Life — December 2, 1920 — page 66: what you’re looking at

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

Christmas and Life By Dr. Frank Crane F Christmas means anything at all it means Cneer. Whatever it meant in Bethlehem, in the Middle Ages or among the Puritans, it now means the soft, warm shine in happy eyes. Whatever it means etymologically, his- torically, ecclesiastically or traditionally, it means actually just plain good feeling. And the best quality of good feeling, which is good feeling toward one another. And that is why it is the most popular, the most enduring, of all festivals. When St. Swithin’s Day and Hallowe'en and Candlemas and Bank Holiday shall have been smudged, out by the shuffling feet of centuries, Christmas Day will still dawn to children as the event of the year. From all appearances Christmas is the huskiest of holidays, fullest of vitamines and most promising of long life. Why? Because the purpose, end and reward of Life is Joy. The only use of morals, virtue, good- ness and such roughage, is to make Joy surer by purging, antisepticizing and ton- ing up the system. ery wholesome instinct of Nature is baited with Pleasure. Nature wants us to be strong, so she gives us appetite and makes thirst a craving and eating a de- light; she wants us to be nimble and healthy, so she makes exercise fun; she intends that the human race, shall not perish from the earth, hence she sugar- coats her procreative, purpose with ro- mance and tips her animalities with poetry. “Gentleness and cheerfulness,” said Robert Louis Stevenson, “these come be- fore morality; they are the perfect virtues, If your morals are dreary, de- pend upon it they are wrong; I do not say ‘give them up,’ for they may,be all you have; but conceal them like a vice, lest they should spoil the lives of better and simpler people.” Then scorn not them whose gift and calling it is to make you laugh. They add to the anonymous treasures of existence. They enrich morale, and stiffen the will to live. More wars have been prevented by Court Jesters than by Court Preachers. More family quarrels have been shunt- ed by a sense of humor than by righteous convictions, More humbugs have been punctured by ridicule than have been smashed by the Big Berthas of logic. More decayed old creeds, full of worms and sepsis, have been laughed away than reasoned down. A man may well doubt that he is doing a great deal, making a great discovery, or living a great life, if he does not laugh. There is a certain intoxication that char- acterizes genius, a sense of play. This light touch is found in Goethe’s Faust, in Dante's Inferno, in Kepler's astronomical discoveries, in Ghiberti’s Bronze Gates, in Lincoln's life. At its summit life is not dark and cold; it is sunlit. Mastery is joy. One of the persistent delusions that de- e the multitude is that glumness wisdom and sourness is virtue. Some- thing must be done to save the world from the solemn autocracy of college presidents and bankers, not to mention bishops and undertakers. So Christmas comes once a year, and Lire comes once a week, and absurdities are made manifest, and quip and jollity remind us that we are human, and the race is saved from mildew and mulligrubs. Where did the wiseacres get that no- tion of the sanctity of seriousness? For surely goodness is never genuine until we really like it, just as love is not love unless it be irresistible. Why not link pleasure always with rightness and make sin and sorrow twins? Why not teach that we are not punished For our sins, but By them? Is not the sparkling surface the sweetest part of the sea? Are not the gay blooms the crest of the wave of life in the plant? Is not the smile the summit of the soul? And is not “joy unspeakable and full of glory” the end of religion? Is not Christmas the bursting up of the eternal spring of human joy through the dry desert crust of fear and logic, the protest of instinct against the syllogism, the beating of the live heart in the cold statue carved by thcology, the blooming of the little flower of beauty and of love in the crevices between the dreadful rocks of superstition, authority, tradition and morals? Joy is the evergreen thing in this world. To-day I see young people exuberant Christmas Life around me and the sun boiling up ir dawns promise, and seeds sprouting, and myriads of things commencing; and 1 reflect how old the carth is, and think of castles I have seen crumbling, and of gnawed, gray monuments, and of empty tombs; and I marvel at the abiding youngness of the world and of humanity. Why does not the world wear out and grow tired and old? Whence comes this exhaustless liquor of youth that runs through the veins of men and trees? Go and tell this miracle to jus and to Arcturus, that here rolls a strange planet which buries its men and its forests, mak- ing history of one and coal of the other, and still keeps eternally young! So here’s to you, Merry Christmas; may you live forever, or at least until the millennium shall spread your spirit “through all the circle of the Golden Year”! And to you, O Lire, more power to your arm, until we, “by your bless’d hebdomadary round,” shall be weaned from our morbidities, and each man find each day a Christmas treasure! Honest Laborer’s Son: Just A MINUTE, OLD TOP, BEFORE YOU START TO UNLOAD. 1 WISH TO WARN YOU THAT I'L POSITIVELY ACCEPT NOTHING THAT DOESN'T BEAR A UNION LABEL comicbooks.com