Christmas has no rival

THE festival will be said to be, in the popular phrase: as far away as if it had never been." Yet only in one sense, for what, we trust, may be a pleasant memory will remain - this and the more tangible evidences of the season: the tokens without which Christmas would be robbed of one of its greatest joys.
By The Newsroom
Published 6th Jan 2011, 09:07 BST

Certainly, of all the milestones of the year - as the different holiday periods may be styled - none remains so long in sight after we pass it, possibly because none is so much looked forward to.

What is there, for example, to fasten attention upon. Whitsundtide or Easter? These periods come and go without being appreciably associated with any agreeable dislocation of our social system.

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But Christmas remains as the great central festival of the year - the time requiring the sanctifying touch of no St Lubbock to its proper observance: when they must be very poor and very sad - and there will always be the poor and the sorrowful in our midst - who can discover nothing of gladness in life.

It comes, as Tusser sagely says, "but once a year."

But has anyone stopped to reflect what it would be like if it did not come at all? What would it be after the midsummer recess has begun to bring the shortening evenings if , on gazing into futurity, we were unable to see a break in the monotony of existence in the busy round of daily toil nearer than the next succeeding midsummer furnishes?

In short, is there not a volume of expression summarised, in the observation heard so frequently as soon as the breath of winter sharpens the air and bares the tree, "It will be no time until Christmas is with us?"

Let the secret lie where it will, Christmas exercises and abiding hold upon Christendom. The method of its observation may not be the same - the coal fire may elbow out the yule log, and may in turn give place to the gas stove, just as the lordly turkey has successfully challenged the formerly undisputed sway of the goose on the Christmas dinner table: the customs may alter in minor degree with the changing times, but in its principal aspect as the great gift-giving and gift-receiving time, and as the universal meeting time of the year. Christmas has no rival.

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May the altering observances bring no diminution of the sum of human joy by which the festival is remembered. May the rich never cease to realise the luxury of doing good, and the poor always find in this a season of peculiar sympathy and support.

Be the weather what it may, we would in accordance with our custom, and in all sincerity. wish to all our readers the compliments of the day and we would add: A HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR!

This excerpt was taken from a Sentinel editorial of 1895.