Judge — December 26, 1931 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

JUDGE Have We Forgotten? © cometh the third since folly went boom. the beard of a Nicholas, how much than we knew then! Christmas And by distracted St. more we know Holidays have many uses, and not least is that they punctuate the pas- sage of time; they give us pause to 1k back, sum up, jot. down, and t or glower. Let's have another round at a frugal punch-bowl and squander another ‘small log on the fire while we consider in retrospect the past three Christmas s * * « of 1928. Do you te- Surely that was the mad- dest and merriest, the most extrava- gant and the most meretricious th this people has ever known, Every- thing was on the up and up. and no- body yet on his uppers. The mean little money-gods held us with their glittering eyes. We bowed down be- fore them, rose to caper at their bid- ding and dashed off bec tering coins to the four winds. wifts we gave asons. Christmas member? zled, scat- The and got were more lav- or the givers could afford; nd we reveled in it, for what matter?—there was plenty more where that ¢ crosity me from, and such gen- only showed our magnificence. We were titans in carning power, gen- and the world’s first abolishers of poverty! We were hecled with cash and doped with credit. Surely in those purse-proud revels we did much violence to the ancient and noble spirit of Christmas. * * + Christmas of 1929. That was but few short weeks after the crash. We dn't know yet what hit us, but didn’t think it was much. We were groggy but gay nevertheless. No ink- ling troubled us of the harsh days to come. We saw an unlucky few mired in the market-place, but we didn’t see the breadlines forming. There were lonely households that Christmas Day, there were men who sat grimly iuses in gamblin wondering, women whose unspoken questions, children who choked back childish tragedies. But most of us roared on, heedless, crazy and er: There yet no wel- come among us for the true spirit of Christmas. * *# * Christmas of 1930, Another brought us to soberness, even to fear, but not yet to humility. Strange that it took us so very long to understand ! Our most august oracles and seers had en us wordy comfort at pleasant intervals. Statisticians had bled as to whether the number of un- employed was this many million or only that) many million! arly everybody had been daily expecting some miracle, probably psychological, some universal outburst of confidence which would suddenly restore our old prosperity. But Christmas Day it- self dawned as one that would have been gloomy indeed had it not been for the tradition of good cheer and good will. Many of us got closer to a squab- realization of the ancient Christmas spirit. But we didn't quite reach it. We still labored under the financial obsession. Expensive gifts were de- livered with conscious pride, skimpy ones with apology and a sense of un- worthiness. Christmas was still too much a festival of spending, of get- ting, of comparing. *“_ * * Christmas of 1931. This season finds us still more chastened. Bad as our economic situation was a year ago, it is worse now—except tha are wiser by a year’s learni: by so much, closer to recovery. If we still persist in letting money clank through our minds, we shall not have much merriment. Have we forgotten the origin of Christmas, that it celebrates the birth of Him who came to teach simplicity and meckness and quict faith in the sure destiny of man? Have we for- gotten that the carly celebrants of Christmas were humble folk, who, with neither present wealth nor future 15 security, drew from this day much joy and reverence and courage with which to face together the unknown? Have we not noticed that little chil- dren, who neither know nor about prices and budgets, are the piest of us all on Christmas Day? Only at. the millennium, of course, will there come a Christmas that is moneyless, free of all competition and vanity. But this year of Christ 1931 ought to move the world a pace or two in that direction. There are millions who cannot buy any Christ- mas gifts at all. There are more who can buy thi worth only a fraction of those they gave last year. There are millions who know already that friends will give them presents far more valuable than they ¢ care millions n give in return. Let them face the pros- pect with chins up, without . fool- ish shame. It is salutary, Let this Christmas drive further into oblivion the haunting memory of the money-gods. Let nobody give more than he can afford, for fear of what he expects to receive. Let no- F less than he can afford, b cause he knows the recipient will give little or nothing. And let nobody at all except with genuine desire to give. There are gifts that cost long consideration but little cash, gifts made with one’s own hands and brains. There are glorious gifts quite immaterial—such as thoughts set down in an unexpected letter , cheering words spoken over the tele- phone on Christmas morning, visits paid in spite of cold and slush and distance to those to whom the sight of your face and the clasp of your hand will mean more than diamonds, Thus, in this yea if we will recover some of the old, the true spirit of Christmas and remind our- selves of what we had so far forgot- ten, that friendship is not a financial venture, that love is without price and is strong and casts out fear, and that humility has power to breed a mighty courage. r, we may JIL W, comicbooks.com