_Christmas_ (_New Style_). “WE ARE THE MODERN CHRISTMAS CARDS--WE ARE! WE ARE! WE ARE!” _Christmas_ (_Old Style_). “YOU REPRESENT CHRISTMAS! POOH! WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY COMING OUT LIKE THAT AT THIS TIME OF YEAR?” Then follows this poem, which still further explains the meaning of the picture: Says the Old-fashioned Christmas to the New-fangled Christmas, “’Pon my word, my boy, I don’t think much of you.” Says the New-fangled Christmas to the Old-fashioned Christmas, “Well, with tastes like yours, I don’t suppose you do. For, to celebrate a season, very fortunately brief, At _your_ age too,--with an orgie of plum-pudding and roast beef, Crowned with holly, in a dressing-gown! The thing’s past all belief!” Says Old Christmas, with a nod, “My boy, that’s true.” Says the New-fangled Christmas to the Old-fashioned Christmas, “For tomfoolery like yours we have no zest.” Says the Old-fashioned Christmas to the New-fangled Christmas, “What now! _You_ to talk like that! Well, I am blest! ‘Tomfoolery’? Why, what do you call all this here modern fad,-- Sending gimcrack cards by dozens, dauby, glaring, good, and bad, Nymphs--and what not? Why, between you, you drive friends and Postmen mad.” Says Young Christmas, “When it’s over, they can rest.” [Illustration: Bringing in Old Christmas. From the Illustrated London News.] Says the Old-fashioned Christmas to the New-fangled Christmas, “Where’s the jollity of twenty years ago?” Says the New-fangled Christmas to the Old-fashioned Christmas, “How on earth, now, do you think that _I_ should know? For to-day, with Art and Culture’s dainty trifles by the score, We just manage to scrape through the time, confessing it’s a bore; But, by Jove, if _you_ came back again, ’twould soon be something more!” Says Old Christmas, “Well, I really call that low.” Says the New-fangled Christmas to the Old-fashioned Christmas, “I don’t see the day a bit, you know, like you.” Says the Old-fashioned Christmas to the New-fangled Christmas, “Never mind, my boy, there’s something you can do. Have your fads; but copy me, my boy. Go on as I’ve begun. Remember, when your table’s spread, the thousands that have none. So, get your cheque-book out, my boy. Show you’re your father’s son.” Says Young Christmas, “Well, I don’t mind if I do.” After all, may it not be safe for us to decide that it is not the spirit but the fashion which alters, that the heart of Old Father Christmas still beats warm under the new garb wherein changing tastes have clothed him? Surely, if we have dropped some of the revellings of the past, we have dropped also the abuses which gradually made distasteful the horse play that attended those revelries. On the whole the “new-fangled Christmas” has many points that show an improvement over the old-fashioned Christmas while in all essentials the two remain one and the same.