What Christmas Is As We Grow Older
Time was, with most of us, when Christmas Day encircling all our limited world like a
magic ring, left nothing out for us to miss or seek; bound together all our home
enjoyments, affections, and hopes; grouped everything and every one around the
Christmas fire; and made the little picture shining in our bright young eyes, complete.
Time came, perhaps, all so soon, when our thoughts over-leaped that narrow boundary;
when there was some one (very dear, we thought then, very beautiful, and absolutely
perfect) wanting to the fulness of our happiness; when we were wanting too (or we
thought so, which did just as well) at the Christmas hearth by which that some one sat;
and when we intertwined with every wreath and garland of our life that some one's name.
That was the time for the bright visionary Christmases which have long arisen from us to
show faintly, after summer rain, in the palest edges of the rainbow! That was the time for
the beatified enjoyment of the things that were to be, and never were, and yet the things
that were so real in our resolute hope that it would be hard to say, now, what realities
achieved since, have been stronger!
What! Did that Christmas never really come when we and the priceless pearl who was
our young choice were received, after the happiest of totally impossible marriages, by the
two united families previously at daggers--drawn on our account? When brothers and
sisters-in-law who had always been rather cool to us before our relationship was effected,
perfectly doted on us, and when fathers and mothers overwhelmed us with unlimited
incomes? Was that Christmas dinner never really eaten, after which we arose, and
generously and eloquently rendered honour to our late rival, present in the company, then
and there exchanging friendship and forgiveness, and founding an attachment, not to be
surpassed in Greek or Roman story, which subsisted until death? Has that same rival long
ceased to care for that same priceless pearl, and married for money, and become
usurious? Above all, do we really know, now, that we should probably have been
miserable if we had won and worn the pearl, and that we are better without her?
That Christmas when we had recently achieved so much fame; when we had been carried
in triumph somewhere, for doing something great and good; when we had won an
honoured and ennobled name, and arrived and were received at home in a shower of tears
of joy; is it possible that THAT Christmas has not come yet?
And is our life here, at the best, so constituted that, pausing as we advance at such a
noticeable mile-stone in the track as this great birthday, we look back on the things that
never were, as naturally and full as gravely as on the things that have been and are gone,
or have been and still are? If it be so, and so it seems to be, must we come to the
conclusion that life is little better than a dream, and little worth the loves and strivings
that we crowd into it?
