Hundreds of acts and practices in the life of Christian households in civilized lands pass muster before the bar of æsthetic propriety and society, and even of the church, as not only harmless and allowable, but as commendable, and conducive to kindness, good-will, and healthful social entertainment; but in the doing of these acts few are aware of the fact that some of them in their origin were heathenish and in their meaning idolatrous, and that long ago they would have brought on the doer church censure. Norse legends and Celtic and Gaelic folk-lore abound in superstitions that were held by our forefathers in honor of false gods and demons. Their Christian descendants, to the present generations in Great Britain and the United States, delight our children with the beautifully printed fairy tale, forgetting, or not even knowing, that once, long ago, that tale was a tale of sin. The superstitious peasant of Germany, Ireland, and other European countries, while as at least a nominal son of the church he worships God, fears the machinations of trolls and the "good little people," and wards off their dreaded influence by vocal and material charms,--a practice for which the African Negro just emerging from heathenism is debarred church-membership. The practice is common to the three,--the untaught heathen, the ignorant peasant, and the enlightened Christian,--but its significance differs for each. To the Christian it is only a national or household tradition, without religious or moral significance, and his belief in the power of the charm is seldom seriously held. To the peasant the practice is also a tradition; it is not his religion, but he thinks that somehow under the divine Providence, in whom he believes and whom he worships in the church, it will be conducive to his physical well-being. But to the heathen it is a part of his religion, and leads to the exclusion of the true God, whom he does not know, or at least does not worship. In our Christian homes, around the Christmas tree, with all its holy, happy thoughts, we decorate with the holly bush and we hang the mistletoe bough, never thinking that the December festival itself was originally a heathen feast, and that our superstitious forefathers spread the holly as a guard against evil fairies, and hung the mistletoe as part of the ceremonies of a Druid's human sacrifice.