Jasper County Democrat, Volume 21, Number 76, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1918 — Christmas Is Childrens Day [ARTICLE]

Christmas Is Childrens Day

The message of Christmas is love. Its emblem is radiant, thankful, contented childhood. Without love and without children there could be no real Christmas. The form might survive but the substance would be lacking. Unhappy must be the adult who cannot make himself a child again in spirit at the Yuletide. For Christmas is the universal children's day. Men and women are superfluous except as they make themselves partners with those whom the day glorifies. Let us, then, lay aside the affectation and. arrogance of manhood and •womanhood and be children again. Let us adopt their point of view and put ourselves in their places—in the places of these sons and daughters of ours and of the sons and daughters of our neighbors. It was only a year or two ago, as it seems,- when we hung our well-worn stockings in a row along the mantel shelf, while our fathers and mothers looked on with unfeigned pleasure at the innocent confidence we showed in what the morrow would bring forth. Even as you and I. It all comes back in a flood of memories. Life was simpler then. Our desires were less pretentious than those our children voice now. Modest remembrances they were that bulged toe and heel of the stockings mother knit. Life and its circumstances change, but the essence of Christmas never. The same happy childhood, the same restlessness, the same snail-like creeping of time as the holiday approaches. The same parenthood, too —the same planning across the reading table after the boys and girls are abed,' the same loving consideration of what this or that child most desires and how far the family purse can properly be stretched to permit some further purchase. Every home is assured a Christmas if it has a great, warm heart pulsating In tune with the hopes and joys of childhood. —Exchange.