Speaker 1: What Christmas is as we grow older By Charles Dickens.
Time was with most of us when Christmas Day, encircling
all our limited world like a magic ring, left nothing
out for us to miss or seek. Bound together all
our home enjoyments, affections and hopes, grouped everything and every
one around the Christmas fire and made the little picture
shining in our bright young eyes. Complete. Time came, perhaps
all so soon, when our thoughts overleaped that narrow boundary,
when there was someone very dear, we thought then, very
beautiful and absolutely perfect, wanting to the fullness of our
happiness when we were wanting too, or we thought so,
which did just as well at the Christmas hearth by
which that some one sat, and when we intertwined with
every wreath and garland of our life that some one's name,
That was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which
have long arisen from us, to show faintly after summer
rain in the palest edges of the rainbow. That was
the time for the beatified enjoyment of the things that
were to be and never were, and yet the things
that were so real in our resolute hope that it
would be hard to say now, what realities achieved since
have been stronger? What did Christmas never really come when
we and the priceless pearl who was our young choice
were received after the happiest of totally impossible marriages by
the two United families previously at daggers drawn on our account,
when brothers and sisters in law, who had always been
rather cool to us before our relationship was affected, perfectly
doated on us, and when fathers and mothers overwhelmed us
with unlimited incomes. Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten?
After which we arose and generously and eloquently rendered honor
to our late rival present in the company then and there,
exchanging friendship and forgiveness and founding an attachment not to
be surpassed in Greek or Roman story, which subsisted until death.
Has that same rival long ceased to care for that
same priceless pearl and married for money and become musurious
above all? Do we really know now that we should
probably have been miserable if we had won and warned
the pearl that we are better off without her that Christmas,
when we had recently achieved so much fame, when we
had been carried in triumph somewhere for doing something great
and good, when we had won an honored and ennobled name,
and arrived and were received at home in a shower
of tears of joy? Is it possible that Christmas has
not come yet? And is our life here at the
best so constituted that, pausing as we advance at such
a noticeable milestone in the track as this great birthday,
we look back on things that never were, as naturally
and fully as gravely as on the things that have
been and are gone, or have been and still are.
If it be so, and so it seems to be,
must we come to the conclusion that life is little
better than a dream, and little worth the loves and
strivings that we crowd into it. No far be such
miscalled philosophy from us, dear reader, on Christmas Day. Nearer
and nearer to our hearts be the Christmas Spirit, which
is the spirit of active usefulness, perseverance, cheerful discharge of duty,
kindness and forbearance. It is in the last virtues especially
that we are or should be strengthened by the unaccomplished
visions of our youth. For who shall say that they
are not our teachers to deal gently even with the
impalpable nothings of the earth. Therefore, as we grow older,
let us be more thankful that the circle of our
Christmas associations and of the lessons that they bring expands.
Let us welcome every one of them, and summon them
to take their places by the Christmas hearth. Welcome old aspirations,
glittering creatures of an ardent fancy, to your shelter underneath
the holly. We know you and have not outlived you yet.
Welcome old projects and old loves, however, fleeting to your
nooks among the steadier lights that burn around us. Welcome
all that was ever real in our hearts, and for
the earnestness that made you reel. Thanks to Heaven. Do
we build no Christmas castles in the clouds now. Let
our thoughts, fluttering like butterflies among the flowers of children,
bear witness. Before this boy there stretches out future, brighter
than we ever looked on in our old romantic time,
but bright with honor and with truth. Around this little
head on which the sunny curls lie heaped the Grace's
sport as prettily, as airily as when there was no
scythe within the reach of time to shear away the
curls of our first love upon another girl's face near it,
placid but smiling bright, a quiet and contented little face.
We see home fairly written, shining from the word as
rays shine from a star. We see how when our
graves are old, other hopes than ours are young, Other
hearts than ours are moved, other ways are smoothed, How
other happiness blooms, ripens and decays, No, not decays for
other homes, and other bands of children not yet in being,
nor for ages yet to be, arise and bloom and ripen.
To the end of all. Welcome everything, Welcome alike what
has been and what never was, and what we hope
may be, to your shelter underneath the holly, to your
places round the Christmas fire, where what is sits open hearted?
In yonder shadow do we see obtruding furtively upon the
blaze in enemy's face. By Christmas day we do forgive him.
If the injury he has done us may admit of
such companionship, Let him come here and take his place,
If otherwise unhappily, let him go. Hence assured that we
will never injure nor accuse him. On this day we
shut out nothing. Pause, says a low voice. Nothing think
on Christmas Day we will shut out from the fireside, nothing,
not the shadow of a vast city where the withered
leaves are lying deep, the voice replied, Not the shadow
that darkens the whole globe, Not the shadow of the
City of the Dead, not even that of all days
in the year. We will turn our faces toward that
city upon Christmas Day, and from its silent host, bring
those we loved among us. City of the Dead, in
the blessed name, wherein we are gathered together at this time,
and in the presence that is here among us, according
to the promise, we will receive and not dismiss thy
people who are dear to us. Yes, we can look
upon these children angels that alight so solemnly, so beautifully,
among the living children by the fire, and can bear
to think how they departed from us, entertaining angels unawares,
as the patriarchs did. The playful children are unconscious of
their guests, but we can see them, can see a
radiant arm around one favorite neck, as if there were
attempting of that child away among the celestial figures. There
is one a poor misshapen boy on earth, of a
glorious beauty now, of whom his dying mother said had
grieved her much to leave him here alone for so
many years, as it was likely would elapse before he
came to her, being such a little child. But he
went quickly and was laid upon her breast, and in
her hand she leads him. There was a gallant boy
who fell far away upon a burning sand, beneath a
burning sun, and said, tell them at home, with my
last love, how much I could have wished to kiss
them once, But that I died, contented and have done
my duty. Or there was another over whom they read
the words therefore we commit his body to the deep,
and so consigned him to the lonely ocean and sailed on.
Or there was another who lay down to his rest
in the dark shadow of great forests, and on earth
awoke no more. Oh shall they not from sand and
sea and forest be brought home at such a time.
There was a dear girl, almost a woman never to
be one, who made a morning Christmas in a house
of joy, and went her trackless way to the silent city.
Do we recollect her, worn out faintly whispering what could
not be heard, and falling into that last sleep for weariness.
Oh look upon her now, Oh look upon her beauty,
her serenity, her changeless youth, her happiness. The daughter of
Jyris was recalled to life to die, but she more
blest has heard the same voice saying unto her, a
rise forever. We had a friend who was our friend
from early days, with whom we often pictured the changes
that were to come upon our lives, and merrily imagined
how we would speak and walk and think and talk
when we came to be old. His destined habitation in
the City of the Dead received him in his prime.
Shall he be shut out from our Christmas remembrance? Would
his love have excluded us? Lost friend, lost child, lost parents, sister, brother, husband, wife.
We will not so discard you. We shall hold your
cherished places in our Christmas hearts and by our Christmas fires,
and in the season of immortal hope, and on the
birthday of a mortal mercy, we will shut out nothing.
The winter sun goes down over town and village on
the sea, it makes a rosy path, as if the
sacred tread were fresh upon the water. A few more
moments in its sinks, and night comes on, and lights
begin to sparkle in the prospect on the hill side,
beyond the shapelessly diffused town, and in the quiet keeping
of the trees that gird the village. Steeple remembrances are
cut in stone, planted in common flowers, growing in grass,
entwined with lowly brambles, around many a mound of earth.
In town and village. There are doors and windows closed
against the weather. There are flaming logs heaped high. There
are joyful faces, There is healthy music of voices. Be
all ungentleness and harm excluded from the temples of the
household gods. But be those remembrances admitted with tender encouragement.
They are of the time and all its comforting and
peaceful reassurances, and of the history that reunited even upon
earth the living and the dead, And of the broad
beneficence and goodness that too many men have tried to
tear to narrow shreds. What Christmas is as we grow older?
By Charles Dickens