(Here we are, the last days before Christmas. For some it’s a time of great anticipation—finding things under the tree or in the stocking, visiting friends and relatives—or panic about what to get someone who has already bought everything during the year or hoping that a last-minute inspiration will jump off a store shelf and into your arms, immediately solving the gift problem at the last minute. We publish Dr. Frank Crane’s thoughts on Christmas every year because they are timeless and never lose their meaning).
UNIVERSAL, PERPETUAL JOY
Christmas means the indestructibility of joy
Christmas is the protest of the human race against gloom.
The one thing neither time nor force can suppress is instinct.
In days past, religion tried to stamp out earthly gladness, play, fun, the joy of man and maid. As well one might endeavor to dam the waters of the Mississippi.
When we have clamped human nature down with our reasonings and revelations, along comes Instinct, and to use the words of Bennett*, blandly remarks:
“Don’t pester me with Right and Wrong. I am Right and Wrong. I shall suit my own convenience and no one but nature (with a big, big N) shall talk to me!”
In the Fourth Century, the Christian World was pretty dismal. This world was considered a dreadful place, to get away from as soon as possible. Consequently, the girls and boys were lured off into heathen sports, for the heathen alone raced and danced and frolicked.
Then the church established the Christmas festival, which was one of her wisest strokes of policy.
In 342 A.D., the good Bishop Tiberius preached the first Christmas sermon, in Rome.
Into this opening poured the play instinct of the world.
This time of the winter solstice strangely enough had been the jovial period of the year everywhere. Then the Swedes of old used to light fires on the hills in honor of Mother Friga, goddess of Love. Then the Romans indulged in their Saturnalia, the one carnival of democracy and equality during the twelve months of tyranny and slavery. Then the Greeks lit torches upon Helicon in praise of Dionysus. In Egypt of this period the population bore palms for the god Horus, in Persia they celebrated the birth of Mithras, and the Hindus of India sang their songs to Vishnu.
Many of these festivals had become very corrupt. Excess and license darkened the hour of national joy.
The wisest things the Christians ever did was to turn this feast day over to a child.
The child Jesus stands for the childhood of the world, perpetual, evergreen, inexhaustible.
It’s a weary world to those who have lived wrong or too long, but to those who remain healthy in their tastes, it’s a wonderful world, full of undying youth running with sap, recurrent with primal joy.
Christmas means the supreme fact about life, namely: that it is joyful.
It is the opinion of many the greatest music ever composed is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. As a climax for this orchestral composition the master chose a chorus to sing Schiller’s “Hymn to Joy.”
Christmas means that when this world and all its purposes and deeds are wound up, and the last men and women stand at the end of time and contemplate the complete story of humanity, they will not wail or hang their heads, but they will shout and exult.
The truest, most everlasting element of mankind is play, accompanied by laughter.
*Dr. Crane is referring to English novelist essayist, and journalist Enoch Arnold Bennett (1867-1931). The quote comes from his book, Friendship and Happiness and Other Essays, published in 1921.