Christmas Part 12

About mistletoe? (Good Heavens! what an immense number of things remain to be said about mistletoe!) About Christmas Eve?

About hunt-the-slipper?

About hot c.o.c.kles?

About blind-man's-buff?

About shoeing the wild-mare?

About thread-the-needle?

About he-can-do-little-that-can't-do-this?

About puss-in-the-corner?

About snap-dragon?

About forfeits?

About Miss Smith?

About the bell-man?

About the waits?

About chilblains?

About carols?

About the fire?

About the block on it?

About school-boys?

About their mothers?

About Christmas-boxes?

About turkeys?

About Hogmany?

About goose-pie?

About mumming?

About saluting the apple-trees?

About brawn?

About plum-porridge?

About hobby-horse?

About hoppings?

About wakes?

About "feed-the-dove"?

About hackins?

About yule-doughs?

About going-a-gooding?

About loaf-stealing?

About _Julklaps_? (Who has exhausted that subject, we should like to know?) About wad-shooting?

About elder-wine?

About pantomimes?

About cards?

About New-Year's Day?

About gifts?

About wa.s.sail?

About Twelfth-cake?

About king and queen?

About characters?

About eating too much?

About aldermen?

About the doctor?

About all being in the wrong?

About charity?

About all being in the right?

About faith, hope, and endeavor?

About the greatest plum-pudding for the greatest number?

_Esto perpetua_,--that is, faith, hope and charity, and endeavor; and plum-pudding enough by and by, all the year round, for everybody that likes it. Why that should not be the case, we cannot see,--seeing that the earth is big, and human kind teachable, and G.o.d very good, and inciting us to do it. Meantime, gravity apart, we ask anybody whether any of the above subjects are exhausted; and we inform everybody, that all the above customs still exist in some parts of our beloved country, however unintelligible they may have become in others. But to give a specimen of the non-exhaustion of any one of their topics.

Beef, for example. Now, we should like to know who has exhausted the subject of the fine old roast Christmas piece of beef, from its original appearance in the meadows as part of the n.o.ble sultan of the herd, glorious old Taurus,--the lord of the st.u.r.dy brow and ponderous agility, a sort of thunderbolt of a beast, well chosen by Jove to disguise in, one of Nature's most striking compounds of apparent heaviness and unenc.u.mbered activity,--up to its contribution to the n.o.ble Christmas-dinner, smoking from the spit, and flanked by the outposts of Bacchus. John Bull (cannibalism apart) hails it like a sort of relation.

He makes it part of his flesh and blood; glories in it; was named after it; has it served up, on solemn occasions, with music and a hymn, as it was the other day at the royal city dinner:--

"Oh the roast beef of old England!

And oh the old English roast beef!"

"_And_ oh!" observe, not merely "oh!" again; but "and" with it; as if, though the same piece of beef, it were also another,--another and the same,--cut, and come again; making two of one, in order to express intensity and reduplication of satisfaction:--

"Oh the roast beef of old England!

_And_ oh the old English roast beef!"

We beg to a.s.sure the reader, that a whole _Seer_ might be written on this single point of the Christmas-dinner; and "shall we be told" (as orators exclaim), "and this, too, in a British land," that the subject is "_exhausted_"!

Then plum-pudding! What a word is that! how plump and plump again! How round and repeated and plenipotential! (There are two p's, observe, in plenipotential; and so there are in plum-pudding. We love an exquisite fitness,--a might and wealth of adaptation). Why, the whole round cheek of universal childhood is in the idea of plum-pudding; ay, and the weight of manhood, and the plenitude of the majesty of city dames.

Wealth itself is symbolized by the least of its fruity particles. "A plum" is a city fortune,--a million of money. He (the old boy, who has earned it)--

"Puts in his thumb,

_videlicet_, into his pocket,

And pulls out a plum, And says, What a _good man_ am I!"

Observe a little boy at a Christmas-dinner, and his grandfather opposite him. What a world of secret similarity there is between them! How hope in one, and retrospection in the other, and appet.i.te in both, meet over the same ground of pudding, and understand it to a nicety! How the senior banters the little boy on his third slice! and how the little boy thinks within himself that he dines that day as well as the senior! How both look hot and red and smiling, and juvenile. How the little boy is conscious of the Christmas-box in his pocket! (of which, indeed, the grandfather jocosely puts him in mind); and how the grandfather is quite as conscious of the plum, or part of a plum, or whatever fraction it may be, in his own! How he incites the little boy to love money and good dinners all his life! and how determined the little boy is to abide by his advice,--with a secret addition in favor of holidays and marbles,--to which there is an a.n.a.logy, in the senior's mind, on the side of trips to Hastings, and a game at whist! Finally, the old gentleman sees his own face in the pretty smooth one of the child; and if the child is not best pleased at his proclamation of the likeness (in truth, is horrified at it, and thinks it a sort of madness), yet nice observers, who have lived long enough to see the wonderful changes in people's faces from youth to age, probably discern the thing well enough, and feel a movement of pathos at their hearts in considering the world of trouble and emotion that is the causer of the changes. _That_ old man's face was once like that little boy's! _That_ little boy's will be one day like that old man's! What a thought to make us all love and respect one another, if not for our fine qualities, let at least for the trouble and sorrow which we all go through!

Ay, and joy too; for all people have their joys as well as troubles, at one time or another,--most likely both together, or in constant alternation: and the greater part of troubles are not the worst things in the world, but only graver forms of the requisite motion of the universe, or workings towards a better condition of things, the greater or less violent according as we give them violence, or respect them like awful but not ill-meaning G.o.ds, and entertain them with a rewarded patience. Grave thoughts, you will say, for Christmas. But no season has a greater right to grave thoughts, in pa.s.sing; and, for that very reason, no season has a greater right to let them pa.s.s, and recur to more light ones.

So a n.o.ble and merry season to you, my masters; and may we meet, thick and three-fold, many a time and oft, in blithe yet most thoughtful pages! Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the 25th of this month, that the divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on that day: and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for mirth is also of Heaven's making, and wondrous was the wine-drinking at Galilee.

SONG OF THE HOLLY

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Blow, blow thou winter wind-- Thou art not so unkind As man's ingrat.i.tude!

Thy tooth is not so keen, Because thou art not seen, Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly: Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh ho! the holly!

This life is most jolly!

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky-- Thou dost not bite so nigh As benefits forgot!

Though thou the waters warp, Thy sting is not so sharp As friend remembered not.

Heigh ho! sing heigh ho! unto the green holly, Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly.

Then heigh ho, the holly!