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. There is in the human race some dark spirit of
recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in
which we are reasonably expected to go. At a funeral, the slightest
thing, not in the least ridiculous at any other time, will convulse
us with internal laughter. At a wedding, we hover mysteriously on the
brink of tears. So it is with the modern Christmas. I find myself in
agreement with the cynics in so far that I admit that Christmas, as
now observed, tends to create melancholy. But the reason for this
lies solely in our own misconception. Christmas is essentially a _dies
iræ_. If the cynics will only make up their minds to treat it as such,
even the saddest and most atrabilious of them will acknowledge that he
has had a rollicking day.

This brings me to the second fallacy. I refer to the belief that
"Christmas comes but once a year." Perhaps it does, according to the
calendar--a quaint and interesting compilation, but of little or no