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Christmas
Christmas

"The Freemason Weekly Newspapter", December 1877eemason Weekly Newspapter", December 1877
"The Fr

Christmas is here once again before us and greets and reasonable gaieties of Christmas, there comes
us smiling on the way. Much as we like this festive as a ever needful warning, lest we misuse instead of
season, much as we admire its carols and reverence profi ting by the goodly blessings of T.G.A.O.T.U.,
its memories, Christmas comes to us with mingled and least we also forget the solemn lesson that each
feelings of rejoicing and melancholy, of pleasure and returning Christmas brings in its silvery and pleasant
pain, of gaiety and depression. It is impossible amid voice to us all alike old and young, high and low, rich
the cheerful wishes and gladdening associations of and poor, educated and uneducated.
Christmastide not to feel how we are ourselves all
carried back, whether we will or not, to many a past First of all, let us be on our guard against turning our
Christmas, to scenes and epochs in our own little life, needful and benefi cial holiday into a scene of unwise
which are still full to us all of deep pathos and of and nu-sanctifi ed revelry. Too many make Christmas
abiding souvenirs. still only an excuse for unrestrained indulgence and idle
extravagance! The world has so taken possession of
For do what we will, say what we may, the present Christmas, that its hymns of rejoicing and its echoes of
does recall the past, and if the refl ection of all past peace, are sometimes drowned in the din of tumultuous
time! As someone has said, is melancholy, it will yet uproar, in the chants of human Bacchanalia.
supervene alike amid the chants of rejoicing and the
gathering of the world. The memories of Christmas are forgotten altogether,
put on one side, laid by entirely, and we give a clear
Yes, there seems always to be a ghost of the past, earthy gloss to all of higher teaching or more severe
reminding us of other days and other scenes and contemplation. And then also we forget the past in the
telling us how time is fl eeting and hopes are vain, present. That present is all for us. It colors our waking
how all that is of earth is ephemeral, and how all the dreams, controls our hourly striving, it is the be-all and
fl owers and decorations of fancy, the pleasures and do-all of our whole moral being, until at last absorbed
pains of existence, the glittering gewgaws and the in gaiety, and given up to dissipation, we become
fantastic tinsel of life, the very living beings of our wholly material, entirely sensuous, and forget all that
little home circle, all fade by degrees and end in dust - is spiritual; ignore all that is heavenly teaching and
yes in dust! And do not let any of think that ours is too development.
lugubrious a deliverance, too much a sermon, too little
of a Masonic leader, especially at this genial season. The past has no longer a memory or a message for
us; it is often in fact as if it had never been. Now it is
We hold, and hold strongly, that of all the nuisances against this two-fold mistake, that Christmas always
which bore us, and bedevil us at the present hour, seems to protest, as the world runs on its way, as
is that array of foolish persons, of whom "Motley's generation follows generation to the grave, as we
the Only Wear", who are on the lookout always for ourselves grow old and weary in the race, and as the
insipid jokes and bad puns, whose acclimatization are river of time passes slowly on, emptying itself year by
unceasing, and whose faces are always extended in a year into the great ocean of eternity.
broad grin.
If it be the best of philosophies, not to be too
We want to be serious every now and then, depend melancholy or too morbid, not to take too downcast a
upon it, and never more than at this Christmas season, view of life and the world, not to "cry over split milk,"
when mirth may degenerate into leniency, relaxation not to deplore the irresistible and the inevitable, surely
into extravagance, and amusement into excess. We also it is the highest wisdom, not to allow the present
always need the sobering voice and the restraining to make us forget the past or the future, so as to render
hand. Such is the composition of mortality, feeble us citizens of time alone, when we are heirs of eternity,
and fallen, that what was intended for its enjoyment to constitute us simply children of the "plain," when
becomes an abuse, what was given in it for a blessing we really belong to that "better country," which lies
ends in its bane. So too, amid all the licensed liberty amid the "everlasting hills."

Page 38 Montana Freemason November December 2018