belong to Christmas.

It takes time and effort and unselfish expenditure of strength to make
gifts in this way. But it is the only way that fits the season.

The finest Christmas gift is not the one that costs the most money,
but the one that carries the most love.


II

But how seldom Christmas comes--only once a year; and how soon it is
over--a night and a day! If that is the whole of it, it seems not
much more durable than the little toys that one buys of a fakir on the
street-corner. They run for an hour, and then the spring breaks, and
the legs come off, and nothing remains but a contribution to the dust
heap.

But surely that need not and ought not to be the whole of
Christmas--only a single day of generosity, ransomed from the dull
servitude of a selfish year,--only a single night of merry-making,
celebrated in the slave-quarters of a selfish race! If every gift
is the token of a personal thought, a friendly feeling, an unselfish
interest in the joy of others, then the thought, the feeling, the
interest, may remain after the gift is made.

The little present, or the rare and long-wished-for gift (it matters
not whether the vessel be of gold, or silver, or iron, or wood, or
clay, or just a small bit of birch bark folded into a cup), may carry
a message something like this: