By the way, not all things that are
divine are human. But all things that are human are divine. But to
return to Christmas.
I select at random two of the more obvious fallacies that obtain. One
is that Christmas should be observed as a time of jubilation. This is
(I admit) quite a recent idea. It never entered into the tousled heads
of the shepherds by night, when the light of the angel of the Lord
shone about them and they arose and went to do homage to the Child. It
never entered into the heads of the Three Wise Men. They did not bring
their gifts as a joke, but as an awful oblation. It never entered into
the heads of the saints and scholars, the poets and painters, of the
Middle Ages. Looking back across the years, they saw in that dark and
ungarnished manger only a shrinking woman, a brooding man, and a child
born to sorrow. The philomaths of the eighteenth century, looking
back, saw nothing at all. It is not the least of the glories of the
Victorian Era that it rediscovered Christmas. It is not the least of
the mistakes of the Victorian Era that it supposed Christmas to be a
feast.
The splendour of the saying, "I have piped unto you, and you have not
danced; I have wept with you, and you have not mourned" lies in the
fact that it might have been uttered with equal truth by any man who
had ever piped or wept.
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