'Papa,' she said at last, 'are you busy? May I ask you something?'
'What is Christmas?' he repeated. 'It is nothing, Esther; nothing at all. A name--nothing more.'
'Then, why do people think so much of Christmas?'
'They do not. Sensible people do not think anything of it. Christmas is nothing to me.'
'But, papa, why then does anybody make much of it? Mrs. Dallas has her house all dressed up with greens.'
'You had better keep away from Mrs. Dallas's.'
'But it looks so pretty, papa! Is there any harm in it?'
'Dressing the house so? It is all hemlock wreaths, and cedar branches, and bright red berries here and there; and Pitt has put them up so beautifully! You can't think how pretty it all is. Is there any harm in that, papa?'
'My dear, they have a foolish fancy that it is the time when Christ was born; and so in Romish times a special Popish mass was said on that day; and from that the twenty-fifth of December got its present name--Christ-mass; that is what it is.'
'Then He was not born the twenty-fifth of December?'
'No, nor in December at all. Nothing is plainer than that spring was the time of our Lord's coming into the world. The shepherds were watching their flocks by night; that could not have been in the depth of winter; it must have been in the spring.'
'Then why don't they have Christmas in springtime?'
'Don't ask _me_, my dear; I don't know. The thing began in the ages of ignorance, I suppose; and as all it means now is a time of feasting and jollity, the dead of winter will do as well as another time. But it is a Popish observance, my child; it is a Popish observance.'
'There's no harm in it, papa, is there? if it means only feasting and jollity, as you say.'
'There is always harm in superstition. This is no more the time of Christ's birth than any other day that you could choose; but there is a superstition about it; and I object to giving a superstitious reverence to what is nothing at all. Reverence the Bible as much as you please; you cannot too much; but do not put any ordinance of man, whether it be of the Popish church or any other, on a level with what the Bible commands.'
The colonel had finished his toast, and was turning to his book again.
'Pitt has been telling me of the way they keep Christmas in England,' Esther went on. 'The Yule log, and the games, and the songs, and the plays.'