The Feast of St. Friend

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The Feast of St. Friend

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Bennett
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Title: The Feast of St. Friend
Author: Arnold Bennett
Release Date: January 10, 2005 [eBook #14653]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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OF ST. FRIEND***
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THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND
A Christmas Book
by
ARNOLD BENNETT
Author of _The Old Wives' Tale_, Buried Alive, etc., etc.
New York George H. Doran Company
1911

CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.
THE FACT II. THE REASON III. THE SOLSTICE AND
GOODWILL IV. THE APPOSITENESS OF CHRISTMAS V.
DEFENCE OF FEASTING VI. TO REVITALIZE THE FESTIVAL
VII. THE GIFT OF ONESELF VIII. THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND IX.
THE REACTION X. ON THE LAST DAY OF THE YEAR

ONE
THE FACT
Something has happened to Christmas, or to our hearts; or to both. In
order to be convinced of this it is only necessary to compare the present
with the past. In the old days of not so long ago the festival began to
excite us in November. For weeks the house rustled with charming and
thrilling secrets, and with the furtive noises of paper parcels being
wrapped and unwrapped; the house was a whispering gallery. The

tension of expectancy increased to such a point that there was a positive
danger of the cord snapping before it ought to snap. On the Eve we
went to bed with no hope of settled sleep. We knew that we should be
wakened and kept awake by the waits singing in the cold; and we were
glad to be kept awake so. On the supreme day we came downstairs
hiding delicious yawns, and cordially pretending that we had never
been more fit. The day was different from other days; it had a unique
romantic quality, tonic, curative of all ills. On that day even the
tooth-ache vanished, retiring far into the wilderness with the spiteful
word, the venomous thought, and the unlovely gesture. We sang with
gusto "Christians awake, salute the happy morn." We did salute the
happy morn. And when all the parcels were definitely unpacked, and
the secrets of all hearts disclosed, we spent the rest of the happy morn
in waiting, candidly greedy, for the first of the great meals. And then
we ate, and we drank, and we ate again; with no thought of nutrition,
nor of reasonableness, nor of the morrow, nor of dyspepsia. We ate and
drank without fear and without shame, in the sheer, abandoned ecstasy
of celebration. And by means of motley paper headgear, fit only for a
carnival, we disguised ourselves in the most absurd fashions, and yet
did not make ourselves seriously ridiculous; for ridicule is in the vision,
not in what is seen. And we danced and sang and larked, until we could
no more. And finally we chanted a song of ceremony, and separated;
ending the day as we had commenced it, with salvoes of good wishes.
And the next morning we were indisposed and enfeebled; and we did
not care; we suffered gladly; we had our pain's worth, and more. This
was the past.
* * * * *
Even today the spirit and rites of ancient Christmas are kept up, more
or less in their full rigour and splendour, by a race of beings that is
scattered over the whole earth. This race, mysterious, masterful,
conservative, imaginative, passionately sincere, arriving from we know
not where, dissolving before our eyes we know not how, has its way in
spite of us. I mean the children. By virtue of the children's faith, the
reindeer are still tramping the sky, and Christmas Day is still something
above and beyond a day of the week; it is a day out of the week. We

have to sit and pretend; and with disillusion in our souls we do pretend.
At Christmas, it is not the children who make-believe; it is ourselves.
Who does not remember the first inkling of a suspicion that Christmas
Day was after all a day rather like any other day? In the house of my
memories, it was the immemorial duty of my brother on Christmas
morning, before anything else whatever happened, to sit down to the
organ and perform "Christians Awake" with all possible stops drawn.
He had to do it. Tradition,