Chapter II: Part 2

I was roused from this fit of luxurious meditation by a shout from my little travelling companions. They had been looking out of the coach windows for the last few miles, recognizing every tree and cottage as they approached home, and now there was a general burst of joy—“There’s John! and there’s old Carlo! and there’s Bantam!” cried the happy little rogues, clapping their hands.

At the end of a lane there was an old sober-looking servant in livery waiting for them; he was accompanied by a superannuated pointer, and by the redoubtable Bantam, a little old rat of a pony, with a shaggy mane and long rusty tail, who stood dozing quietly by the roadside, little dreaming of the bustling times that awaited him.

I was pleased to see the fondness with which the little fellows leaped about the steady old footman, and hugged the pointer, who wriggled his whole body for joy. But Bantam was the great object of interest; all wanted to mount at once; and it was with some difficulty that John arranged that they should ride by turns, and the eldest should ride first.

Off they set at last; one on the pony, with the dog bounding and barking before him, and the others holding John’s hands; both talking at once, and overpowering him by questions about home, and with school anecdotes. I looked after them with a feeling in which I do not know whether pleasure or melancholy predominated; for I was reminded of those days when, like them, I had neither known care nor sorrow, and a holiday was the summit of earthly felicity. We stopped a few moments afterwards to water the horses, and on resuming our route, a turn of the road brought us in sight of a neat country-seat. I could just distinguish the forms of a lady and two young girls in the portico, and I saw my little comrades, with Bantam, Carlo, and old John, trooping along the carriage road. I leaned out of the coach window, in hopes of witnessing the happy meeting, but a grove of trees shut it from my sight.

God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen

God rest you merry, gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay,
For Jesus Christ, our Saviour,
Was born upon this day;
To save us all from Satan’s power,
When we were gone astray.
_O tidings of comfort and joy,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas Day._

In Bethlehem in Jewry
This blessed babe was born,
And laid within a manger
Upon this blessed morn;
The which His mother Mary
Nothing did take in scorn.

From God, our Heavenly Father,
A blessed Angel came,
And, unto certain shepherds,
Brought tidings of the same;
How, that in Bethlehem was born
The Son of God by name.

The Shepherds at those tidings,
Rejoiced much in mind,
And left their flocks a-feeding
In tempest, storm, and wind,
And went to Bethlehem straightway,
This blessed Babe to find.

But when to Bethlehem they came,
Where as this Infant lay,
They found him in a manger
Where oxen feed on hay,
His mother Mary kneeling
Unto the Lord did pray.

Now to the Lord sing praises
All you within this place,
And with true love and brotherhood
Each other now embrace,
This holy tide of Christmas
All others doth deface.
_O tidings of comfort and joy,
For Jesus Christ our Saviour
Was born on Christmas Day._

_Correggio_

THE HOLY NIGHT]

The Date of Russia’s Christmastide

Real winter in Russia is supposed to start on the feast of St. Nicholas of which the date, written in Russian style, is December 6/19. The first figure gives the date of the month as it is known in Russia and Greece, the second the date according to the calendar in use in all other civilized countries.

The calendar which was brought into use by Julius Cæsar, and was carried all over the then known world by the Romans, aimed to measure the year by the time it takes the earth to move once around the sun. His Egyptian astronomer figured that this required 365¼ days, so the practice was begun of having three years of 365 days, followed by a leap year, to which an extra day is given. As a matter of fact, the length of the average year is _not exactly_ 365¼ days. To be sure, that is only 11¼ seconds or so out of the way, and this may seem a very small matter out of a whole year; but what happens is that every 128 years or so the calendar of Julius Cæsar or the Julian Calendar, as it is called, gets a day behind. By the year 1582, when Gregory XIII was Pope, the calendar was ten days slow. So Pope Gregory issued an order that the year was to take a new start and that thereafter three leap years out of every four centuries should be omitted, which keeps the calendar very nearly correct. But though Pope Gregory might decree, it did not follow that every one would obey at once; the ignorant thought that by the change of date they were losing ten days of time and, of course, of wages. After some confusion all the Roman Catholic countries obeyed. England, being a Protestant country, ignored Pope Gregory’s commands. But it could not so easily dismiss the knowledge of its own astronomers that the Gregorian Calendar, as it is called, is nearer the truth than the Julian. In 1752, therefore, the date of the day of the year was changed by an Act of Parliament. The day after September 3 was to be called September 14, which it would have been if the calendar had not been slow. And naturally the change was also made in America, to which the new style had been brought already by French and Spanish settlers from Catholic countries.

There were always hot jealousies between the Eastern Church, ruled from Constantinople, and the Western, ruled from Rome. The Eastern or Greek churches refused to change their calendar on the order of a Latin Pope, and to this day retain the old style, the Julian dates. This is why their Christmas follows our Twelfth Day, for by this time their calendar is thirteen days behind the Gregorian. But to avoid confusion the double date is very generally in use.

During the time between the Day of St. Nicholas and Christmas it seems as if half Russia streams out upon the ice of the river Neva in St. Petersburg. All through the summer the boats come and go, bringing food, fuel, building materials, everything the city needs, from the interior; but the river is frozen for six months of the year, and in those months it is used as if it were public land. St. Petersburg is a very gay capital in winter, when the wealthier Russian nobles have left their country estates, and come down to exchange visits, to give balls, or go dashing about in gay sleighs to join the sleighing or skating contests for which a part of the frozen river is reserved. All around the cleared spaces on the ice, merchants have set up temporary booths; here you may buy tea and nutcakes; there holy pictures, or ikons, pictures of all the possible saints, some costing a few pennies, others with gold and silver backgrounds costing many roubles, a rouble being worth about fifty cents. On another part of the river a great provision market is held a little before Christmas, and the booths stretch for miles. Everything is frozen. Countless oxen, piles of sheep and goats, pyramids of pigs, form a frozen range of hillocks to which the butcher comes to make his choice. With hatchet or saw he divides the animal, ox, or pig, or it may be a bear, into sections which his customers store in the ice-cellars which have all been freshly filled. Thousands of workmen are engaged during the winter in cutting and drawing the ice from yet another part of the Neva, and on a still frosty morning the clink of their axes against iron ice-breakers can be heard at a long distance from the river.

A great ceremony of the Greek Church takes place each year at the end of their Christmas season—the Benediction of the Waters—in every town and village in Russia and down along the coasts of Greece. In St. Petersburg the ceremony is performed by the Czar outside the Winter Palace. A wooden temple is put up out on the ice, decorated with gilt and paintings within, and surrounded by a hedge of fir boughs without. A hole is made in the ice, and to this a long procession makes its way; troops with bright banners, gorgeously robed bishops, and priests carrying lighted tapers and big ikons, are followed by more soldiers, the Czar and Czarina in magnificently jewelled robes, and after them their Court brilliant in uniforms and beautiful fur-trimmed dresses. They have all attended one service in the Imperial Chapel; they now have another on the ice. The water is blessed, evil spirits flee away, the soldiers fire a salute, and every one is sprinkled with the now holy water. The procession returns to the city, carrying with it great vessels of the holy water to be used later in all the churches. Then the people who have been looking on try to get to the hole; some draw up pailfuls of the cold liquid; others plunge bodily into the icy water, believing that so they will be cleansed from sin or sickness; many have even plunged delicate babies into it, content, if the child does not survive the shock, in the belief that its soul is forever saved. And over every door in the great city on that day rests the sign of the cross, lest the evil spirit expelled from the water should enter any home.

St. Barbara’s Grain

Only in the south of France, they say, is to be found the custom of planting St. Barbara’s grain on the fourth of December. Earthenware dishes an inch or two in depth are half filled with water, on the surface of which wheat is scattered, or the small, flattened seeds of the lentil, a leafy-stemmed plant whose honey-laden blossoms will, later in the year, draw swarms of golden bees to the fields where it is planted. The dish is then set in the warm ashes of the fireplace, or on the deep stone sill of a sunny window, and the grain is left to sprout and grow so that on the table of the Christmas Eve supper there may be this tender promise of the harvest of the year to come—a pale, delicate young greenness in strong contrast with the darker evergreens. The bent old _gran’mère_ by the hearth will tell you, that as the growth is thick and sturdy or scattered and thin, so will be the later harvests of grain, or honey.

The yellow daffodil, or narcissus, is a plant which first grew in southern France, and along the Mediterranean, and it may be that it was some early settler from Languedoc or Provence, who introduced into Louisiana a custom common half a century ago, that had a dim resemblance to this planting of St. Barbara’s grain. The daffodil bulbs were planted in shallow earthenware dishes on the eve of All Saints, and set for three weeks in the warm dark, and later in the sun. The older creoles foretold a fruitful year if the flower bud were well formed by St. Barbara’s day.

Before the Paling of the Stars

Before the paling of the stars,
Before the winter morn,
Before the earliest cockcrow,
Jesus Christ was born:
Born in a stable,
Cradled in a manger,
In the world His hands had made
Born a stranger.

Priest and King lay fast asleep
In Jerusalem,
Young and old lay fast asleep
In crowded Bethlehem:
Saint and Angel, ox and ass,
Kept a watch together
Before the Christmas daybreak
In the winter weather.

Jesus on His Mother’s breast
In the stable cold,
Spotless Lamb of God was He,
Shepherd of the fold:
Let us kneel with Mary Maid,
With Joseph bent and hoary,
With Saint and Angel, ox and ass,
To hail the King of Glory.

A Midnight Mass in France

The great time for making gifts in France is the _Jour de l’An_, the day of the year, our New Year’s Day, when there is a great exchange of cards, good wishes, visits, and presents. On Christmas Eve, everything else used to pale before the exciting adventure of going to the church at midnight. After church came the Grand Supper, a family gathering from which the children were sent to bed long before they were ready to go, comforting themselves as they climbed the stair by asking each other, “What do you think P’tit Noël will put in your shoe?” But they were always too sleepy to lie awake long enough to see whose hand it was that dropped into each little shoe under the mantelpiece a few goodies or bits of silver coin. Sometimes one was guiltily afraid that a black record of naughtiness deserved the disgracing gift of a few pebbles, but then,—surely Petit Jesus was forgiving and next year one would be very good, yes, of a certainty, _most_ good.

Earlier in the evening the children had been allowed to play any game they liked, however noisy, quite up to eleven o’clock, which was unusual enough by itself. Then began a great bundling up in furs and mufflers before the plunge from the warm candle-lighted room into the frosty night, where stars shone like gold nails driven into blue-black velvet; the frost crunched under wooden shoes; the lanterns threw strange, wavering shadows; a dry branch fell with a sudden crackle; far away a horse whickered and stamped just as one was coming toward the deepest blackness of all, where the great gray church and the tall buildings about it threw the Grande Place into densest shadow. Nothing in that sound should frighten one, but every child had heard the peasants tell of this enchanted hour when animals in their stables could talk like men; still, nothing could harm a child on the way to mass, of course, so one plucked up courage and sang out extra loudly in the refrain of whatever carol was being rung on the chimes in the ivy-covered tower.

The old church had always seemed large, very large for the few who worshipped in it, but now it was majestic, reaching up toward the skies as if to gather from the angelic choir the great waves of music that rolled down the valley to be heard miles away. And how could one help gasping when a gust of wind swept him suddenly into the porch; there through the open door he was caught and drawn forward, adoring, by the full splendor of the altar, studded with lights, dazzling against dark walls, green with pine and laurel.

At one side was the crêche, the miniature stable scene, where the mother ever watched in wondering love the Holy Child. Down the long nave, from the damp stone floor which had never known the luxury of matting, great pillars lost themselves in the blackness of the arches. But each who entered brought his lantern and set it on the stones in front of him; one after another the little lights like stars came twinkling out all over the church. And each newcomer joined in the carols sung before the mass was begun—old, old carols with beloved refrains which one heard only at Christmas time.

_Blashfield_

THE BELLS]

The old mysteries, quaint plays in which long ago the peasants of Southern France acted the simple stories of the adoration of the Babe by the angels, the shepherds, and the Wise Men, are seen no more, but it is said that until very recently, in some of the provinces, at a certain pause in the mass, a shepherd knocks loudly on the great church door, the hollow sound echoing in the solemn hush. From without is heard singing, the voices of shepherds asking to come in. Slowly the doors swing back, the people part and the shepherds enter, passing up the nave between a double row of worshippers. In front are two or three boys playing softly on simple musical instruments, one has a flute, another a tambourine. Then begins a quaint musical dialogue between these peasants in their long, weather-stained cloaks, and those who stand on either side.

From one hand comes the question, in high treble,

_Where hast thou been?_

And it is echoed from the other,

_What hast thou seen?_

And the deep musical voices of the shepherds answer:—

“_Deep in a manger, a little child,
On the dry straw, slumbered and smiled._”

So they move slowly, carrying a little fruit, a measure of grain, a pair of pigeons, to where the priest stands waiting to bless their simple gifts and lay them at the foot of the altar.

The Christchild and the Pine Tree

On the Holy Night when the Christchild was born, the earth lay very near to heaven; all the world was at peace, and there was no noise of war to keep men on earth from hearing the angels sing.

Animals and birds and trees alike were glad because of the coming of the Holy Babe, and like the shepherds and the Wise Men came to bring to Him their gifts. Most of all the little pine tree beside the road longed to take something to the Christchild.

The cedars, instead of pointing their branches upward in pointed slender trees, spread their branches wide, as Cedars of Lebanon do to this day, and bent low to shelter the Mother and Child. But the little pine was too small to shelter anything, and though he stretched and stretched, he was not even tall enough to keep the sun out of the eyes of the Wonderful Babe. He was barely tall enough for the wind to make a whispering sound in the tips of his little branches.

The thorn, although it was midwinter, suddenly blossomed out and brought its white flowers to make a coverlet for the Child’s cradle. And the little pine tree tried so hard to blossom that pine-needles came out in tufts all over him, but that was all; only the wind through his branches now sounded like a sigh.

The “bird of God,” which we call the wren, flew quickly and brought soft moss and feathers to make His cradle warm. “I will pull off all my needles to make a bed for Him,” the pine tree said. But when he began to do that, Mother Mary smiled and shook her head. “Your needles would only prick Him, little pine,” she said. And the little pine rocked in pain and the wind sighed through his branches.

The olive came and brought sweet-smelling oil, with which to rub the Christchild’s little limbs; and the pine tree saw her and ached so for something to give that the resin stood out in big drops along his stem. “Oh!” he cried joyfully, “I, too, have oil to give.” And Mother Mary’s smile was very tender as she shook her head again and said gently, “But your drops are sticky, and they would hurt His tender skin, dear little pine.” So the little pine was very unhappy because it had nothing to offer the Christchild. And year by year as he grew taller, and remembered the Holy Night, the wind swept through his branches with a sound that was almost a moan; and ever since you can hear that sound from pine trees all the world over.

Now for hundreds of years after, on each Christmas Eve, the Christchild comes again, in the likeness of a poor child, gathering fallen sticks in the forest. Up and down the hills He goes, shivering in the icy cold, knocking at every door, whether it is of a cabin or a castle, until He finds some one who, remembering His lesson of love, calls Him in to find warmth and shelter; and such a home He blesses. Some there are who, like the pine tree, long to serve Him, and these place a candle in the window, that if He pass along their way, He may see it and come in.

But one night there was no door open and as He walked wearily through the pine wood the wind shrieked through the trees bending before Him. Then the Christchild turned aside and crept under the low branches of a pine tree, which was large enough now to shelter Him; and the moss lifted itself from the snow to make a soft bed for the tired Child. And the pine tree, drawing its branches close above Him, was so happy that tears of joy ran down his branches and freezing, hung in slender icicles. And as the first red rays of the sun on Christmas morning shone upon them they glittered like the candles on your Christmas tree, and the Christchild opened His eyes and smiled.

A Birthday Gift

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb,
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part,
Yet what I can give Him,—
Give my heart.

_Hunt_

THE TRIUMPH OF THE INNOCENTS]

The Christmas Fire in Servia

Servia is one of the countries in which the old, old customs have lasted longest. They began in the times when men looked forward longingly to “the days in which the sun, having gone far enough into the snowy plains of the winter, turns back toward the green fields of summer.” The celebration begins on the day before Christmas, which the older Servian songs call “the day of the old Badnyak.” No one seems to know who Badnyak was; but some have believed that the fast-day was first kept in honor of the old sun-god, who was thought of as grown weak and faint, and as giving place to a younger. For on the next day was the feast of “the little God,” the new sun who was to bring summer back again. Nowadays, the name is given to logs cut for the Christmas fire.

Every Servian boy is up before daylight on the day before Christmas, for he, of course, must be on hand when the strongest young men of the family start out with a cart and a pair of oxen to cut a young oak tree and bring it home. Upon the chosen tree they throw a handful of wheat with the greeting, “Happy Badnyi Day to you!” Then they begin to cut it very carefully, timing the strokes of the axes and placing them so that the tree shall fall directly toward the rising sun, and at the exact moment when its red ball begins to show at the edge of the world. If by any mischance, or a stroke of the axe in the wrong place, the tree falls toward the west, there will be great distress, for this is thought to mean that very bad luck will follow the family through all the coming year. If the tree should fall in the right direction but catch in the branches of another, the good fortune of the family will only be delayed for a while. The small boy’s part is to watch very closely where the first chip falls, for it is most important to carry home that first oak chip. The trunk of the tree is trimmed and cut into two or three logs, of which one is a foot or more longer than the others. They are then dragged to the house, but are not taken inside until sunset; in the meantime they stand in the courtyard on either side the door. The house mother leaves her work as they are brought home to break a flat cake of purest wheat flour upon the longest log, while the little girls sing special songs. But soon she goes back to her work, for there is a deal to be done before sunset; the women are making Christmas cakes in the shape of lambs and chickens, and most often of little pigs with blunt-pointed noses and curly tails. For the pig belongs to a Servian Christmas as much as turkey does to an American Thanksgiving. Long ago the pagan Servians used to sacrifice a pig to the sun-god on the day of the old Badnyak; and to this day you will not find one Servian house in which “roast pig” is not the chief dish of the Christmas dinner. While the women bake, the men prepare the pig for the next day’s roasting. The boy who so carefully brought home that first oak chip put it at once into a wooden bowl, and his little sister and he cover the chip, and fill the bowl with wheat.

Just at sunset the whole family gathers in the big kitchen. The mother of the family gives a pair of woollen gloves to one of the men—most often to the father, sometimes to the strongest of her sons, who goes outside to bring in the Badnyak. Tall wax candles are set on either side the open door, and in front of it the mother stands with the wooden bowl in her hands. As the log is brought in she throws a handful of wheat at the bearer, who says, “Good evening, and may you have a happy Badnyi Day.” He is answered by a chorus of greetings from all in the room. In some parts of the country each man present brings in a log and at each is thrown a little wheat in sign of the wish that, in the year to come, food may be plenty enough to throw away. A glass of red wine is then sprinkled on the log, and the oldest and the strongest of the family together place it on the burning fire in such a way that the thick end of the log sticks out above the hearth for about a foot. And sometimes you may see a prudent father smear the end of it with honey and place on it a bowl of wheat, an orange, and the ploughshare, that they may be so warmed by the Christmas fire that the cattle shall be fed, the bees industrious, and the trees and fields be fruitful, through all the year.

The Day of the Little God

There is so little sleep for the Servian peasant on a Christmas morning that very few except the old and the babies go to bed at all on the night before “the day of the little God,” as it is called. For one thing, the new Badnyak, the great log on the Christmas fire, must be kept burning all the time, and brightly. Then the all-important pig must be set to roast early. When it is ready and laid before the fire, some one goes outside and fires off a gun or pistol; and when the roasted pig is taken from the fire, the shooting is repeated. From four to eight o’clock on a Christmas morning every Servian village reëchoes as if it were celebrating the Fourth of July with cannon crackers.

Just before sunrise some young girl of the family goes to the fountain, or the brook from which they usually get their drinking water. Before she fills her pots or jars she greets the water, wishing it a happy Christmas, and throws into it a handful of wheat. The first cupfuls of water drawn are put into a special jar and are used to make the “Chesnitza,” the Christmas cake, which is to be divided into a piece for each member of the family, present or absent. A small silver coin baked into it is supposed to fall to the lot of that member of the family who is to meet with special good fortune during the coming year.

_H. Hofmann_

BETHLEHEM]

No other visitor is allowed to enter the house before the “Polaznik,” the Christmas guest, has come. The part is usually taken by some boy from a neighbor’s family, who comes very early and brings with him a woollen glove full of wheat. When at his knock the door is opened, he showers the wheat over those around the brightly burning fire and into all corners of the room with the greeting, “Christ is born.” The mother of the family throws a handful of wheat at him and all the others shout, “In truth, He is born!” The guest then walks straight to the fire, and with the heavy shovel strikes the burning log with all his force repeatedly, so that thousands of sparks rise high in the chimney, while he says, “May you have this year so many oxen, so many horses, so many sheep, so many pigs, so many beehives of honey, so much good luck, so much success and happiness.” After this good wish he kisses his host, drops to his knees before the Christmas log on the fire, kisses one end of it, which sticks out of the fireplace into the room, and places a coin upon it as his gift. As he rises, a woman offers him a low wooden chair, but just as he seats himself draws it away so that he sits down hard upon the ground, and is thus supposed to fix to it firmly every good wish he has spoken. Finally he is wrapped in a thick blanket, and with it around him sits quietly for a few minutes while the young folks who are to tend the flocks and herds in the coming year come to the hearth and kiss each other solemnly across the Christmas log. The wearing of the blanket is said to insure thick cream in the next year, and the shepherds’ kisses will make for peace and plenty among the cattle.

Before the chief meal of the day, all the members of the family gather about its head, each with a lighted candle in hand, while he prays briefly. Then they turn and kiss each other with such greetings as: “Peace of God be with us!” “Christos is born!” “In truth, He is born!” “Therefore let us bow before Christos and His birth.” And toward the end of the meal all stand to drink “to the glory of God and of the birth of Christ,” which marks the end of the Christmas celebration.

Nature Folk-lore of Christmastide

Among all the older peoples of Europe there are many bits of folk stories which tell of the wonderful peace which fell upon the world on the night of the Holy Eve. A Bosnian legend says that at the time of the birth of Christ “the sun in the east bowed down, the stars stood still, the mountains and the forests shook and touched the earth with their summits, and the green pine tree bent, ... the grass was beflowered with opening blossoms, incense sweet as myrrh pervaded upland and forest, birds sang on the mountain top, and all gave thanks to the great God.” This belief in the holy and gracious kinship of all nature at this season finds expression in many countries in an added tenderness for all living things during Yuletide. The very sparrows, whose nests the boys are free to raid at any other time, have a sheaf of rye set up for their Christmas feast, says Mr. Riis, who tells that once, stranded in a Michigan town, he was wandering about the streets and came upon such a sheaf raised upon a pole in a dooryard. “I knew at once,” he says, “that one of my people lived in that house and kept Yule in the old way. So I felt as if I were not quite a stranger.”

In England, robins are the birds of Christmas time; an old legend has it that on the day of Christ’s suffering the robin fluttered beside Him, and in trying to pluck thorns from His crown stained its breast crimson.

So ever when the snow comes round
To crown the wintry year,
Perched high upon the holly bough
Red Robin warbles clear.

No other songster on the spray
At Christmas time is heard,
But when the Saviour’s birth we keep,
We hear the Saviour’s bird.

The Spanish show special kindness at this time to any ass or cow, believing that on Holy Night they breathed upon the Christchild to keep Him warm. Many other quaint old beliefs used to be common about how the animals act at Christmas time. From northern Canada comes the Indian saying that on the Holy Night the deer all kneel and look up to the Great Spirit, but that whoever spies upon them will have stiffness in his knees for all the year to come. In the German Alps it was believed that animals have the gift of speech on Christmas Eve, but that he who listens will surely hear them foretell some evil for the listener. Of a like belief Mr. Riis says that, when he was a boy:—

“All the animals knew perfectly well that the holiday had come, and kept it in their way. The watch-dog was unchained. In the midnight hour on the Holy Eve the cattle stood up in their stalls and bowed out of respect and reverence for Him who was laid in a manger when there was no room in the inn, and in that hour speech was given them, and they talked together. Claus, our neighbor’s man, had seen and heard it, and every Christmas Eve I meant fully to go and be there when it happened; but always long before that I had been led away to bed, a very sleepy boy, with all my toys hugged tight, and when I woke up the daylight shone through the frosted window-panes, and they were blowing good morning from the church tower; it would be a whole year before another Christmas. So I vowed, with a sigh at having neglected a really sacred observance, that I would be there sure on the next Christmas Eve. But it was always so, every year, and perhaps it was just as well, for Claus said that it might go ill with the one who listened, if the cows found him out.”

In the older parts of Montenegro, the head of the family and his shepherd boy still follow the quaint old custom of lighting the animals to their stalls on Christmas Eve. Each takes a lighted wax candle and they go together into every stall in turn, holding the candles for a moment in each of its corners. Then, at the stable door they take stand, one at each side of it, and hold their candles high while the little shepherdess drives the animals in. One by one, sheep, goats, and oxen, they pass between the flickering lights. After that, the shepherd boy and the little shepherdess kiss each other “that the cattle may live in peace and love,” they say.

Good King Wenceslas

Good King Wenceslas looked out
On the Feast of Stephen,
When the snow lay round about,
Deep, and crisp, and even.

Brightly shone the moon that night,
Though the frost was cruel,
When a poor man came in sight,
Gath’ring winter fuel.

“Hither, page, and stand by me,
If thou know’st it telling,
Yonder peasant, who is he?
Where and what his dwelling?”

“Sire, he lives a good league hence,
Underneath the mountain;
Right against the forest fence,
By St. Agnes’ fountain.”

“Bring me flesh, and bring me wine,
Bring me pine logs hither;
Thou and I will see him dine,
When we bear them thither.”

Page and monarch forth they went,
Forth they went together;
Through the rude wind’s wild lament,
And the bitter weather.

“Sire, the night is darker now,
And the wind blows stronger;
Fails my heart, I know not how,
I can go no longer.”

“Mark my footsteps, good my page!
Tread thou in them boldly;
Thou shalt find the winter’s rage
Freeze thy blood less coldly.”

In his master’s steps he trod,
Where the snow lay dinted;
Heat was in the very sod
Which the saint had printed.

Therefore, Christian men, be sure,
Wealth or rank possessing,
Ye who now will bless the poor,
Shall yourselves find blessing.

A Mexican “Mystery” seen by Bayard Taylor

Against the wing-wall of the Hacienda del Mayo, which occupied one end of the plaza, was raised a platform, on which stood a table covered with a scarlet cloth. A rude bower of cane leaves on one end of the platform represented the manger of Bethlehem, while a cord stretched from its top across the plaza to a hole in the front of the church bore a large tinsel star, suspended by a hole in its centre. There was quite a crowd in the plaza, and very soon a procession appeared, coming up from the lower part of the village. The three kings took the lead; the Virgin, mounted on an ass that gloried in a gilded saddle and rose-besprinkled mane and tail, followed them, led by the angel; and several women, with curious masks of paper, brought up the rear. Two characters, of the harlequin sort—one with a dog’s head on his shoulders, and the other a bald-headed friar, with a huge hat hanging on his back—played all sorts of antics for the diversion of the crowd. After making the circuit of the plaza, the Virgin was taken to the platform, and entered the manger. King Herod took his seat at the scarlet table, with an attendant in blue coat and red sash, whom I took to be his Prime Minister. The three kings remained on their horses in front of the church; between them and the platform, under the string on which the star was to slide, walked two men in long white robes and blue hoods, with parchment folios in their hands. These were the Wise Men of the East, as one might readily know from their solemn air, and the mysterious glances which they cast toward all quarters of the heavens.

In a little while, a company of women on the platform, concealed behind a curtain, sang an angelic chorus to the tune of “Opescator dell’ onda.” At the proper moment, the Magi turned toward the platform, following the star, to which a string was conveniently attached that it might be slid along the line. The three kings followed the star till it reached the manger, when they dismounted, and inquired for the sovereign, whom it had led them to visit. They were invited upon the platform and introduced to Herod, as the only king; this did not seem to satisfy them, and, after some conversation, they retired. By this time the star had receded to the other end of the line and commenced moving again, they following. The angel called them into the manger, where, upon their knees, they were shown a small wooden box, supposed to contain the sacred infant: they then retired, and the star brought them back no more. After this departure, King Herod declared himself greatly confused by what he had witnessed, and was very much afraid this newly found king would weaken his power. Upon consultation with his Prime Minister, the Massacre of the Innocents was decided upon, as the only means of security.

The angel, on hearing this, gave warning to the Virgin, who quickly got down from the platform, mounted her bespangled donkey, and hurried off. Herod’s Prime Minister directed all the children to be handed up for execution. A boy, in ragged sarape, was caught and thrust forward; the Minister took him by the heels in spite of his kicking, and held his head on the table. The little brother and sister of the boy, thinking he was really to be decapitated, yelled at the top of their voices, in an agony of terror, which threw the crowd into a roar of laughter. King Herod brought down his sword with a whack on the table, and the Prime Minister, dipping his brush into a pot of white paint which stood before him, made a flaring cross on the boy’s face. Several other boys were caught and served likewise; and finally, the two harlequins, whose kicks and struggles nearly shook down the platform. The procession then went off up the hill, followed by the whole population of the village.

_Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York_

THE CHRISTMAS TREE MARKET IN NEW YORK]

Breaking the Piñate

If you were in Mexico the week before Christmas you would not find one Christmas tree, unless it were in some town where Americans have been living for a good while. But everywhere children would be talking about breaking a piñate (pronounced pin-yah-tay) as you talk of having a tree. In the small stalls set up in the plazas for the sale of Christmas gifts there are hundreds of different gayly colored piñates. Some are bowl-shaped or oval jars made out of the coarse red earthenware of Puebla, painted with dashes of yellow and black in patterns that have been copied from old Indian pottery. Others are made of paper in gay stripes of red and yellow, in shape like tissue-paper balloons, and are decorated with tinsel ornaments and streamers of bright-colored paper, such as are hung on Christmas trees. Others still are made in the shape of grotesque figures, clowns with baggy trousers, dancing girls in wide-spread skirts, monks in long cloaks, and animals. All of them, jars or paper figures, are easily breakable; they are stuffed with sweets, crackers, rattles, whistles, or any other toys which are small and light, and parents hang them—usually on Christmas Eve—from the ceiling of a room or from a branch of a tree in the courtyard. Each child of the family in turn after being blindfolded, given a long stick, and led some distance away from the hanging piñate, is allowed to grope toward where he thinks it is and to strike out at it three times in the effort to break it. If he fails, another is given the chance. Mexican families are large and often a father and all his sons live together in square, flat-roofed buildings of sun-dried brick around a common courtyard. So there is a deal of laughter and excitement as one child after another makes his trial. At last one manages to hit the piñate so that it breaks open and toys, sweets, and ornaments come down in a shower. This is the moment for which the children crowding around have been waiting, and they swoop down upon the dainties in a joyous scramble. The successful child usually receives a special prize; for, blindfolded as he is, he stands small chance of getting anything else.

Breaking the piñate usually follows a curious ceremony in which all those present walk together around the house several times chanting a litany. The procession is in memory of the night when Joseph and Mary journeyed to Bethlehem and found no room in the inn. Often even the donkey belonging to the family is brought into the ceremony. After the litany some go within the house while others outside sing a plea for admittance, which is at first roughly refused. Finally they are admitted, and another hymn is followed by feasting and merry-making, of which breaking the piñate is the children’s part.

Christmas upon a Greenland Iceberg

One hot June day in 1869 there was a great stir in the new harbor of Bremerhaven in Germany; at its entrance lay two stout ships, the _Germania_ and the _Hansa_, fully fitted out for Arctic exploration. Visitors and messengers were going back and forth. The King of Prussia himself, with many of his nobles, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg, Schwerin, Count Bismarck, and General von Moltke among them, had come from Berlin to say Godspeed to the commander and the scientific gentlemen who were braving unknown dangers, and certain privations and hardships “for the honor of the German navy and of German science,” as his Majesty expressed it.

The last of the cases of stores hoisted on board the _Hansa_ were stowed away with a peculiar laughing tenderness. They were stout chests cased in lead in which friends of these explorers had placed such friendly little trifles as are inseparable from the celebration of Christmas wherever the Germans may be.

There is no place in this book for the story of their adventures in the slow voyage up beyond the ice line. In July, by some misunderstanding of signals, the two ships separated, never to meet again. In September the _Hansa_ was caught in a great field of floating ice and was carried for two hundred days thereafter in the drift of the floe. An October storm so racked the ship that her captain and crew were forced to abandon her and carry everything out upon the ice. The great coal-bin of the ship was taken out and turned into a store hut. All the supplies were taken there, the ship’s three boats were carefully secured, everything was taken from the _Hansa_ which could be used for fuel, and at last the ship was cut away from the ice lest in sinking she destroy them.

Then began a frightful period of drifting. Storm after storm put them in danger of a sudden death which may have seemed more desirable than waiting for the winds and currents to carry them slowly into a warmer sea and toward the natural breaking up of the ice-floe. Hope of rescue in those lonely waters was faint.

But they lived bravely and worked steadily, constructing around the main hut, from the timbers saved from the _Hansa_, small black shelters in which, all but buried in the snow, the men lived. And that they kept Christmas in true German fashion the log of the vessel tells:—

“The tree was erected in the afternoon, while the greater part of the crew took a walk; and the lonely hut shone with wonderful brightness amid the snow. Christmas upon a Greenland iceberg! The tree was artistically put together of firwood and ravelled matweed [hemp?], and Dr. Laube had saved a twist of wax taper for the illumination. Chains of colored paper and newly baked cakes were not wanting, and the men had made a knapsack and a revolver case as a present for the captain. We opened the leaden chests of presents from Professor Hochstetter and the Geological Society, and were much amused by their contents. Each man had a glass of port wine; and we then turned over the old newspapers which we found in the chests, and drew lots for the presents, which consisted of small musical instruments, such as fifes, jews’-harps, trumpets, etc., with draughts and other games, puppets, crackers, etc. In the evening we feasted on chocolate and gingerbread.”

_From paintings by Raphael_

HEADS OF THE CHRIST CHILD]

“We observed the day very quietly,” wrote Dr. Laube in his diary. “If this Christmas be the last we are to see, it was at least a cheerful one; but should a happy return home be decreed for us, the next will, we trust, be a far brighter. May God so grant!”

And He did. But that is not a Christmas story, and you will have to look elsewhere for it.

Luther’s Christmas Carol for Children

Good news from Heaven the angels bring,
Glad tidings to the earth they sing:
To us this day a child is given,
To crown us with the joy of heaven.

This is the Christ, our Lord and God,
Who in all need shall aid afford:
He will Himself our Saviour be,
From sin and sorrow set us free.

To us that blessedness He brings,
Which from the Father’s bounty springs:
That in the heavenly realm we may
With Him enjoy eternal day.

All hail, Thou noble Guest, this morn,
Whose love did not the sinner scorn!
In my distress Thou cam’st to me:
What thanks shall I return to Thee?

Were earth a thousand times as fair,
Beset with gold and jewels rare,
She yet were far too poor to be
A narrow cradle, Lord, for Thee.

Ah, dearest Jesus, Holy Child!
Make Thee a bed, soft, undefiled,
Within my heart, that it may be
A quiet chamber kept for Thee.

Praise God upon His heavenly throne,
Who gave to us His only Son:
For this His hosts, on joyful wing,
A blest New Year of mercy sing.

The Good Night in Spain

If you were a child in Spain, you would not be talking of Christmas trees in the late December days, but of _navidades_, or “nativities.” These are tiny models of a scene supposed to be Bethlehem. Some of them are very simple, made of cardboard, colored paper, bits of stone and sand. On one side is a hill, built up of paper or plaster, and in the side of it is the cave to which the gentle cattle were used to come for food and shelter. By its crude match-wood manger stand or sit little figures of the Holy Family. Often these are modelled from beautiful designs, the work of famous artists who put their highest skill into creating the tiny images of the mother and the Holy Child. Outside the cave stand the patient oxen, and perhaps the donkey upon which the Infant Christ is to be carried out of the reach of Herod. Overhead sparkles a shining star. Some of these simple “nativities” can be bought for a few cents. Others made of better materials, or with greater care, and with many figures, are more costly. These have, besides the Holy Family, perhaps, a fire of ruddy tinfoil around which shepherds gather, looking, in their straight brown cloaks, as if they might have stepped from your Noah’s ark, and back of them, on a hillside of green cloth, little white wool lambs feed quietly. In still another you may even see a smuggler with a slouch hat pulled down over his eyes, hiding with a load of tobacco behind a paper rock to leave the road free for the Three Kings who in all their tinsel go journeying to worship the Holy Child. The roads are rough with bits of cork, the river is a strip of glass, and the bridge over which the camels of the Wise Men pass is clearly of paper stone; the rabbit hiding in the evergreens is quite as large as the donkey saddled for the flight into Egypt; but in the magic of “the Holy Night” all seem to be real, to live and feel, so natural and tender is the children’s faith in these simple “nativities,” which are repeated on a larger scale in all the churches.

On Christmas Eve, or the Good Night, as the Spanish children say, every one must go to the church for the midnight mass, and of course no one goes to bed before that. Early in the dusk the toy dealers bring their booths and flaming naphtha torches to the village plaza, and the children swarm around them like flies to sweets. All the week before groups of these children have been going from door to door at night singing to familiar tunes ballads which tell the story of the Nativity, and he is a poor Spaniard who cannot find some small coins for the band of singers. On Holy Night, too, after they have made the small round of the toy-dealers’ stands, they go to each other’s houses to look at the different nativities and sing one carol after another in which a single voice carries a verse, remembered or made up at the time, and the others join in the refrain while two of them dance. At the end of each verse the two whose turn it has been to dance go up to the nativity with flushed cheeks and bright eyes, open wide their little arms and fall on their knees, with the exclamation “For Thee.” In some places the children will instead carry a nativity into the plaza, singing carols in which every one joins.

One such carol is this lullaby:—

“The Baby Child of Mary,
Now cradle He has none;
His father is a carpenter
And he shall make Him one.
_His father is a carpenter
And he shall make Him one._

“The Lady, good St. Anna,
The Lord, St. Joachim,
They rock the Baby’s cradle
That sleep may come to Him.
_They rock the Baby’s cradle
That sleep may come to Him._

“Then sleep thou, too, my baby,
My little heart so dear;
The Virgin is beside thee,
The Son of God is near.
_The Virgin is beside thee,
The Son of God is near._”

A Christmas Tree in Japan

It was a huge Christmas tree, the first that had ever grown in our compound,[1] for the children of our servants and writers and employees, who make up the number of our Legation population to close on two hundred. I could not have the tree on Christmas Day, owing to various engagements; so it was fixed for January 3, and was quite the most successful entertainment I ever gave!