Part 9

In a word, the old English feeling seemed nearly extinct for a time; and the ancient customs which had connected themselves therewith, one by one fell more or less into disuse. The chain of _universal_ sympathy and _general_ observance, which had long kept the festival together in all its parts, was broken; and the parts fell asunder, and were by degrees lost or overlooked. Let no man say that this is scarcely worth lamenting! Let none imagine that, in the decay of customs useless or insignificant in themselves, there is little to regret! "The affections," says Sterne, "when they are busy that way, will build their structures, were it but on the paring of a nail;" and there is no practice of long observance and ancient veneration--whether among nations or individuals--round which the affections have not in some degree twined themselves, and which are not therefore useful as supports and remembrancers to those affections. There are few of the consequences springing from civil war more lamentable than the disturbance which it gives to the social arrangements, were it but to the meanest of them. It is impossible that customs long identified with the feelings should perish without those feelings (though from their own eternal principle they will ultimately revive and find new modes of action) suffering some temporary injury. It was a beautiful assertion of Dr. Johnson that his feelings would be outraged by seeing an old post rooted up from before his door which he had been used to look at all his life,--even though it might be an incumbrance there. How much more would he have grieved over the removal of a village Maypole, with all its merry memories and all its ancient reverence!

The Christmas festival has languished from those days to this, but never has been, and never will be extinct. The stately forms of its celebration in high places have long since (and, in all probability, forever) passed away. The sole and homely representative of the gorgeous Christmas prince is the mock-monarch of the Epiphany,--the laureate of our times, with his nominal duties, in the last faint shadow of the court bards and masque-makers of yore; and the few lingering remains of the important duties once confided to the master of the royal revels are silently and unostentatiously performed in the office of the Lord Chamberlain of to-day. But the spirit of the season yet survives, and, for reasons which we shall proceed to point out, _must_ survive. True, the uproarious merriment, the loud voice which it sent of old throughout the land, have ceased; and while the ancient sports and ceremonies are widely scattered, many of them have retreated into obscure places, and some perhaps are lost. Still, however, this period of commemoration is everywhere a merry time; and we believe, as we have already said, that most of the children of Father Christmas are yet wandering up and down in one place or another of the land. We call upon all those of our readers who know anything of the "old, old, very old, gray-bearded gentleman" or his family to aid us in our search after them; and with their good help we will endeavor to restore them to some portion of their ancient honors in England.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] The evergreen holly is meant, a bearing peculiarly appropriate to the lord of Christmas sports.

[3] His motto or impress.

FEELINGS OF THE SEASON.

OF all the festivals which crowd the Christian calendar there is none that exercises an influence so strong and universal as that of Christmas; and those varied superstitions, and quaint customs, and joyous observances, which once abounded throughout the rural districts of England, are at no period of the year so thickly congregated or so strongly marked as at this season of unrestrained festivity and extended celebration. The reasons for this are various and very obvious. In the case of a single celebration, which has to support itself by its own solitary influence long, perchance, after the feeling in which it originated has ceased to operate, whose significance is perhaps dimly and more dimly perceived (through the obscurity of a distance, year after year receding further into shadow) by its own unaided and unreflected light, the chances are many that the annually increasing neglect into which its observance is likely to fall, shall finally consign it to an entire obliteration. But a cluster of festivals, standing in a proximate order of succession, at once throwing light upon each other and illustrated by a varied and numerous host of customs, traditions, and ceremonies,--of which, as in a similar cluster of stars, the occasional obscuration of any one or more would not prevent their memory being suggested and their place distinctly indicated by the others,--present greatly multiplied probabilities against their existence being ever entirely forgotten or their observation wholly discontinued. The arrangement by which a series of celebrations--beautiful in themselves, and connected with the paramount event in which are laid the foundations of our religion--are made to fall at a period otherwise of very solemn import (from its being assumed as the close of the larger of those revolutions of time into which man measures out the span of his transitory existence), and the chance which has brought down to the same point and thrown together the traces of customs and superstitions both of a sacred and secular character, uniting with the crowd of Catholic observances, off-shoots from the ancient Saturnalia, remains of old Druidical rites, and glimpses into the mythology of the Northern nations, have written a series of hieroglyphics upon that place of the calendar, which, if they cannot be deciphered in every part, are still, from their number and juxtaposition, never likely to be overlooked.

But though these causes are offered as accounting for the preservation of many customs which, without them, would long since have passed into oblivion, which exist by virtue of the position they occupy on the calendar, yet the more conspicuous celebrations of this season need no such aid and no such arguments. Nothing can be added to their intrinsic interest, and they are too closely connected with the solemn warnings of man's temporal destiny, and linked with the story of his eternal hopes, ever to lose any portion of that influence, a share of which (without thereby losing, as light is communicated without diminution) they throw over all the other celebrations that take shelter under their wing.

In every way, and by many a tributary stream, are the holy and beneficent sentiments which belong to the period increased and refreshed. Beautiful feelings, too apt to fade within the heart of man amid the chilling influences of worldly pursuit, steal out beneath the sweet religious warmth of the season, and the pure and holy amongst the hopes of earth assemble, to place themselves under the protection of that eternal hope whose promise is now, as it were, yearly renewed. Amid the echoes of that song which proclaimed peace on earth and good-will towards men, making no exclusions, and dividing them into no classes, rises up a dormant sense of universal brotherhood in the heart; and something like a distribution of the good things of the earth is suggested in favor of those, destitute here, who are proclaimed as joint participators in the treasure thus announced from heaven. At no other period of the year are the feeling of a universal benevolence and the sense of a common Adam so widely awakened; at no season is the predominant spirit of selfishness so effectually rebuked; never are the circles of love so largely widened.

The very presence of a lengthened festivity--for festivity can never be _solitary_--would, apart from its sacred causes, promote these wholesome effects. The extended space of time over which this festival is spread, the protracted holiday which it creates, points it out for the gathering together of distant friends whom the passing nature of an occasional and single celebration would fail to collect from their scattered places of the world. By this wise and beautiful arrangement the spell of home is still made to cast its sweet and holy influence along the sterile regions as along the bright places of after-life, and from the dark valleys and the sunny hilltops of the world to call back alike the spoiled of fortune and the tired and travel-stained to refresh themselves again and again at the fountain of their calmer hopes and purer feelings. A wise and beautiful arrangement this would be, in whatever season of the year it might be placed! Wise and beautiful is any institution which sets up a rallying-place for the early affections and re-awakens the sacred sympathies of youth,--which, from that well-head of purity and peace, sends forth, as it were, a little river of living waters, to flow with revivifying freshness and soothing murmur along the wastes and wildernesses of after years; which makes of that spring-time of the heart a reservoir of balm, to which in hours of sorrow it can return for joy, and in years of guilt for regeneration; and which, like the widow's cruse of oil, wasteth not in all the ages of the mind's dearth. But how greatly are the wisdom and the beauty of this arrangement increased by the sacred season at which it has been placed! Under the sanctions of religion the covenants of the heart are renewed. Upon the altars of our faith the lamps of the spirit are rekindled. The loves of earth seem to have met together at the sound of the "glad tidings" of the season, to refresh themselves for the heaven which those tidings proclaim. From "Abana and Pharpar" and all the "rivers of Damascus" the affections are returned to bathe in "the waters of Israel." In many a peaceful spot and lowly home,

"Wi' joy unfeigned, brothers and sisters meet, An' each for other's welfare kindly spiers;"

and as the long-separated look once more into the "sweet, familiar faces," and listen in that restored companionship to strains such as "once did sweet in Zion glide" (even as they listened long ago, and, it may be, with some who are gone from them for ever),--

"Hope springs, 'exulting on triumphant wing' That thus they all shall meet in future days, There ever bask in uncreated rays, No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear, Together hymning their Creator's praise In such society, yet still more dear, While ceaseless time moves round in an eternal sphere."

To this tone of feeling the services of the Church have for some time previously been gradually adapting the mind. During the whole period of Advent a course of moral and religious preparation has been going on, and a state of expectation is by degrees excited, not unlike that with which the Jews were waiting for the Messiah, of old. There is, as it were, a sort of watching for the great event, a questioning where Christ shall be born, and an earnest looking out for his star in the East that we may "come to worship him." The feeling awakened by the whole series of these services--unlike that suggested by some of those which commemorate other portions of the same sacred story--is entirely a joyous one. The lowly manner of the Saviour's coming, the exceeding humiliation of his appointments, the dangers which beset his infancy, and his instant rejection by those to whom he came, are all forgotten in the fact of his coming itself, in the feeling of a mighty triumph and the sense of a great deliverance, or only so far remembered as to temper the triumph and give a character of tenderness to the joy. "The services of the Church about this season," says Washington Irving, "are extremely tender and inspiring. They dwell on the beautiful story of the origin of our faith, and the pastoral scenes that accompanied its announcement. They gradually increase in fervor and pathos during the season of Advent, until they break forth in full jubilee on the morning that brought 'peace and good-will to men.'" "I do not know," he adds, "a grander effect of music on the moral feelings than to hear the full choir and the pealing organ performing a Christmas anthem in a cathedral, and filling every part of the vast pile with triumphant harmony." We confess that, for ourselves, very sensible as we are to the grander and more complicated effects of harmony, we have, on the occasion in question, been more touched by the simple song of rejoicing as it rang in its unaided sweetness through the aisles of some village church. We have felt ourselves more emphatically reminded, amid pastoral scenes and primitive choirs, of the music of congratulation which was uttered through the clear air to men "abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flocks by night,"--

"The hallowed anthem sent to hail Bethlehem's shepherds in the lonely vale When Jordan hushed his waves, and midnight still Watched on the holy towers of Zion's hill."

Nor is the religious feeling which belongs to this season suffered to subside with the great event of the nativity itself. The incidents of striking interest which immediately followed the birth of the Messiah, the persecutions which were directed against his life, and the starry writing of God in the sky, which, amid the rejection of "his own," drew to him witnesses from afar, all contribute to keep alive the sense of a sacred celebration to the end of the period usually devoted to social festivity, and send a wholesome current of religious feeling through the entire season, to temper its extravagancies and regulate its mirth. The worship of the shepherds; the lamentation in Rama, and the weeping of Rachel for the murder of the innocents; the miraculous escape from that massacre of the Saviour, and the flight of his parents into Egypt with the rescued child; and the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles, which is indeed the day of his nativity to _us_,--are all commemorated in the Christian Church, and illustrated by the series of services distributed through that period of religious worship which bears the general title of Christmas.

There is, too, in the lengthened duration of this festival a direct cause of that joyous and holiday spirit which, for the most part (after the first tenderness of meeting has passed away, and a few tears perhaps been given, as the muster-roll is perused, to those who answer to their names no more), pervades all whom that same duration has tempted to assemble.

Regrets there will no doubt, in most cases, be, for these distant and periodical gatherings together of families but show more prominently the blanks which the long intervals have created; this putting on anew, as it were, of the garment of love but exposes the rents which time has made since it was last worn; this renewing of the chain of our attachments but displays the links that are broken! The Sybil has come round again, as year by year she comes, with her books of the affections; but new leaves have been torn away. "No man," says Shakspeare, "ever bathed twice in the same river;" and the home-Jordan to which the observers of the Christmas festival come yearly back to wash away the leprous spots contracted in the world never presents to them again the identical waters in which last they sported, though it be Jordan still. Amid these jubilant harmonies of the heart there will be parts unfilled up, voices wanting. "This young gentlewoman," says the Countess of Rousillon to Lafeu, "had a father (oh that _had_! how sad a passage 'tis!)." And surely with such changes as are implied in that past tense some of the notes of life's early music are silenced forever. "Would they were with us still!" says the old ballad; and in the first hour of these reunions many and many a time is the wish echoed in something like the words! And if these celebrations have been too long disused, and the wanderer comes rarely back to the birthplace of the affections, the feeling of sadness may be too strong for the joyous influences of the season,--

"A change" _he may find_ "there, and many a change! Faces and footsteps and all things strange! Gone are the heads of the silvery hair, And the young that were, have a brow of care, And the place is hushed where the children played!"

till, amid the bitter contrasts of the past with the present, and thoughts of "the loved, the lost, the distant, and the dead," something like

"A pall, And a gloom o'ershadowing the banquet-hall, And a mark on the floor as of life-drops spilt,"

may spoil his ear for the voice of mirth, and darken all the revels of the merry Christmas-tide.

* * * * *

To few assemblages of men is it given to come together in the scene of ancient memories without having to "remember such things were that were most precious." But excepting in those cases in which the suffering is extreme or the sorrow immediate, after a few hours given to a wholesome and perhaps mournful retrospect, the mind readjusts itself to the tone of the time, and men for the most part seem to understand that they are met for the purpose of being as merry as it is in their natures to be. And to the attainment of this right joyous frame of mind we have already said that a sense of the duration of the festival period greatly contributes. In the case of a single holiday the mind has scarcely time to take the appropriate tone before the period of celebration has passed away; and a sense of its transitoriness tends often to prevent the effort being made with that heartiness which helps to insure success.

But when the holiday of to-day terminates only that it may make way for the holiday of to-morrow, and gladness has an ancient charter in virtue of which it claims dominion over a series of days so extended that the happy school-boy (and some who are quite as happy as school-boys, and as merry too) cannot see the end of them for the blaze of joyous things that lies between,--then does the heart surrender itself confidently to the genius of the time, and lets loose a host of cheerful and kindly feelings, which it knows will not be suddenly thrown back upon it, and heaps up pleasant devices upon the glowing flame of mirth, as we heap up logs on the roaring fire, laying them decently aside at the end of the season, as we lay aside the burned-out brand of the Yule log to re-kindle the Christmas fire and the Christmas feeling of another year.

But there is yet another reason, in aid of those which we have enumerated, accounting for an observance of the Christmas festivities more universal, and a preservation of its traditions more accurate and entire, than are bestowed in England upon the festival customs of any other period of the year. This reason, which might not at first view seem so favorable to that end as in truth it is, is to be found in the outward and natural aspects of the season. We have been watching the year through the period of its decline, are arrived at the dreary season of its old age, and stand near the edge of its grave. We have seen the rich sunshines and sweet but mournful twilights of autumn, with their solemn inspirations, give place to the short days and gloomy evenings which usher in the coming solstice. One by one the fair faces of the flowers have departed from us, and the sweet murmuring of "shallow rivers, by whose falls melodious birds sing madrigals," has been exchanged for the harsh voice of the swollen torrent and the dreary music of winds that "rave through the naked tree." Through many a chilling sign of "weary winter comin' fast," we have reached the

"Last of the months, severest of them all.

. . . . . . .

For lo! the fiery horses of the Sun Through the twelve signs their rapid course have run; Time, like a serpent, bites his forked tail, And Winter, on a goat, bestrides the gale; Rough blows the North-wind near Arcturus' star, And sweeps, unreined, across the polar bar."

The halcyon days, which sometimes extend their southern influence even to our stern climate, and carry an interval of gloomy calm into the heart of this dreary month, have generally ere its close given place to the nipping frosts and chilling blasts of mid-winter. "Out of the South" hath come "the whirlwind, and cold out of the North." The days have dwindled to their smallest stature, and the long nights, with their atmosphere of mist, shut in and circumscribe the wanderings of man. Clouds and shadows surround us. The air has lost its rich echoes, and the earth its diversified aspects; and to the immediate threshold of the house of feasting and merriment we have travelled through those dreary days which are emphatically called "the dark days before Christmas." Of one of the gloomy mornings that usher in these melancholy days Ben Jonson gives the following dismal description:--

"It is, methinks, a morning full of fate! It riseth slowly, as her sullen car Had all the weights of sleep and death hung at it! She is not rosy-fingered, but swoln black! Her face is like a water turned to blood, And her sick head is bound about with clouds, As if she threatened night, ere noon of day! It does not look as it would have a hail Or health wished in it--as of other morns!"

And the general discomforts of the season are bemoaned by old Sackville, with words that have a wintry sound, in the following passage, which we extract from "England's Parnassus:"--

"The wrathfull winter, proching on a pace, With blustring blast had all ybard the treene; And old Saturnus, with his frosty face, With chilling cold had pearst the tender greene; The mantle rent wherein inwrapped beene The gladsome groves that now lay over-throwne, The tapers torne, and every tree downe blowne; The soyle, that erst so seemely was to seeme, Was all dispoiled of her beauties hewe, And stole fresh flowers (wherewith the Somer's queene Had clad the earth), now Boreas blast downe blew; And small fowles flocking, in their songs did rew The Winter's wrath, where with each thing defast, In wofull wise bewayl'd the Sommer past: Hawthorne had lost his motley liverie, The naked twigs were shivering all for cold, And, dropping down the teares aboundantlie, Each thing, methought, with weeping eye me told The cruell season, bidding me withhold Myselfe within."

The feelings excited by this dreary period of transition, and by the desolate aspect of external things to which it has at length brought us, would seem, at first view, to be little in harmony with a season of festival, and peculiarly unpropitious to the claims of merriment. And yet it is precisely this joyless condition of the natural world which drives us to take refuge in our moral resources, at the same time that it furnishes us with the leisure necessary for their successful development. The spirit of cheerfulness which, for the blessing of man, is implanted in his nature, deprived of the many issues by which, at other seasons, it walks abroad and breathes amid the sights and sounds of Nature, is driven to its own devices for modes of manifestation, and takes up its station by the blazing hearth. In rural districts, the varied occupations which call the sons of labor abroad into the fields are suspended by the austerities of the time; and to the cottage of the poor man has come a season of temporal repose, concurrently with the falling of that period which seals anew for him, as it were, the promises of an eternal rest. At no other portion of the year, could a feast of equal duration find so many classes of men at leisure for its reception.

"With his ice, and snow, and rime, Let bleak winter sternly come! There is not a sunnier clime Than the love-lit winter home."