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Somewhere in the west country of England Comus had an uncle who lived in a rose-smothered rectory and taught a wholesome gentle- hearted creed that expressed itself in the spirit of "Little lamb, who made thee?" and faithfully reflected the beautiful homely Christ-child sentiment of Saxon Europe.
That was what, in my time, the mothers used to say on the eve of Epiphany and, zòu! all the children of the village would be off together to meet "les Rois Mages," who were coming with their pages and their camels and the whole of their glittering royal suite to adore the Christ-Child in our church in Maillane!
We might begin this story of Susy Parlin on a New Year's day, only it is so hard to skip over Christmas. There is such a charm about Christmas! It makes you think at once of a fir tree shining with little candles and sparkling with toys, or of a droll Santa Claus with a pack full of presents, or of a waxen angel called the Christ-child.
And the little ones held each other by the hand, kissed the roses, looked at God's bright sunshine, and spoke to it, as if the Christ-child were there. What splendid summer days those were! How beautiful it was without, among the fresh rosebushes! Kay and Gerda sat and looked at the picture book of beasts and birds.
When we consider that, even stripped of divinity, the birth of a child, its first dawning intelligence, its flower-like tenderness of aspect, are one and all motives which excite the best that is in man, there is little wonder that the Christ-child should have been and should still be the best subject that a painter could demand.
At that moment the clock struck twelve in the tower; as the last stroke died slowly away, soft singing arose in the nearest house and, spreading from house to house, ran through the whole village: A little babe, a worthy child, Was born to us today, Of Mary Virgin undefiled; We all rejoice and say: Yea, had the Christ-child ne'er been born, To lasting woe we'd all been sworn, For He is our salvation.
Eager exclamations, moments of awed silence, after which the thrilling distribution of gifts. Human life holds few things better or happier than such a Christmas morning. Whatever else the Christ-child brought to the world, that alone would make his coming a boon to mankind.
"Deeming the light that in the east was seen An earnest and a prophecy of rest To weary wanderers, such as they had been," came on that bleak December night, 1880 years ago, to pay their homage to the Christ-child the long expected Messiah the Redeemer of the world!
The stories told by mother and grandmother about Snow-White, the Sleeping Beauty, the giants and the dwarfs, Cinderella, the stable at Bethlehem where the Christ-Child lay in the manger beside the oxen and asses, the angels who appeared to the shepherds singing "Glory to God in the Highest," the three kings and the star which led them to the Christ-Child, are firmly impressed on his memory.
But the spirit Of Christmas does strange things. That very evening, while the Portier was roistering in a beer hall preparatory to the midnight mass, came the Portier's wife, puffing from the stairs, and brought a puzzle book that only the initiated could open, and when one succeeded at last there was a picture of the Christ-Child within.
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