m, and give way to sentiments
and impressions which in their more reflective moments they spurn. Most
men are ready at Christmas to put themselves into an instinctive rather
than a rational attitude, to drink of the springs of wonder, and return
in some degree to earlier, less intellectual stages of human
development--to become in fact children again.

|359| Many elements enter into the modern Christmas. There is the
delight of its warmth and brightness and comfort against the bleak
midwinter. A peculiar charm of the northern Christmas lies in the thought
of the cold barred out, the home made a warm, gay place in contrast with
the cheerless world outside. There is the physical pleasure of "good
cheer," of plentiful eating and drinking, joined to, and partly resulting
in, a sense of goodwill and expansive kindliness towards the world at
large, a temporary feeling of the brotherhood of man, a desire that the
poor may for once in the year "have a good time." Here perhaps we may
trace the influence of the _Saturnalia_, with its dreams of the age of
gold, its exaltation of them of low degree. Mixed with a little
sentimental Christianity this is the Christmas of Dickens--the Christmas
which he largely helped to perpetuate in England.

Each nation, naturally, has fashioned its own Christmas. The English have
made it a season of solid material comfort, of good-fellowship and
"charity," with a slight flavour of soothing religion. The modern French,
sceptical and pagan, make little of Christmas, and concentrate upon the
secular celebration of the _jour de l'an_. For the Scandinavians
Christmas is above all a time of sport, recreation, good living, and
social gaiety in the midst of a season when little outdoor work can be
done and night almost swallows up day. The Germans, sentimental and
childlike, have produced a Christmas that is a very Paradise for children
and at which the old delight to play at being young again around the
Tree. For the Italians Christmas is centred upon the cult of the
_Bambino_, so fitted to their dramatic instincts, their love of display,
their strong parental affection. (How much of the sentiment that
surrounds the _presepio_ is, though religiously heightened, akin to the
delight of a child in its doll!) If the Germans may be called the good,
industrious, sentimental children of Europe, making the most of simple
things, the Italians are the lively, passionate, impulsive children,
loving gay clothes and