, might be on a raised plat- form, at the left centre of the stage. At the right would be the group of wise men. A gilded box lying on a cloth would lie at Mary's feet. The first wise man would kneel, the second would carry a box on his urm as if about to offer it, while the third would stand at the rear. Bright colours in the costumes will further assist in complet. ing the picture.

An old print shows the ceremony of the Yule Log. The log is roped and is being dragged by four boys of ten years of age. Their costumes suggest Elizabethan times. They are headed toward a great fire. place (which with wood panelling would form the back drop). On the log sits a youngster of four or five who is being held there by his solicitous mother.

Court Fool Amuses Child

A court fool is playing back of her for the child's benefit. At the right a group of elder folk are seated about a heavy wood table watching the fun. At the left a grand dame is seating, pointing her stick at the log. Over her bends a fine gentleman! Another man, and his lady, stand further back at the The tableau, "The Three Wise Men," left. With the glow of the fire for a back could be preceded by a Scriptural reading, ground this should present a picture of un- too. A tableau should present a definite pic-usual colour and charm. ture to the mind. It will therefore be most effective if the costumes are full of colour Postlude Handel's Largo.

and the lighting carefully studied. Colour- To this programme two or more recita-ed lights may help, but the scene must not tions might be added. "Christmas Hymn," be rendered too dim by too great a use of by Charles Wesley (which may be found in them. Volume 45 of the Harvard Classics, page 674), has a fine ringing air. It begins:-

Hark! how all the welkin rings, Glory to the King of Kings!

men.

Chorus God Rest ye, Merry Gentle

Suggestion for Tableau

The composition of this tableau must be thought out. Of course, the background will suggest a stable, very crude in its construc-

A SANTA CLAUS OF BLUE But the washtub seemed determined to do

WATER

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men were not working wholeheartedly. He did not say, what every other one was say ing, that a growing lack of confidence in the captain was increasing hourly. Socially, Harold Loxley left nothing to be desired; professionally, he was failing to rise to the

emergency.

While this tableau was being prepared, Robert Herrick's lines could be recited:

Kindle the Christmas brand, and then

Till sunne-set let it burne; Which quencht, then lay it up again, Till Christmas next returne. Part must be kept wherewith to teend The Christmas log next year; And when 'tis safely kept, the Fiend

Can do no mischief there.

Battling At Dawn

something. It set about the task with a Laggard dawn found her still battling. suggestion of grim purposefulness that to It revealed the horrors which the Hyacinth some minds was inspiring. It launched a had escaped in hideous detail. The tramp boat, for one thing, and that boat contrived was washed bare as a well-picked bone, to cross the intervening stretch of furious There were gaunt gaps in her bulwarks, and sea without mishap, and carried a line, her derricks were lashed over her hatches to which it passed aboard the Hyacinth avert the possibility of boarding seas break- Nothing could stop it. The boat returneding down her defences and swamping her. to its parent ship, and the line it had carried was bent to a hawser, and the hawser passed from ship to ship. The tramp signalled:

Loxley saw all this and, looking along the gaunt length of his own ship, knew that life had come to him from the pits of threatened death. He stared at the wallowing tramp, and saw bunting climb to her signal span as she swung her kicking tail to the impulse of a furious, baffled sea.

"What's he saying?" he asked.

"Hurry!-weather worsening!" The people of the Hyacinth hurried. They married the hawser to a bower-cable, work- Storm-Battered And Riotous

ing for the most part under water as the The Cromlech, storm-battered and livid squalls rioted; and the tramp hove the riotous, hove in sight and signalled, "Do you cable across to form a link. She took aboard

The navigating officer and a quarter- wish to abandon 7" Carrying the mails as such heavy water as she worked that it master worked away with spray-wetted she was, she could do no more than save seemed a miracle she did not open and sink glasses and the sodden volume of the Signal life. Loxley looked at the sea, at the ice- like a stone to the bottom of the sea; but Code, and a slow grin began to crease the shrouded ships, and shook his head. Pre- as every fresh wave passed she swung her-officer's face. But that face was gravely sently, the Cromlech passed on, disappear- self clear and went on battling. But it was severe as he reported: ing into the misted distance. The Hyacinth night-black, unbelievable night by the "He says, sir: 'Captain Santa Claus, wallowed along in a wilderness of destruc- time the connection was satisfactorily ac-of the Mercury, wishes all aboard the com- tion.

complished. And the storm was growing pliments of the season!"" Towards sunset, though no sun was towards the infernal climax that midnight "God bless my soul!" gasped Loxley. visible, a rusty, wallowing old freighter would bring.

He took the glasses and, through them, loomed into view from the eastward. She

The White Horror

made out, on the freighter's bridge, a squat, doggedly pitched and wallowed, and white "I will keep on towing," signalled the white-bearded figure, who, recognising him- water streamed from every rivet of her. tramp. It plucked the bow of the Hyacinth self as being under observation, waved a re- She looked a veritable outcast of the seas, into the wind and sea, and began assuring arm. Loxley thought of the cap- but she was gallantly trudging on.

to tow. Occasionally, it could be dimly tains' room of the Port of Call; of the hush- "Send a rocket up. Ask her to stand seen in the white horror, a half-tide rock in ed and sleeping children and women below

Bordered Loxley.. The tramp saw the effect, hard-set to keep afloat for its own —all safe; of Dorothy Soames, whom he

signal and wallowed nearer, asking for par- ticulars.

"I will take you in tow," she signalled back, after the bunting had told the news. Loxley spat and swore.

"As if that dirty old washtub could do anything with a ship like this!" he yelled.

part, but always indomitably towing. It would see again; of a humbled but not would have been an easy matter to abandon eternally disgraced man, thanks to the the liner and fight a stouter fight unham-stupendous gallantry of the old man he had pered, but no attempt was made to shirk insulted. responsibility. There were times when the "Some Santa Claus!" he said chastened- storm seemed to gather up the puny battler |ly. "He's brought us a proper Christmas and set it down bodily on the tow:

gift-life!"