Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 301, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 December 1917 — How the World Keeps Christmas [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

How the World Keeps Christmas

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aN MANY millions of homes this year there will be no merry tones in the bells that ring throughout the Christian world on Christmas day. To mothers, wives, sweethearts, who have lost sons, husbands, lovers, in the world madness, Christmas bells will sound as harsh, metallic clangor, crystallizing sadness and despair. Perhaps the women whose men are in the armies will receive in the music from the church towers messages of hope iind Inspiration. But speaking metaphorically, how the Yuletide bells ring and just when they ring, who rings them and how long, are matters of national taste that will seem queer to you if while you happen to be roystering in Spain, you think of Sweden kneeling in solemnity ; or in England eating your way through Christmas day, you consider the Russians chanting the myths of the Goddess of the Sun, or in Italy listening to the children reciting their godly pieces in the streets, you remember New York and its theaters with “special Christmas performances.” Christmas in England never has regained the measure of pure revelry it held before the reformation. Only the remnants of those hearty‘times when the land was glutted with epicurean richness are what are left for old England today, but these are enough to make the celebration distinct in its ponderosity. Wherever Christmas is found in the British isles there is a Ilium pudding, that heaviest of edibles that seems to Improve in taste with every pound tipped off on the scales. In Ireland they accompany a generous slice with long drinks of what they call “lamb’s-wool,” made by bruising roasted apples mixed with ale or milk. If food and drink are the greater parts of jollity, there are no merrier Christmases in the land than these in England. But there is little Christmas lore and superstition. Now and then you will hear some old fireside crony drone away about the bad consequences of a red and dusky New Year’s day, or peer out anxiously for the first visitor, whose sex determines good or ill luck during the coming year. The authors have put into rhyme just what you would do if you were passing your Christmas day with the British:

Ak Christmas time we deck the hall With holly branches brave and tall. With sturdy pine and hemlock bright, And in the Yule-log's dancing light We tell old tales of field and fight At Christmas time. At Christmas time we pile the board With flesh and fruit and vintage stored, ‘ And ’mid the laughter and the glow We tread a measure soft and slow, And kiss beneath the mistletoe At Christmas time. Germany has no long years of rlotChristmases to look back upon. There is no country in peace times where the celebration is more wholesomely merry than in Germany. The Germans begin a week before Christmas day to bring in evergreens of air sizes which they pile up in the public squares of the cities and towns until these look like forests of pines and hemlocks. Not one tree, but two, each German family must have and those too poor to buy them ard'assisted by those who have plenty. St. Nicholas is the old fellow at the bottom of this seasonal merriment. On the eve of St. Nicholas day, December 6, the Christmas festival begins. That is the day when the German children behave! For a man who is good at keeping secret’s impersonates the saint and goes around inquiring' how the children have acted during the year. He curries a bundle of birch switches with him and leaves them in the homes where he thinks they may be needed. The dtfy before Christmas in Germany (peace time Germany,, remember) the mothers trim the house from top to bottom with strings of frosted Christmas cakes and railing greens. When it comes to trimming the Christmas trees themselves, then you may play out in the yard, take a walk, or get out of the way somewhere, for this is secret business between motherland Kris Kringle. On

tables under the trees are the gifts, surprising gifts they would seem to some —a soap-rose, an artificial flower, knitted lace, a Christmas cake, or a sausage or cheese. Most of them have verses attached, written In curious meter. Not until six a’clock in the evening are the doors open for the festivity of the trees. Tonight the horses and cows of the German farmers have peculiar gifts. It is said that the cattle kneel on Christmas eve and say a few animal prayers. It is a very great sin to listen to their conversation, else it would be recorded here.

If reindeer could talk on Christmas eve, the ones that pull the family sleighs of the Lapps of Lapland, what wouldn’t they tell of long journeys over ice and snow for days before Christmas in order to have their masters and the children at church on Christmas morning! Miles over the snow come the people of the North to hear the - familiar monotoned message of the birth of the Christchild from their pastors. There is no lightness in this ceremony, nor any gifts for the children, nor gay music. The tent or hut homes are filled with guests for the Christmas holidays, so full that there is no room for evergreens or candles. They take their Christmas with faces as solemn as mummies and make the attendant ceremonies as unjoyful as possible. Marriages are performed during the season, children are sent to school for a few weeks, babies are christened, the dead are buried, and liquor Is sent around with.lavishness. This is Christmas for the Lapps. Who will change with them? Norway outside of Lapland has a more joyous time of it. Norwegian children have Christmas trees and little gifts that are hidden in out-of-the-way corners for them to find. Every bird in Norway must know of an approaching Christmas', for the boys and girls tie oats and corn on the trees, the fences, the tops of houses and barns, and on high poles they erect in their yards so that the birds may feast with them. What a chattering there must be in Norway on Christmas morning! After a day of feasting and church services, little boys with white mantles and star-shaped lanterns, carrying dolls to represent the Virgin Mary and the Christchild, sing carols in the homes. Strolling musicians serenade at twilight. To be clean for Christmas is the problem that haunts the Swedish housewife. For days she scours and scrubs and washes. Not a piece of trimming or furniture is left unpolished. All dirt is sinful, and must not be tolerated at this holy season. While the cleaning is going on, there is the; baking of Christmas breads, ringshaped, that must dry under the beams for a week or two, and the brewing of spiced drinks. A wine that the Swedish women make with almonds and spices is an aromatic quaff with a holiday smell. Never can there be a proper Christmas in Sweden without home-made cheeses, especially the sweet ones made of boiled sweet milk < and molded' fantastically-. Santa Claus appears in person to Swedish children and distributes his sled of gifts. When he has disappeared as mysteriously as he came, they join hands and sing Christmas jingles until they work up a fine appetite for Christmas mush, an indispensable sweet—rice boiled a long time in milk with cinnamon and sukar, with blanched almonds for flavor, to be eaten with cream. Christmas fish in Sweden has, the same share of respectability that rare roast beef ha? in England. It is buried for days in wood ashes, then boiled and served with hot milk. Sled parties of forty or fifty sleds each go. to church on Christmas morning, with the ringing oflobg rows of sleigh bells and festive trappings. The day itself Is one of .peace and quiet. But on the next day the fun begins, and continues unfit all their four holidays are over—Christmas, the day after,' the twelfth day, and the twentieth. The ceremony of untrimming the tree is as much of a frolic as its decoration. There are no house greens to take down, because this is their sign of mourning, but there are flowers if they can be obtained. ■ ‘

Christmas turkeys In Denmark are geese that share honors at the Christmas feast with a special kind of cake. The salt-cellar remains on 4he table throughout Yuletide just to tiphold tradition. At midnight on Christmas eve those who have fruit trees take lanterns and a stick and find their way into the orchards. Each tree is struck three times by the head of the house with the injunction, “Rejoice and be fruitful.” No one who can possibly avoid it works from Christmas until after New Year’s day.

“Greetings for the Lord’s birth” is the Russian way of saying, “Merry Christmas,” to which the answer is, “God be with you.” Besides celebrat-. ing the nativity, the Russians cherish a mystical lore of the Goddess of the Sun, who, at Christmas time, was supposed to enter her sledge, dressed in gorgeous robes and headdress, and ► turn her horses toward summer. Here and there in the great country a village maiden, dressed in white and drawn on a sledge from house to house, represents the Goddess of the Sun, while her retinue sing carols. After attending a Christmas eve service in church, Russians set out to have a frolicking Christmas in a community way. One who has a large house invites many other households, which come bringing cakes and othpr sweets. They would freeze in their sledges rather than alight before receiving the greetings of host and hostess. There are a large feast, games, snowballing, and recitations and songs, sometimes lasting throughout the night. One wonders how revolutionary Russia, anarchistic and warworn, will celebrate the Holy Child’s birth this year. France has a quiet Christmas, giving less prominence to it than to any of -the other days in the holiday calendar. Old folks in the provinces tell about times when Christmas was a gay season, celebrated with great romp and joy. The shopkeepers furbish their stalls for the gift season, and the confectioners make those delicious little cakes with sugar forms of the Christchild on top. Scraps of Yuletide tradition are dearly held in the homes of some of the peasants. The ashes of the great Yule log are thought to be protection against lightning and bad luck; the old log has magic power to fill with peppermints shoes left beside it, and its ashes dropped into medicine have wonderful curative.powers. French children have Christmas trees and little cradles made of evergreens, representations of the holy manger. France sings carols through the whole month of December, strolling musicians playing their Noels from house to.i hoflse. The presence of American’soldiers there this year undoubtedly will alter the ancient customs of the people somewhat. Christmas in Italy means a children’s season, wherein the little folks reconsecrate themselves by singing and reciting pieces in the streets, and in Spain it means no end of social gayety among the young folks, almost to the point of such roystering as Americans indulge in on Hallowe’en. In America it seems to be a gala combination of these old-world customs and others with a little «more lavishness and good-time display. —From “Yuletide in Many Lands,” by Mary P. Pringle and Clara A. Urann.