Christmas. Various

Christmas - Various


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       Various

      Christmas

      Its Origin, Celebration and Significance as Related in Prose and Verse

      Published by Good Press, 2019

       [email protected]

      EAN 4064066194574

       NOTE

       PREFACE

       INTRODUCTION

       I

       ORIGIN

       II

       CELEBRATION

       III

       SIGNIFICANCE AND SPIRIT

       IV

       STORIES

       V

       OLD CAROLS AND EXERCISES

       ADDITIONAL PIECES

       THE END

       Table of Contents

      The Publishers desire to acknowledge the kindness of Messrs. Charles Scribner's Sons; Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Little, Brown and Company; Dodd, Mead and Company; Bobbs-Merrill Company and others, who have granted us permission to reproduce selections from works bearing their copyright.

       Table of Contents

      Christmas is our most important holiday, and its literature is correspondingly rich. Yet until now no adequate bundle of Christmas treasures in poetry and prose has found its way into the library of Santa Claus.

      While this book brings to children of all ages, in school and at home, the best lyrics, carols, essays, plays and stories of Christmas, its scope is yet wider. For the Introduction gives a rapid view of the holiday's origin and development, its relation to cognate pagan festivals, the customs and symbols of its observance in different lands, and the significance and spirit of the day. This Introduction endeavors to be as suggestive as possible to parents and teachers who are personally conducted and introduced to the host of writers learned and quaint, human and pedantic, humorous and brilliant and profound, who have dealt technically with this fascinating subject.

       Table of Contents

      It was the habit of him whose birthday we celebrate to take what was good in men and remould it to higher uses. And so it is peculiarly fitting that the anniversary of Christmas, when it was first celebrated in the second century of our era should have taken from heathen mythology and customs the more beautiful parts for its own use. "Christmas," says Dean Stanley, "brings before us the relations of the Christian religion to the religions which went before; for the birth at Bethlehem was itself a link with the past."

      As Christianity replaced paganism, the Christians, in the tolerant spirit of their Master, adopted these beautiful old usages, merely changing their spirit. So that the Lord of Misrule who long presided over the Christmas games of Christian England was the direct descendant of the ruler who was appointed, with considerable prerogatives, to preside over the sports of the Saturnalia. In this connection the narrow Puritan author of the "Histrio-Mastix" laments: "If we compare our Bacchanalian Christmasses with these Saturnalia, we shall find such a near affinitye between them, both in regard to time and in manner of solemnizing, that we must needs conclude the one to be but the very issue of the other."


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