But, after all, why should we attempt to delude ourselves? I am confident that I voice your convictions when I say that no play of ingenuity and no amount of special pleading can frame an absolutely creditable excuse for our remissness in appropriate holiday observance. You will notice that I use the words “holiday observance.” I have not in mind merely the selection or appointment of days which have been thought worthy of celebration. Such an appointment or selection is easy, and very frequently it is the outcome of a perfunctory concession to apparent propriety, or of a transient movement of affectionate sentiment. But I speak of the observance of holidays, and such holidays as not only have a substantial right to exist, but which ought to have a lasting hold upon the sentiment of our people--days which, as often as they recur, should stimulate in the hearts of our countrymen a grateful recognition of what God has done for mankind, and especially for the American nation; days which stir our consciences and sensibilities with promptings to unselfish and unadulterated love of country; days which warm and invigorate our devotion to the supreme ideals which gave life to our institutions and their only protection against death and decay. I speak of holidays which demand observance by our people in spirit and in truth. The commemoration of the day on which American independence was born has been allowed to lose much of its significance as a reminder of Providential favor and of the inflexible patriotism of the fathers of the republic, and has nearly degenerated into a revel of senseless noise and aimless explosion, leaving in its train far more of mishap and accident than lessons of good citizenship or pride of country. The observance of Thanksgiving Day is kept alive through its annual designation by Federal and State authority. But it is worth our while to inquire whether its original meaning, as a day of united praise and gratitude to God for the blessings bestowed upon us as a people and as individuals, is not smothered in feasting and social indulgence. We, in common with Christian nations everywhere, celebrate Christmas, but how much less as a day commemorating the birth of the Redeemer of mankind than as a day of hilarity and the interchange of gifts. I will not, without decided protest, be accused of antagonizing or deprecating light-hearted mirth and jollity. On the contrary, I am an earnest advocate of every kind of sane, decent, social enjoyment, and all sorts of recreation. But, nevertheless, I feel that the allowance of an incongruous possession by them of our commemorative days is evidence of a certain condition, and is symptomatic of a popular tendency, which are by no means reassuring.