Christmas! And the bells are clanging! Christmas! And the goose is hanging high and joy’s abroad! Christmas is the happy season! Though the weather may be freezin’, human hearts are thawed! Here we see the ancient codger sporting like an artful dodger with the laughing kids; here we see the haughty chappie smiling broadly and as happy as the katydids. Every one has shed his sorrow, dropped his burden till tomorrow, dropped the world and care; Christmas is no time for sadness—all the world is full of gladness, each should have his share.
Therefore, if you deal in lumber, let your business rest and slumber, till the day is o’er; think no more of lath and plaster; frolic fast and frolic faster till you split the floor. Cast aside all thoughts of timber; show the folks your legs are limber, and your soul unspoiled; show your heart has not been toughened, show your nature’s not been roughened, by the years you’ve toiled. Let no thoughts of sash and siding your attention be dividing on this day of grace; help to fill with glee your shanty, till grandmother, sister, auntie, bless your cheer-up face.
Christmas! When the reindeer travel, and Old Santa scratches gravel, making good his dates! Men who don’t get good and mellow when is due that brave old fellow, surely are cheap skates. When the Christmas music’s rollin’, and the children’s socks are swollen, we should all be young; young as when we watched and waited for those reindeer, rapid-gaited, by the night wind stung. We can be as young in spirit as the kids, or pretty near it, if we only try, though our heads are gray and dusty and our joints are worn and rusty, and no longer spry. Then when Christmas time is ended and we to our tasks have wended, we shall bear away something of the youth we captured when the whole world was enraptured with its Christmas day.