TO THOSE FRIENDLY THOUSANDS OF MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN AMERICAN TOWNS AND CITIES, WHO HAVE SHARED WITH THE AUTHOR IN HIS MASQUES A COMMON DEVOTION TO THE HAPPY CAUSE OF A COMMUNAL ART THIS MASQUE IS DEDICATED IN CHRISTMAS FELLOWSHIP PREFACE Always an evergreen tree points up at a star. Always a star looks somewhere down on the cradle of a child. Always, once in the year, a child laughs up at evergreen boughs. Tree, star and child are triune in the poetry of nature—a constellation of man that never sets. The antic mirth, the naïve awe of paganism, the joy and passion of Christianity, are masks happy and tragic which the Folk Spirit of childhood has worn for ages, and shall wear for ages more, in ritual of a tree that never dies. On the verge of No-Man’s-Land, where the blasted earth reels amid war’s stench and thunder; in calm cathedrals, to carolling choirs; by lonely chimney sides, or amid the young, tense assemblies of army camps, Christmas—this Christmas of our new age—grows again in the ancient greenness of a little tree. How may we, too, do it homage? Not forgetting the old simple merriment of folk days gone by, how shall we say—and sing—to our tree something of that deep response which we feel to-day to the creative sadness of our time? Our young men are going out to the war: our country is grappling the issue of a planet. Here is a dramatic conflict, not for us as spectators, but as participants. Here is a theme, not of the traditional theatre, but of a communal drama, the action of which is at once a battle and a prayer. How may we take part together in expressing such a theme, at this new Christmas time? Surely it must be through some simple festival—chiefly of song, for song is elemental to us all: a festival in which our people—young, old, rich, poor, women, men, but chiefly our young soldiers—may share, outdoors or indoors, in a ritual, democratic and devotional, on a scale great or small, simple to act and symbolize: a drama not designed for a hollow amphitheatre of spectators, but for a level-floored cathedral of communicants: a drama in which the goal of world liberty we battle for is clearly contrasted with its opposite, that we ourselves may not lose sight of our goal or swerve from it, as our common prayer, in the midst of battle. And there, as the focus-point of our festival and symbol of it—the tree of light: light of our own childhood and of the world’s. I do not know whether this simple masque will prove worthy to help in creating such a festival for our new Christmas time—I can only wish and hope that it may. PERCY MACKAYE. Cornish, New Hampshire, September, 1917. CONTENTS