hall be merry, and
your new year a happy one!

Who can be insensible to the outpourings of good feeling, and the honest
interchange of affectionate attachment, which abound at this season of
the year? A Christmas family-party! We know nothing in nature more
delightful! There seems a magic in the very name of Christmas. Petty
jealousies and discords are forgotten; social feelings are awakened, in
bosoms to which they have long been strangers; father and son, or brother
and sister, who have met and passed with averted gaze, or a look of cold
recognition, for months before, proffer and return the cordial embrace,
and bury their past animosities in their present happiness. Kindly
hearts that have yearned towards each other, but have been withheld by
false notions of pride and self-dignity, are again reunited, and all is
kindness and benevolence! Would that Christmas lasted the whole year
through (as it ought), and that the prejudices and passions which deform
our better nature, were never called into action among those to whom they
should ever be strangers!

The Christmas family-party that we mean, is not a mere assemblage of
relations, got up at a week or two's notice, originating this year,
having no family precedent in the last, and not likely to be repeated in
the next. No. It is an annual gathering of all the accessible members
of the family, young or old, rich or poor; and all the children look
forward to it, for two months beforehand, in a fever of anticipation.
Formerly, it was held at grandpapa's; but grandpapa getting old, and
grandmamma getting old too, and rather infirm, they have given up
house-keeping, and domesticated themselves with uncle George; so, the
party always takes place at uncle George's house, but grandmamma sends in
most of the good things, and grandpapa always _will_ toddle down, all the
way to Newgate-market, to buy the turkey, which he engages a porter to
bring home behind him in triumph, always insisting on the man's being
rewarded with a glass of spirits, over and above his hire, to drink 'a
merry Christmas and a happy new year' to aunt George. As to grandmamma,
she is very secret and mysterious for two or three days beforehand, but
not sufficiently so, to prevent rumours getting afloat that she has
purchased a beautiful new cap with pink ribbons for each of the servants,
together with sundry books, and pen-knives, and pencil-cases, for the
younger branches; to say nothing of divers