This is one side of the question; your neighbour takes the other.
Who on earth, he says with his hands in his pockets, his back to the fire and his kindly smiling face to the room, who on earth can grumble at the facts of Christmas-time? For his part he finds it the jolliest season of the year, and he finds each season as jolly as the other, and all perfect in their own appointed way. He is none of your crying philosophers who go through life bewailing its miseries and oppressed by its misfortunes. Not he! He thinks the earth beautiful, men and women pleasant, and God very good; and of all occasions wherein he can transact his cheerful philosophy, Christmas is the best. The boys are home for their holidays; and it is a pleasure to him to take them out hunting and shooting, and initiate them into the personal circumstances belonging to English country gentlemen. He looks forward to the time when they will take his place and carry on the traditions of the family, and he wishes them to be worthy of their name and an honour to their country. He is not one of those nervous self-centred men who live by rule and measure and cannot have a line of the day's ordering disturbed. He likes his own way certainly; and he has it; but he can press his elbows to his sides on occasions, and give room for others to expand. He does not find it such an unbearable infliction that his boys should come home and racket about the place, even though they are a little upsetting, and do not leave everything quite as smooth and straight as they found it. He remembers his own youth and how happy it made him to come home and racket; and he supposes that his lads are very much the same as he was at their age. He thinks too that they do the girls good--wake them up a little--and while not making them rough or rude--the mother takes care of that--yet that they prevent them from becoming prim and missy, as girls are apt to be who have no brothers and are left too much to themselves. Certainly he does not approve of the flood of slang which is let loose in the house during their stay; but school-boy slang at the worst is not permanent, and in a week's time will be forgotten.
As for the married daughter's children, they are the merriest little rogues in the world; and his wife looks ten years younger since they came. She was always fond of babies; and her grandchildren seem to renew her own past nursery with all the pleasure and none of the anxiety of the olden time. He rather wonders at his girl's taste in the matter of her husband--most fathers do--and cannot for the life of him see what there is to love in him. But if not an Alcibiades he is a good fellow in the main, and makes his young wife happy; which is the principal thing. And if his daughter-in-law is a trifle stiff, and fond of giving herself fine-lady airs, he for his part never stands that kind of nonsense, and will laugh her out of it before she has been twenty-four hours in the house. He finds good-humour and taking no offence the best weapons in the world against folly and ill-temper; and prefers them as curative agents to any other. The girl is a nice girl enough, but she has been badly brought up--had a lot of false ideas instilled into her by a foolish mother--but when she has been away from the old influences, and associated with themselves for a little while, she will open her eyes and see things in their right light. Who indeed could resist the sweet sensible influence of his wife, her mother-in-law?--and are not his girls the very perfection of honest wholesome English ladies? It will all come right in time; he has no doubt of that; and meanwhile they must be patient and forbearing for Dick's sake, and not make matters worse than they are by their own want of self-control.