Each nation, naturally, has fashioned its own Christmas. The English have made it a season of solid material comfort, of good-fellowship and "charity," with a slight flavour of soothing religion. The modern French, sceptical and pagan, make little of Christmas, and concentrate upon the secular celebration of the _jour de l'an_. For the Scandinavians Christmas is above all a time of sport, recreation, good living, and social gaiety in the midst of a season when little outdoor work can be done and night almost swallows up day. The Germans, sentimental and childlike, have produced a Christmas that is a very Paradise for children and at which the old delight to play at being young again around the Tree. For the Italians Christmas is centred upon the cult of the _Bambino_, so fitted to their dramatic instincts, their love of display, their strong parental affection. (How much of the sentiment that surrounds the _presepio_ is, though religiously heightened, akin to the delight of a child in its doll!) If the Germans may be called the good, industrious, sentimental children of Europe, making the most of simple things, the Italians are the lively, passionate, impulsive children, loving gay clothes and finery; and the contrast shows in their keeping of Christmas. The modern Christmas is above all things a children's feast, and the elders who join in it put themselves upon their children's |360| level. We have noted how ritual acts, once performed with serious purpose, tend to become games for youngsters, and have seen many an example of this process in the sports and mummeries kept up by the elder folk for the benefit of the children. We have seen too how the radiant figure of the Christ Child has become a gift-bringer for the little ones. At no time in the world's history has so much been made of children as to-day, and because Christmas is their feast its lustre continues unabated in an age upon which dogmatic Christianity has largely lost its hold, which laughs at the pagan superstitions of its forefathers. Christmas is the feast of beginnings, of instinctive, happy childhood; the Christian idea of the Immortal Babe renewing weary, stained humanity, blends with the thought of the New Year, with its hope and promise, laid in the cradle of Time. |361| |362| |363| NOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY CHAPTER I.--INTRODUCTION 1. #G. K. Chesterton# in #"The Daily News,"# Dec. 26, 1903. 2. _Ibid._ Dec. 23, 1911. 3. Cf. #J. E. Harrison, "Themis: a Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion"# (Cambridge, 1912), 139, 184. 4. Or plural _Weihnachten_. The name _Weihnachten_ was applied in five different ways in mediaeval Germany: (1) to Dec. 25, (2) to Dec. 25-8, (3) to the whole Christmas week, (4) to Dec. 25 to Jan. 6, (5) to the whole time from Christmas to the Octave of the Epiphany. #G. Bilfinger, "Das germanische Julfest"# (Stuttgart, 1901), 39.