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| * [[The Thing/34|34. Peace and the Papacy]] | | * [[The Thing/34|34. Peace and the Papacy]] |
| * [[The Thing/35|35. The Spirit of Christmas]] | | * [[The Thing/35|35. The Spirit of Christmas]] |
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| == THE SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS ==
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| I HAVE rather rashly undertaken to write of the Spirit of Christmas;
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| and it presents a preliminary difficulty about which I must be candid.
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| People are very curious nowadays in their way of talking
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| about "the spirit" of a thing. There is, for example,
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| a particular sort of prig who is always lecturing us about having
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| the spirit of true Christianity, apart from all names and forms.
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| As far as I can make out, he means the very opposite of what he says.
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| He means that we are to go on using the names "Christian"
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| and "Christianity," and so on, for something in which it is quite
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| specially the spirit that is not Christian; something that is a sort
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| of combination of the baseless optimism of an American atheist
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| with the pacifism of a mild Hindoo. In the same way, we read
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| a great deal about the Spirit of Christmas in modern journalism
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| or commercialism; but it is really a reversal of the same kind.
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| So far from preserving the essentials without the externals, it is
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| rather preserving the externals where there cannot be the essentials.
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| It means taking two mere material substances, like holly and mistletoe,
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| and spreading them all over huge and homeless cosmopolitan hotels
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| or round the Doric columns of impersonal clubs full of jaded
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| and cynical old gentlemen; or in any other place where the actual
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| spirit of Christmas is least likely to be. But there is also
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| another way in which modern commercial complexity eats out the heart
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| of the thing, while actually leaving the painted shell of it.
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| And that is the much too elaborate system of dependence on buying
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| and selling, and therefore on bustle and hustle; and the actual
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| neglect of the new things that might be done by the old Christmas.
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| Normally, if anything were normal nowadays, it would seem a truism to say
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| that Christmas has been a family festival. But it is now possible
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| (as I have had the good or bad luck to discover) to earn a reputation
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| for paradox simply by going on saying that truisms are true.
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| In this case, of course, the reason, the only reasonable reason,
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| was religious. It was concerned with a happy family because it
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| was consecrated to the Holy Family. But it is perfectly true
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| that many men saw the fact without specially feeling the reason.
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| When we say the root was religious, we do not mean that Sam Weller
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| was concentrated on theological values when he told the Fat Boy
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| to "put a bit of Christmas," into some object, probably edible.
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| We do not mean that the Fat Boy had gone into a trance of mystical
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| contemplation like a monk seeing a vision. We do not even mean
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| that Bob Cratchit defended punch by saying he was only looking
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| on the wine when it was yellow; or that Tiny Tim quoted Timothy.
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| We only mean that they, including their author, would have confessed
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| humbly and heartily that there was someone historically quite anterior
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| to Mr. Scrooge, who might be called the Founder of the Feast.
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| But in any case, whatever the reason, all would have agreed about
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| the result. Mr. Wardle's feast centred in Mr. Wardle's family;
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| and none the less because the romantic shadows of Mr. Winkle
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| and Mr. Snodgrass threatened to break it up for the formation
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| of other families.
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|
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| The Christmas season is domestic; and for that reason most people
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| now prepare for it by struggling in tramcars, standing in queues,
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| rushing away in trains, crowding despairingly into tea-shops,
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| and wondering when or whether they will ever get home.
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| I do not know whether some of them disappear for ever in the toy
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| department or simply lie down and die in the tea-rooms; but by
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| the look of them, it is quite likely. Just before the great festival
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| of the home the whole population seems to have become homeless.
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| It is the supreme triumph of industrial civilisation that,
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| in the huge cities which seem to have far too many houses,
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| there is a hopeless shortage of housing. For a long time past
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| great numbers of our poor have become practically nomadic.
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| We even confess the fact; for we talk of some of them as Street Arabs.
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| But this domestic institution, in its present ironical phase,
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| has gone beyond such normal abnormality. The feast of the
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| family turns the rich as well as the poor into vagabonds.
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| They are so scattered over the bewildering labyrinth of our traffic
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| and our trade, that they sometimes cannot even reach the tea-shop;
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| it would be indelicate, of course, to mention the tavern.
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| They have a difficulty in crowding into their hotels, let alone
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| separating to reach their houses. I mean quite the reverse
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| of irreverence when I say that their only point of resemblance
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| to the archetypal Christmas family is that there is no room for them
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| at the inn.
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| Now Christmas is built upon a beautiful and intentional paradox;
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| that the birth of the homeless should be celebrated in every home.
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| But the other sort of paradox is not intentional and is certainly
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| not beautiful. It is bad enough that we cannot altogether
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| disentangle the tragedy of poverty. It is bad enough that the birth
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| of the homeless, celebrated at hearth and altar, should sometimes
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| synchronise with the death of the homeless in workhouses and slums.
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| But we need not rejoice in this universal restlessness brought upon
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| rich and poor alike; and it seems to me that in this matter we need
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| a reform of the modern Christmas.
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|
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| I will now emit another brilliant flash of paradox by remarking
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| that Christmas occurs in the winter. That is, it is not only a
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| feast dedicated to domesticity, but it is one deliberately placed
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| under the conditions in which it is most uncomfortable to rush
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| about and most natural to stop at home. But under the complicated
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| conditions of modern conventions and conveniences, there arises
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| this more practical and much more unpleasant sort of paradox.
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| People have to rush about for a few weeks, if it is only to stay
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| at home for a few hours. Now the old and healthy idea of such winter
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| festivals was this; that people being shut in and besieged by the
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| weather were driven back on their own resources; or, in other words,
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| had a chance of showing whether there was anything in them.
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| It is not certain that the reputation of our most fashionable
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| modern pleasure-seekers would survive the test. Some dreadful
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| exposures would be made of some such brilliant society favourites,
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| if they were cut off from the power of machinery and money.
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| They are quite used to having everything done for them; and even
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| when they go to the very latest American dances, it seems to be
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| mostly the Negro musicians who dance. But anyhow, on the average
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| of healthy humanity I believe the cutting off of all these mechanical
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| connections would have a thoroughly enlivening and awakening effect.
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| At present they are always accused of merely amusing themselves;
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| but they are doing nothing so noble or worthy of their human dignity.
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| Most of them by this time cannot amuse themselves; they are too used
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| to being amused.
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|
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| Christmas might be creative. We are told, even by those who praise
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| it most, that it is chiefly valuable for keeping up ancient customs
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| or old-fashioned games. It is indeed valuable for both those
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| admirable purposes. But in the sense of which I am now speaking it
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| might once more be possible to turn the truth the other way round.
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| It is not so much old things as new things that a real Christmas
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| might create. It might, for instance, create new games, if people
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| were really driven to invent their own games. Most of the very
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| old games began with the use of ordinary tools or furniture.
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| So the very terms of tennis were founded on the framework of the old
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| inn courtyard. So, it is said, the stumps in cricket were originally
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| only the three legs of the milking-stool. Now we might invent new
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| things of this kind, if we remembered who is the mother of invention.
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| How pleasing it would be to start a game in which we scored so much
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| for hitting the umbrella-stand or the dinner-wagon, or even the host
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| and hostess; of course, with a missile of some soft material.
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| Children who are lucky enough to be left alone in the nursery
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| invent not only whole games, but whole dramas and life-stories
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| of their own; they invent secret languages; they create
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| imaginary families; they laboriously conduct family magazines.
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| That is the sort of creative spirit that we want in the modern world;
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| want both in the sense of desiring and in the sense of lacking it.
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| If Christmas could become more domestic, instead of less, I believe
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| there would be a vast increase in the real Christmas spirit;
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| the spirit of the Child. But in indulging this dream we must once
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| more invert the current convention into the form of a paradox.
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| It is true in a sense that Christmas is the time at which the doors
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| should be open. But I would have the doors shut at Christmas,
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| or at least just before Christmas; and then the world shall see
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| what we can do.
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|
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| I cannot but remember, with something of a smile, that on an earlier
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| and more controversial page of this book I have mentioned a lady
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| who shuddered at the thought of the things perpetrated by my
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| co-religionists behind closed doors. But my memory of it is mellowed
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| by distance and the present subject, and I feel quite the reverse
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| of controversial. I hope that lady, and all of her way of thinking,
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| may also have the wisdom to close their doors; and discover that only
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| when all the doors are closed the best thing will be found inside.
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| If they are Puritans, whose religion is only based on the Bible,
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| let it for once indeed be a Family Bible. If they are Pagans, who can
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| accept nothing but the winter feast, let it at least be a family feast.
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| The discordance or discomfort complained of by modern critics,
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| in the family reunion, is not due to that mystical focal fire
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| having been left burning, but to its having been left to go cold.
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| It is because cold fragments of a once living thing are clumsily
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| lumped together; it is no argument against making the thing alive.
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| Christmas toys are incongruously dangled before heavy and heathen uncles
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| who wish they were playing golf. But that does not alter the fact
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| that they might become much brighter and more intelligent if they
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| knew how to play with toys; and they are horrible bores about golf.
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| Their dullness is only the last deadly product of the mechanical
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| progress of organised and professional sports, in that rigid
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| world of routine outside the home. When they were children,
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| behind closed doors in the home, it is probable that nearly every
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| one of them had day-dreams and unwritten dramas that belonged to them
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| as much as Hamlet belonged to Shakespeare or Pickwick to Dickens.
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| How much more thrilling it would be if Uncle Henry, instead of
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| describing in detail all the strokes with which he ought to have got
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| out of the bunker, were to say frankly that he had been on a voyage
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| to the end of the world and had just caught the Great Sea-Serpent.
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| How much more truly intellectual would be the conversation of
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| Uncle William if, instead of telling us the point to which he had
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| reduced his handicap, he could still say with conviction that he was
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| King of the Kangaroo Islands, or Chief of the Rango Dango Redskins.
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| These things, projected from within, were in almost all human spirits;
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| and it is not normal that the inspiration of them should be so utterly
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| crushed by the things without. Let it not be supposed for a moment
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| that I also am among the tyrants of the earth, who would impose my
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| own tastes, or force all the other children to play my own games.
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| I have no disrespect for the game of golf; it is an admirable game.
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| I have played it; or rather, I have played at it, which is generally
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| regarded as the very opposite. By all means let the golfers golf
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| and even the organisers organise, if their only conception of an organ
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| is something like a barrel-organ. Let them play golf day after day;
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| let them play golf for three hundred and sixty-four days, and nights
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| as well, with balls dipped in luminous paint, to be pursued in the dark.
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| But let there be one night when things grow luminous from within:
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| and one day when men seek for all that is buried in themselves,
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| and discover, where she is indeed hidden, behind locked gates
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| and shuttered windows, and doors thrice barred and bolted,
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| the spirit of liberty.
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