The Feast of St. Friend | Page 2

and the will that emanated from the best
bedroom, combined to force him to do it. One Christmas morning, as
he was preparing the stops, he glanced aside at me with a supercilious
curl of the lips, and the curl of my lips silently answered. It was as if he
had said: "I condescend to this," and as if I had said: "So do I."
Such a moment comes to most of us of this generation. And
thenceforward the change in us is extraordinarily rapid. The next thing
we know is that the institution of waits is a rather annoying survival
which at once deprives us of sleep and takes money out of our pockets.
And then Christmas is gluttony and indigestion and expensiveness and
quarter-day, and Christmas cards are a tax and a nuisance, and
present-giving is a heavier tax and a nuisance. And we feel
self-conscious and foolish as we sing "Auld Lang Syne." And what a
blessing it will be when the "festivities" (as they are misleadingly
called) are over, and we can settle down into commonsense again!
* * * * *
I do not mean that our hearts are black with despair on Christmas Day.
I do not mean that we do not enjoy ourselves on Christmas Day. There
is no doubt that, with the inspiriting help of the mysterious race, and by
the force of tradition, and by our own gift of pretending, we do still
very much enjoy ourselves on Christmas Day. What I mean to insinuate,
and to assert, is that beneath this enjoyment is the disconcerting and
distressing conviction of unreality, of non-significance, of exaggerated
and even false sentiment. What I mean is that we have to brace and
force ourselves up to the enjoyment of Christmas. We have to induce
deliberately the "Christmas feeling." We have to remind ourselves that
"it will never do" to let the heartiness of Christmas be impaired. The

peculiarity of our attitude towards Christmas, which at worst is a
vacation, may be clearly seen by contrasting it with our attitude
towards another vacation--the summer holiday. We do not have to
brace and force ourselves up to the enjoyment of the summer holiday.
We experience no difficulty in inducing the holiday feeling. There is no
fear of the institution of the summer holiday losing its heartiness. Nor
do we need the example of children to aid us in savouring the August
"festivities."
* * * * *
If any person here breaks in with the statement that I am deceived and
the truth is not in me, and that Christmas stands just where it did in the
esteem of all right-minded people, and that he who casts a doubt on the
heartiness of Christmas is not right-minded, let that person read no
more. This book is not written for him. And if any other person,
kindlier, condescendingly protests that there is nothing wrong with
Christmas except my advancing age, let that person read no more. This
book is not written for him, either. It is written for persons who can
look facts cheerfully in the face. That Christmas has lost some of its
magic is a fact that the common sense of the western hemisphere will
not dispute. To blink the fact is infantile. To confront it, to try to
understand it, to reckon with it, and to obviate any evil that may attach
to it--this course alone is meet for an honest man.

TWO
THE REASON
If the decadence of Christmas were a purely subjective phenomenon,
confined to the breasts of those of us who have ceased to be children
then it follows that Christmas has always been decadent, because
people have always been ceasing to be children. It follows also that the
festival was originally got up by disillusioned adults, for the benefit of
the children. Which is totally absurd. Adults have never yet invented
any institution, festival or diversion specially for the benefit of children.

The egoism of adults makes such an effort impossible, and the
ingenuity and pliancy of children make it unnecessary. The pantomime,
for example, which is now pre-eminently a diversion for children, was
created by adults for the amusement of adults. Children have merely
accepted it and appropriated it. Children, being helpless, are of course
fatalists and imitators. They take what comes, and they do the best they
can with it. And when they have made something their own that was
adult, they stick to it like leeches.
They are terrific Tories, are children; they are even reactionary! They
powerfully object to changes. What they most admire in a pantomime
is the oldest part of it, the only true pantomime--the harlequinade!
Hence the very nature of children is a proof that what Christmas is now
to them, it was in