第8章 ROUND ABOUT THE CHRISTMAS TREE(1)

The kindly Christmas tree, from which I trust every gentle reader has pulled out a bonbon or two, is yet all aflame whilst I am writing, and sparkles with the sweet fruits of its season.You young ladies, may you have plucked pretty giftlings from it; and out of the cracker sugar-plum which you have split with the captain or the sweet young curate may you have read one of those delicious conundrums which the confectioners introduce into the sweetmeats, and which apply to the cunning passion of love.Those riddles are to be read at your age, when I daresay they are amusing.As for Dolly, Merry, and Bell, who are standing at the tree, they don't care about the love-riddle part, but understand the sweet- almoned portion very well.They are four, five, six years old.Patience, little people! A dozen merry Christmases more, and you will be reading those wonderful love-conundrums, too.As for us elderly folks, we watch the babies at their sport, and the young people pulling at the branches: and instead of finding bonbons or sweeties in the packets which we pluck off the boughs, we find enclosed Mr Carnifex's review of the quarter's meat; Mr Sartor's compliments, and little statement for self and the young gentlemen; and Madame de Sainte- Crinoline's respects to the young ladies, who encloses her account, and will sent on Saturday, please; or we stretch our hand out to the educational branch of the Christmas tree, and there find a lively and amusing article from the Rev.Henry Holyshade, containing our dear Tommy's exceedingly moderate account for the last term's school expenses.

The tree yet sparkles, I say.I am writing on the day before Twelfth Day, if you must know; but already ever so many of the fruits have been pulled, and the Christmas lights have gone out.Bobby Miseltow, who has been staying with us for a week (and who has been sleeping mysteriously in the bath-room), comes to say he is going away to spend the rest of the holidays with his grandmother -- and I brush away the manly tear of regretas I part with the dear child."Well, Bob, good-bye, since you will go.Compliments to grandmamma.Thank her for the turkey.Here's ----" (A slight pecuniary transaction takes place at this juncture, and Bob nods and winks, and puts his hand in his waistcoat pocket.) "You have had a pleasant week?"Bob.-- "Haven't I!" (And exit, anxious to know the amount of the coin which has just changed hands.)He is gone, and as the dear boy vanishes through the door (behind which I see him perfectly), I too cast up a little account of our past Christmas week.When Bob's holidays are over, and the printer has sent me back this manuscript, I know Christmas will be an old story.All the fruit will be off the Christmas tree then; the crackers will have cracked off; the almonds will have been crunched; and the sweet-bitter riddles will have been read; the lights will have perished off the dark green boughs; the toys growing on them will have been distributed, fought for, cherished, neglected, broken.Ferdinand and Fidelia will each keep out of it (be still, my gushing heart!) the remembrance of a riddle read together, of a double almond munched together, and of the moiety of an exploded cracker....The maids, I say, will have taken down all that holly stuff and nonsense about the clocks, lamps, and looking-glasses, the dear boys will be back at school, fondly thinking of the pantomime fairies whom they have seen; whose gaudy gossamer wings are battered by this time; and whose pink cotton (or silk is it?) lower extremities are all dingy and dusty.Yet but a few days, Bob, and flakes of paint will have cracked off the fairy flower-bowers, and the revolving temples of adamantine lustre will be as shabby as the city of Pekin.When you read this, will Clown still be going on lolling his tongue out of his mouth, and saying, "How are you to-morrow?" To- morrow, indeed! He must be almost ashamed of himself (if that cheek is still capable of the blush of shame) for asking the absurd question.To-morrow, indeed! To-morrow the diffugient snows will give place to spring; the snowdrops will lift their heads; Ladyday may be expected, and the pecuniary duties peculiar to that feast; in place of bonbons, trees will have an eruption of light green knobs; the whitebait season will bloom...as if one need go on describingthese vernal phenomena, when Christmas is still here, though ending, and the subject of my discourse!

We have all admired the illustrated papers, and noted how boisterously jolly they become at Christmas time.What wassail- bowls, robin- redbreasts, waits, snow landscapes, bursts of Christmas song! And then to think that these festivities are prepared months before -- that these Christmas pieces are prophetic! How kind of artists and poets to devise the festivities beforehand, and serve them pat at the proper time! We ought to be grateful to them, as to the cook who gets up at midnight and sets the pudding a-boiling, which is to feast us at six o'clock.I often think with gratitude of the famous Mr Nelson Lee -- the author of I don't know how many hundred glorious pantomimes -- walking by the summer wave at Margate, or Brighton perhaps, revolving in his mind the idea of some new gorgeous spectacle of faery, which the winter shall see complete.He is like cook at midnight (si parva licet).He watches and thinks.He pounds the sparkling sugar of benevolence, the plums of fancy, the sweetmeats of fun, the figs of -- well, the figs of fairy fiction, let us say, and pops the whole in the seething cauldron of imagination, and at due season serves up the Pantomime.