1932-10-31 — Page 24

CHINA MAIL CHRISTMAS NUMBER.

A Merry Christinas By Rev. J.N. Lewis Bryan

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HRISTMAS is the same the wapl world over.

It doesn't

CHRISTMAS is the whether you are living in lands

where the ladies wear encou-mut mutting camisoles, and men, shorts made of sucking; in Spain the land of guitars and anions; out here in China where the women wear trousers and the men skirts; in the din and tumult of great cities, or in the wide open spaces where men are men and the canaries, sing bass the hearts of all white men beat as one at this time.

for Even the fellows who have ignored your existence twelve solid months, or have systematically forgotten to pay the paltry sum of $50 they have owed you for years, get the odil smite of the back, and the invitation to "come along and have

"one,"

In the minds of all there are thoughts of home. Even the men who have run away, perhaps because their wives have taken to chewing gum, or the cook wouldn't stay, or the wrong horse won the 3:30. ali roll up at Xmas, and gather around the turkey and whatnot, all else forgotten.

All over the country the fatted calves are made ready for the returning prodigals. (This does not unfortunately apply" to Scotland. If he turns up there, it isn't the fatted calf that gets killed).

The bells ring out in merry chime. For weeks, before, chaps. wearing wicket-keeping gloves have been hard at it, until their hands have been sufficiently hardened and then at midnight they let themselves go; little fellows standing on hassocks, all in a bath of perspiration, to reminu fond parents that it is high time they were up and doing, in the night nursery:

Sweet faced children with well-trained voices, after months! of painstaking rehearsals, sally forth, in the real spirit of altruism, to proclaim anew the story of Xmas. You, entirely forget. or their doubles, have been weeks past they that for some making the nights hideous with sound, dropped grease all over the porch, and having sufficiently rasped their throats, prodded the door with their boots, and gone off giving expression to their opinions in language singularly unbecoming to their tender age. Another Spirit.

Then turn to trade and commerce.

All the shops have a clean-up, turn out all the previous year's unsaleable goods, call them Xmas bargains, add on 10 per cent." to the price, and hope for the best.

Here in Hong Kong the Chinese and Indian shops follow suit, Hope always beats high at Xmas and hope is to and why not?

be encouraged.

For weeks before the festive season starts, thousands of people all over the world have been given seasonal employment! Picking oranges, and reducing them by special, ingenious machinery into tangerines; collecting flies for the mincemeat; making plum puddings out of all kinds of other fruit; tying a lot of holes together with, fine netting, to make Xmas stockings for the shops; altering the dates on last year's cards; making ap beautiful verses for the crackers; stealing nuts from the monkeys in Africa, or enticing the camels away from the date trees in Algeria.

All these people find employment and consequently happi- ness at Xmas time.

Even the monkeys and camels can't really grouse they have twelve months "to go, before their Lenten season comes around again. The only things I am sorry for are the Turkeys, they' don't get a second chance.

All the higher professions reap sacks of shekels at this period. Bookmakers at Hurst Park and Sandown take 13 to 8 instead of 5 to 4, and go home to the bosom of their families, with a warm glow of public benefaction.

All round the villages the local bands turn out, and blow their false teeth down cornets and trombones; and so the local dentists

are kept busy until Easter, replacing themel, dentists

Others again (up Lancashire way, especially), bring out their 'false teeth from the second drawer in the washstand where they have been raposing since the previous Xmas, and while trying to negotiate the left leg of the turkey, bite themselves and so get This lets in the doctors who have the time of hydrophobia. their lives...

Mixing The Signals.

Much as I hate the idea of introducing even one passing note of pessimism I must say one word about presents. It is unfor- tunately only too true, that the amount of affection you are likely to receive from your immediate relatives during the forthcoming

year, is in exact ratio to the value of the present they have gouged put of your at Xmas.

Presents have been responsible for any number of broken. lives and hearts. 1 remember the sad case of a dear friend of mine. He purchased a safety-razor for an uncle (Indian army, der-puff for his fiancee. Unfortunately in the hustle at the end, retired, and from whom he had great expectations), and a pow he got them mixed. The appropriate note in each, did not lessen the gravity of the situation in either case, and he had to flee the country.

Another sad experience, was that of a local Vicur, whose son had presented him with a magnificent but somewhat intricate pair of braces. At the end of, a wedding service, which he had just, taken, as the procession was wending its way down the aisle to- wards the vestry, a small childish voice was heard to cry excitedly "They're coming down." They were.

Things are managed much better across the Tweed. There they wait until Boxing Day, when all the presents are in from their English friends, then they shuffle them around and repost them, blaming the delay later on, upon the G.P.O. That is the

Xmas. reason why Boxing Day is known up there as the Scotsman's

Lost In A Forest.

Then who doesn't love the Xmas Tree? Lit by fairy lamps and laden with gifts. But one word of caution here may not be amiss. A very dear friend of mine, going upstairs to his flat one Xmas night, collapsed over a very large tree placed outside a neighbour's door. Waking up a few hours later, he found his head embedded among the branches, and remained there until.. rescued by the servants in the morning, under the firm impression that he had spent the night hopelessly lost in the depths of a pine forest.

If anyone, in conclusion, feels inclined to forward the writer any slight token of affection or regard, please do not let anything he has said about preserits above, deter him. He only asks that they be sent c/o the Editor, and above all adequately stumped.