THE ARENA. VOL. XVIIL DECEMBER, 1897. No. 97. IDYLLS AND IDEALS OF CHRISTMAS. I. WHAT I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS. F I had the power to produce exactly what I want for next Christmas, I would have all the kings and emperors resign and allow the people to govern themselves. I would have all the nobility drop their titles and give their lands back to the people. I would have the Pope throw away his tiara, take off his sacred vestments, and admit that he is not acting for God- is not infallible but is just an ordinary Italian. I would have all the cardinals, archbishops, bishops, priests, and clergymen admit that they know nothing about theology, nothing about hell or heaven, nothing about the destiny of the human race, nothing about devils or ghosts, gods or angels. I would have them tell all their "flocks" to think for themselves, to be manly men and womanly women, and to do all in their power to increase the sum of human happiness. I would have all the professors in colleges, all the teachers in schools of every kind, including those in Sunday schools, agree that they would teach only what they know, that they would not palm off guesses as demonstrated truths. I would like to see all the politicians changed to statesmen, to men who long to make their country great and free, to men who care more for public good than private gain men who long to be of use. I would like to see all the editors of papers and magazines agree to print the truth and nothing but the truth, to avoid all slander and misrepresentation, and to let the private affairs of the people alone. I would like to see drunkenness and prohibition both abolished. I would like to see corporal punishment done away with in every home, in every school, in every asylum, reformatory, and prison. Cruelty hardens and degrades, kindness reforms and ennobles. I would like to see the millionaires unite and form a trust for the public good. I would like to see a fair division of profits between capital and labor, so that the toiler could save enough to mingle a little June with the December of his life. I would like to see an international court established in which to settle disputes between nations, so that armies could be disbanded and the great navies allowed to rust and rot in perfect peace. I would like to see the whole world free free from injustice free from superstition. This will do for next Christmas. The following Christmas I may want more. II. CHRISTMAS, THE HUMAN HOLIDAY. BY REV. MINOT J. SAVAGE, D. D. Our Puritan ancestors looked askance at Christmas and discouraged its celebration, because from their point of view it "savored of popery." But as we have become better acquainted with it we find that it savors not only of popery, but of paganism as well. Not only that, it goes beyond what we ordinarily mean by paganism, and savors very strongly of humanity. Most people whom we meet on the street take it for granted that Christmas originated with the birth of Jesus, and they go so far as to express their astonishment that anyone not holding their peculiar ideas of Jesus should claim to have any rights in Christmas or to take any interest in it. As matter of fact, however, the day and its great deep human meanings were in existence uncounted ages before Christianity was ever heard of. Other holidays have a local significance, and some of them rise to the dignity of even a national meaning; but more than all others put together, Christmas is found to belong to humanity. This, of course, is true only of that part of humanity — which, however, includes what we call ordinarily the civilized world — which lives north of the equator. Among the early peoples of the childhood world the sun was worshipped as the bright and life-giving deity. He was the bringer of light, of warmth, of flowers, of fruits, the giver of all that made life sweet and desirable. When he started on his southward journey, as the cold and the winter came on, to them he seemed to be going away and leaving them a prey to the malevolent spirits of the ice and the storm against which they had so little natural protection. Or, to put it another way, he appeared to them to become decrepit and old, to be losing his power, and to be in that dying condition which we figuratively speak of still as the characteristic of the "old" year. But at the time of the winter solstice a glad change appears. He reaches the furthest point of his southern journey and turns toward them once more with all the promise of spring. This, then, to them was the re-birth of their sungod. And they celebrated it with every kind of rejoicing. In Rome, for example, there was the Saturnalia, in which the people, as they believed, resurrected for a time the peace, the equality, the happiness of the golden age of the past. They exchanged gifts; they offered each other mutual congratulations and good wishes; they broke out in all the characteristic features and gladness of the Christmas time. A similar thing was true in the other nations of the north. Turning to church history we find that Christmas was not one of the original festivals, and that even when it came to be celebrated there was no general agreement as to the time of year. Nobody knew then and nobody knows now not only the day but even the month or the year in which Jesus was born. |