Then it is home to dinner, a real Christmas Dinner. I do not suppose that you will dine with a boar's head on the table, or that you will be permitted to taste a peacock stuffed with spices and sweet herbs. These were two of the dishes that figured in the good old times, but they have long been discarded. Yet the Christmas goose is still popular, and in almost equal favour is the roast beef of Old England. With you children, however, the plum-pudding and the mince pies and the fruit will be in most demand. How many helpings? I dare not say how many, for Christmas Day brings its own appetite, but you must try--just a very little--not to be greedy when the pudding comes in ablaze. Because greediness is ugly, and also because Christmas does not end with dinner-time. There is the evening with its romps, its games, its dances and its Christmas Tree. It is the Christmas Tree, probably, that will give you most pleasure, with all its glittering ornaments, its coloured flags, and its lighted candles. This is a pleasure which English children, in the old times, did not share, because the Christmas Tree for children was only introduced to this country in the reign of Queen Victoria. Indeed, the whole tendency nowadays is to make of Christmas a children's holiday. This is well; because by so doing--by making the lives of all children, and especially all poor children, brighter at this season--we shall give most honour and praise to the Babe that was born in lowly Bethlehem. BOXING DAY. When people are in a good humour--and everybody is supposed to be in a good humour at Christmas--they find it easy to give little gifts to their relations, friends, children and servants. On Christmas Day these gifts are given to friends and the children of the household, but on the day after Christmas the servants and dependents obtain their share of the gifts in what is called a Christmas Box. Hence the 26th December has come to be recognized as Boxing Day. This is a very old custom, and probably it has its origin in certain customs that were observed by the Romans during the Saturnalia. At that season presents were distributed to all, and for one day, at least, the Roman slaves received the gift of freedom. That was a good custom.