From the series: SOCIAL GRIEVANCES.
REALLY is a
great mistake, passing Christmas in the country; and I certainly will not do so any more. Why I should be supposed to wish to leave my comfortable fireside, in this severe weather, I can't imagine. Dinners and balls for a month, to which the shortest distance is ten miles. The Duke of Donkeyton’s is five and twenty miles, at least;—of course, we must go there. I have my house full of people; and, as I have chosen my own guests, we are a pleasant party enough. I have sent all the men out shooting. I don’t go myself, for I don’t see the fun of standing at the corner of a covert, with my nose frozen, and my hands and feet insensible, on the chance of shooting one of the many hundred pheasants I had down from town yesterday, because I won't be troubled with much preserving. So I have come into my den to have a quiet pipe, and a dip into a book, and a chat with my readers.
What a smell of mince pies and plum pudding all over the house! These are what are called reasonable festivities; with double numbers of illustrated papers, and robin redbreasts, and icicles, and Old Father Christmas, and punch, and snapdragon, and New Year's Day, and holly and mistletoe, and “A Merry Christmas to you”—which is frequently a horrible mockery to those to whom it is addressed: as, for instance, people who can't pay their bills, or who have death and sickness in the house. Depend upon it, there are a good many unreformed Scrooges in the world. Not that I am one. One hundred of the poor in my parish will dine to-morrow at my expense. The school children will be feasted, and all the old people will have a blanket given them, and a sackful of coals. Any wayfarer passing my lodge gates will be invited to partake of a hunch of bread and a mug of good October ale. This idea I have borrowed from the Hospital of St. Cross, near Winchester, and is, I flatter myself, a remarkably neat and effective plagiarism. Still, the whole thing is a bore. I have outlived all the gushing over it; and loathingly anticipate the lovely articles there’ll be, no doubt, in the Daily Telegraph —starting with the Wise Men of the East, and ending up, apropos of pantomimes, with some remarks about the ballet dancers' legs, and how they are necessary to draw the foolish men of the West.
Then, what is there seasonable about
ghosts? What connection is there between
them and mince pies and plum pudding? Why shouldn’t they be equally seasonable at Midsummer or Michaelmas? I never saw one, and don’t wish to; but it would not be an agreeable companion at table, even if it were a festive ghost. Yet every body insists on hundreds of ghosts at Christmas—if we may judge from the volumes of literature devoted to their interests at that time.
Christmas and New Year seasonable festivities are only suitable to the very young or very old. The former delight in all the old “shop” of the period—the yule log, the wassail bowl, the carols, mummers, and the rest. The liberty accorded to their gastronomic powers is the more appreciable, as it is accorded but once a year; and they are loaded with presents, more or less valuable, from friends and relatives, as their parents happen to be more or less wealthy. To them it is a poem: to many of us middle-aged people it is a disagreeable reality. The old people naturally like it. Their fading faculties are renewed by the good cheer and gaiety; and they can recall reminiscences of their early days which had been forgotten for a year. They look with pride on their children and grandchildren; and predict the Woolsack for Tommy, and—who knows?—a Prince of Royal blood for Sukey. They have done with the sternness of life, and can afford to indulge in those innocent dreams and speculations. But the melancholy of the subject is leading me on to drivel and to dote. We will leave it, if you please. Mr. Editor shall not have this paper. I will light my pipe with it, and compose myself in my warm armchair by the fire.
Believe in ghosts indeed! Benighted people. I suppose they will soon be back from shooting, as it’s beginning to get dark. The fire makes me quite drowsy. Ghosts, indeed!