Judge — December 14, 1918 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

i DIiTORILAL Curistmas ANd THE Macic CLose HE beauty about Christmas at this time is that it has lost many of its original meanings and become purely human. It is the Mag- nificent Season. It has become psycho logical, emotional, heart-dilating. It is no longer a day—it is an atmosphere. It is not a space of twenty-four hours. It a kind of wonder-time, when all humans in Christendom half expect something miraculous to happen. The soul stands, as it were, on tiptoe, and we really become again as little children sitting at the knee of Time, waiting for a new fairy-story of life. And this strange feeling among us elder folks that something “different” is sure going to happen around this mystical time comes to us from our childhood. We were put to bed in those golden, olden days and told that Old Kris would drive over the heavens, all a-muffle in furs, with his great reindeer with the merry, mellow bells, and he would descend the old chimney-pot at twelve midnight (old mystical, magical hour!) and leave us our Wish in the closet and in our socks! Divine, ancient morning in our lives, when we awoke Christmas Day, bounded out of bed in our little flannel union suits and pattered toward the old clothes- closet which papa and mamma flung open with radiant faces! And what things were there! Drums and candies, soldiers and books, dollies and tiny kitchen sets, all left in the night by that old graybeard of the skies. And maybe there were tears—which we did not see—in the eyes of papa and mammpa, who recalled the days of their own childhood, so far back, so far away, when life was a fairyland. And is not that memory, and Old Kris and the magic closet a symbol of our lives? Who of us does not wait each year before some ma closet, some secret place in the wall of life, which we are sure will open suddenly and give us our darling wish? VA Who of us, as hard as nails be he, who does not have his private / Old Kris, up there, over there, oh, anywhere in the Kingdom of the Unreal, who out of his bag, in the night of our cares and worries, wil not spill the secret desires of our \ heart?—our drums and dollies and golden paper caps? Christmas, 1918. We shall not Droes by H. Parse be cast down, for the human soul “By Test was born to joy as the sparks fly upward. Never was there a time in the history of the human race when the spirit said with more imperative voice, “ Give,” than now. Not because at this time it is Christian to give, but because it is human to give, because life expands when we give, because if Man be a shipwrecked being on a star foundered somewhere in Space, it be- hooves us all the more to take off our coat and put it on those shivering and suffering in the Boat. Let us open the magic closets of our hearts at this time—and we shall find treasures more precious than we found in our childhood. Santa Claus is not dead. He is yourself. He is no illusion, no myth. He is an eternal reality. He is Generosity. Christmas is the Canticle of the Heart. Merry Christmas to all the world! Tue Supreme ‘Test ANY of us acted on November 11, 1918, like the M man who gave his note to cover ail he owed, and exclaimed: “Thank goodness, that’s done with!” It isn’t done with. It has only just begun. Thank God, the fighting is done with, and we have conquered But we did not enter this war to conquer. We entered it to repair—to restore—to insure. In God's good providence, we have been spared much, if not most, of the ternble losses which have befallen our Allies. By as much as we have been spared, by so much the greater is our debt. Upon America more than any other nation rests the duty to rebuild the world. Easy? ? It isn’t going to be easy. In some ways what lies ahead of us will be harder than all that lies behind. What we have done, we did to the blare of trumpet, the beat of drum, the zip and zest of martial music. What we have to do must be done in the quietude of peace. We are told that we must pre- pare for war taxes as high as now for many months to come. We must be ready to finance one or two more loans. We must cheer- fully contribute as much—perhaps more—to the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A. and like remedial agencies. Easy? Was anything really worth while in the nation’s history easy? It is the supreme test—and Presents—. America will not fail! comicbooks.com