function, sometimes the devotion of
those who attend is shown by a tramp over miles of snow through the
darkness and the bitter wind.

In some charming memories of the Christmas of her childhood, Madame Th.
Bentzon thus describes the walk to the Midnight Mass in a French country
place about sixty years ago:-- |97|

"I can see myself as a little girl, bundled up to the tip of
my nose in furs and knitted shawls, tiny wooden shoes on my feet, a
lantern in my hand, setting out with my parents for the Midnight Mass
of Christmas Eve.... We started off, a number of us, together in a
stream of light.... Our lanterns cast great shadows on the white
road, crisp with frost. As our little group advanced it saw others on
their way, people from the farm and from the mill, who joined us, and
once on the Place de l'Eglise we found ourselves with all the
parishioners in a body. No one spoke--the icy north wind cut short
our breath; but the voice of the chimes filled the silence.... We
entered, accompanied by a gust of wind that swept into the porch at
the same time we did; and the splendours of the altar, studded with
lights, green with pine and laurel branches, dazzled us from the
threshold."{16}

In devout Tyrol, the scenes on Christmas Eve before the Midnight Mass are
often extremely impressive, particularly in narrow valleys where the
houses lie scattered on the mountain slopes. Long before midnight the
torches lighting the faithful on their way to Mass begin to twinkle;
downward they move, now hidden in pine-woods and ravines, now reappearing
on the open hill-side. More and more lights show themselves and throw
ruddy flashes on the snow, until at last, the floor of the valley
reached, they vanish, and only the church windows glow through the
darkness, while the solemn strains of the organ and chanting break the
silence of the night.{17}

Not everywhere has the great Mass been celebrated amid scenes so still
and devotional. In Madrid, says a writer of the early nineteenth century,
"the evening of the vigil is scarcely dark when numbers of men, women,
and boys are seen traversing the streets with torches, and many of them
supplied with tambourines, which they strike loudly as they move along in
a kind of Bacchanal procession. There is a tradition here that the
shepherds who visited Bethlehem on the day of the Nativity had
instruments of this sort upon which they expressed t