Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 50, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 December 1895 — Keeping Christmas Wisely. [ARTICLE]

Keeping Christmas Wisely.

Thoughtfiilpeople have discovered that we are in danger of losing our Christmas by doing it th death. It may die of surfeit, as well as a pet, or a love. The maddiig crowd making itself maniac across the impassable streets, choking the writhing shops, stalling the railway trains, blocking the United States mails, and choking, stalling, blocking, and madding more madly every year than it did the year before, does not necessarily mean the growth of the Christmas sense, but is quite as likely' to mean the growth of Christmas nonsense. It means a vast amount of folly, imitation, greed, ambition. It means ap incalculable sum 06 envies, disappointments, jealousies. It means unmeasured aches. It means women literally “tired to death,” apd men in debt, and neighbors offended, and rich relatives cajoled, and a host of human blunders which we might call the Christmas waste. All the processes of action have their waite, and it does not condemn the action, but only appeals to the intelligence behind the action to regulate the proportion between profit and loss. So, when we have a fine thing—an art, invention, feeling or custom —the first point is how not to lose it, and it may be found that we need a high spiritual economy to save our Christmas from the kind of decadence that belongs to a society like ours. It is the greatest—it ought to be the grandest I —day in our calendar. A petty spirit, a false extravagance, a lost temper, a worn-out body, a disappointed soul, have no more place at Christmas than at marriage time, or heaven time. Mrs. Newlywed—How I love to hear the merry Christmas bells. Mr. Newlywed—l’d like to hear them, tod, if Christmas bells were not so confoundedly suggestive of Christmas bills.