The Feast of St. Friend | Page 8

indulged in at all! Can you devise it,
O sceptical one, revelling in disillusion? Can you invent a symbol more
natural and graceful than the symbol of the Tree? Perhaps you would
have a shop-counter, and shelves behind it, so as to instill early into the

youthful mind that this is a planet of commerce! Perhaps you would
abolish the doggerel of crackers, and substitute therefor extracts from
the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin! Perhaps you would exchange
the caps for blazonry embroidered with chemical formula, your object
being the advancement of science! Perhaps you would do away with
the orgiastic eating and drinking, and arrange for a formal conversation
about astronomy and the idea of human fraternity, upon strictly
reasonable rations of shredded wheat! You would thus create an
original festival, and eliminate all fear of a dyspeptic morrow. You
would improve the mind. And you would avoid the ridiculous. But also,
in avoiding the ridiculous, you would tumble into the ridiculous, deeply
and hopelessly! And think how your very original festival would
delight the participators, how they would look forward to it with joy,
and back upon it with pleasurable regret; how their minds would dwell
sweetly upon the conception of shredded wheat, and how their faith
would be encouraged and strengthened by the intellectuality of the
formal conversation!
* * * * *
He who girds at an ancient established festival should reflect upon
sundry obvious truths before he withers up the said festival by the
sirocco of his contempt. These truths are as follows:--First, a festival,
though based upon intelligence, is not an affair of the intellect, but an
affair of the emotions. Second, the human soul can only be reached
through the human body. Third, it is impossible to replace an ancient
festival by a new one. Robespierre, amongst others, tried to do so, and
achieved the absurd. Reformers, heralds of new faiths, and rejuvenators
of old faiths, have always, when they succeeded, adopted an ancient
festival, with all or most of its forms, and been content to breathe into it
a new spirit to replace the old spirit which had vanished or was
vanishing. Anybody who, persuaded that Christmas is not what it was,
feels that a festival must nevertheless be preserved, will do well to
follow this example. To be content with the old forms and to vitalize
them: that is the problem. Solve it, and the forms will soon begin to
adapt themselves to the process of vitalization. All history is a witness
in proof.

SIX
TO REVITALIZE THE FESTIVAL
It being agreed, then, that the Christmas festival has lost a great deal of
its old vitality, and that, to many people, it is a source of tedium and the
cause of insincerity; and it being further agreed that the difficulty
cannot be got over by simply abolishing the festival, as no one really
wants it to be abolished; the question remains--what should be done to
vitalize it? The former spirit of faith, the spirit which made the great
Christmas of the golden days, has been weakened; but one element of
it--that which is founded on the conviction that goodwill among men is
a prime necessity of reasonable living--survives with a certain vigour,
though even it has not escaped the general scepticism of the age. This
element unites in agreement all the pugnacious sectaries who join battle
over the other elements of the former faith. This element has no
enemies. None will deny its lasting virtue. Obviously, therefore, the
right course is to concentrate on the cultivation of goodwill. If goodwill
can be consciously increased, the festival of Christmas will cease to be
perfunctory. It will acquire a fresh and more genuine significance,
which, however, will not in any way inconvenience those who have
never let go of the older significance. No tradition will be overthrown,
no shock administered, and nobody will be able to croak about
iconoclasm and new-fangled notions and the sudden end of the world,
and so on.
* * * * *
The fancy of some people will at once run to the formation of a grand
international Society for the revivifying of Christmas by the cultivation
of goodwill, with branches in all the chief cities of Europe and America,
and headquarters--of course at the Hague; and committees and
subcommittees, and presidents and vice-presidents; and honorary
secretaries and secretaries paid; and quarterly and annual meetings, and
triennial congresses! And a literary organ or two! And a
badge--naturally a badge, designed by a famous artist in harmonious

tints!
* * * * *
But my fancy does not run at all in this direction. I am convinced that
we have already far too many societies for the furtherance of our ends.
To my mind, most societies with a moral aim are merely clumsy