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Scribner's Sons; Houghton, Mifflin and Company; Little, Brown and
Company; Dodd, Mead and Company; Bobbs-Merrill Company and others, who
have granted us permission to reproduce selections from works bearing
their copyright.

PREFACE

Christmas is our most important holiday, and its literature is
correspondingly rich. Yet until now no adequate bundle of Christmas
treasures in poetry and prose has found its way into the library of
Santa Claus.

While this book brings to children of all ages, in school and at home,
the best lyrics, carols, essays, plays and stories of Christmas, its
scope is yet wider. For the Introduction gives a rapid view of the
holiday's origin and development, its relation to cognate pagan
festivals, the customs and symbols of its observance in different lands,
and the significance and spirit of the day. This Introduction endeavors
to be as suggestive as possible to parents and teachers who are
personally conducted and introduced to the host of writers learned and
quaint, human and pedantic, humorous and brilliant and profound, who
have dealt technically with this fascinating subject.

INTRODUCTION

It was the habit of him whose birthday we celebrate to take what was
good in men and remould it to higher uses. And so it is peculiarly
fitting that the anniversary of Christmas, when it was first celebrated
in the second century of our era should have taken from heathen
mythology and customs the more beautiful parts for its own use.
"Christmas," says Dean Stanley, "brings before us the relations of the
Christian religion to the religions which went before; for the birth at
Bethlehem was itself a link with the past."

The pagan nations of antiquity[A] always had a tendency to worship the
sun, under different names, as the giver of light and life. And their
festivals in its honor took place near the winter solstice, the shortest
day in the year, when the sun in December begins its upward course,
thrilling men with the first distant promise of spring. This holiday was
called _Saturnalia_ among the Romans and was marked by great merriment
and licence which extended even to the slaves. There were feasting and
gifts and the houses were hung with evergreens. A more barbarous form of
these rejoicings took place among the rude peoples of the north where
great blocks of wood blazed in honor of Odin and Thor, and sacrifices of
men and cattle were made to them. Mistletoe was cut then from the s