So what is Christmas? And what for centuries has it been to differing
but always identical mortals?

It was once the old pagan festival of dead Nature. It was once the old
pagan festival of the reappearing sun. It was the pagan festival when
the hands of labor took their rest and hunger took its fill. It was
the pagan festival to honor the descent of the fabled inhabitants of
an upper world upon the earth, their commerce with common flesh, and
the production of a race of divine-and-human half-breeds. It is now
the festival of the Immortal Child appearing in the midst of mortal
children. It is now the new festival of man's remembrance of his
errors and his charity toward erring neighbors. It has latterly become
the widening festival of universal brotherhood with succor for all
need and nighness to all suffering; of good will warring against ill
will and of peace warring upon war.

And thus for all who have anywhere come to know it, Christmas is the
festival of the better worldly self. But better than worldliness, it
is on the Shield to-day what it essentially has been through many an
age to many people--the symbolic Earth Festival of the Evergreen;
setting forth man's pathetic love of youth--of his own youth that will
not stay with him; and renewing his faith in a destiny that winds its
ancient way upward out of dark and damp toward Eternal Light.

This is a story of the Earth Festival on the Earth Shield.



I. THE MAN AND THE SECRET