The Feast of St. Friend | Page 6

gave it birth, as the vitality of
children reacts stimulatingly on the vitality of parents. It provides a
concrete symbol of that which is invisible and intangible, and mankind
is not yet so advanced in the path of spiritual perfection that we can
afford to dispense with concrete symbols. Now, if we maintain festivals
and formalities for the healthy continuance and honour of a pastime or
of a personal affection, shall we not maintain a festival--and a mighty
one--in behalf of a faith which makes the corporate human existence
bearable amid the menaces and mysteries that for ever threaten it,--the

faith of universal goodwill and mutual confidence?
* * * * *
If then, there is to be a festival, why should it not be the festival of
Christmas? It can, indeed, be no other. Christmas is most plainly
indicated. It is dignified and made precious by traditions which go back
much further than the Christian era; and it has this tremendous
advantage--it exists! In spite of our declining faith, it has been
preserved to us, and here it is, ready to hand. Not merely does it fall at
the point which uncounted generations have agreed to consider as the
turn of the solar year and as the rebirth of hope! It falls also
immediately before the end of the calendar year, and thus prepares us
for a fresh beginning that shall put the old to shame. It could not be
better timed. Further, its traditional spirit of peace and goodwill is the
very spirit which we desire to foster. And finally its customs--or at any
rate, its main customs--are well designed to symbolize that spirit. If we
have allowed the despatch of Christmas cards to degenerate into naught
but a tedious shuffling of paste-boards and overwork of post-office
officials, the fault is not in the custom but in ourselves. The custom is a
most striking one--so long as we have sufficient imagination to
remember vividly that we are all in the same boat--I mean, on the same
planet--and clinging desperately to the flying ball, and dependent for
daily happiness on one another's good will! A Christmas card sent by
one human being to another human being is more than a piece of
coloured stationery sent by one log of wood to another log of wood: it
is an inspiring and reassuring message of high value. The mischief is
that so many self-styled human beings are just logs of wood, rather
stylishly dressed.
* * * * *
And then the custom of present-giving! What better and more
convincing proof of sympathy than a gift? The gift is one of these
obvious contrivances--like the wheel or the lever--which smooth and
simplify earthly life, and the charm of whose utility no obviousness can
stale. But of course any contrivance can be rendered futile by
clumsiness or negligence. There is a sort of Christmas giver who says

pettishly: "Oh! I don't know what to give to So-and-So this Christmas!
What a bother! I shall write and tell her to choose something herself,
and send the bill to me!" And he writes. And though he does not
suspect it, what he really writes, and what So-and-So reads, is this:
"Dear So-and-So. It is nothing to me that you and I are alive together
on this planet, and in various ways mutually dependent. But I am bound
by custom to give you a present. I do not, however, take sufficient
interest in your life to know what object it would give you pleasure to
possess; and I do not want to be put to the trouble of finding out, nor of
obtaining the object and transmitting it to you. Will you, therefore, buy
something for yourself and send the bill to me. Of course, a sense of
social decency will prevent you from spending more than a small sum,
and I shall be spared all exertion beyond signing a cheque. Yours
insincerely and loggishly * * *." So managed, the contrivance of
present-giving becomes positively sinister in its working. But managed
with the sympathetic imagination which is infallibly produced by real
faith in goodwill, its efficacy may approach the miraculous.
* * * * *
The Christmas ceremony of good-wishing by word of mouth has never
been in any danger of falling into insincerity. Such is the power of
tradition and virtue of a festival, and such the instinctive brotherliness
of men, that on this day the mere sight of an acquaintance will soften
the voice and warm the heart of the most superior sceptic and
curmudgeon that the age of disillusion has produced. In spite of himself,
faith flickers up in him again, be it only for a moment. And, during that
moment, he is almost like those whose bright faith the age has never