e of good taste. Do not
plunge into extravagance from which you will scarcely recover except in
months of nervous strain and desperate financial struggle. On the other
hand do not be mean and niggardly in your gifts. Oh, not that; avoid
selfishness at Christmas, if at no other time. Rather no gift at all
than a grudging one. Let your offerings represent yourselves and your
affections. Indeed if they do not represent you, they are not gifts at
all. "The gift without the giver is bare."

And above all banish from your mind the principle of reciprocity. The
_lex talionis_ has no place in Christmas giving. Do not think or feel
that you must give to someone because someone gave to you. There is no
barter about it. You give because you love and without a thought of
return. Credit others with the same feeling and be governed thereby. I
know one upon whose Christmas list there are over one hundred and fifty
people, rich and poor, high and low, able and not able. That man would
be dismayed beyond measure if everyone of those people felt obliged to
make a return for the Christmas remembrances he so gladly sends them.

In giving remember after all the cardinal principle of the day. Let your
gift be an expression of your kindly remembrance, your gentle
consideration, your joyful spirit, your spontaneous gratitude, your
abiding desire for peace and goodwill toward men. Hunt up somebody who
needs and who without you may lack and suffer heart hunger, loneliness,
and disappointment.

Nor is Christmas a time for gluttonous eating and drinking. To gorge
one's self with quantities of rich and indigestible food is not the
noblest method of commemorating the day. The rules and laws of digestion
are not abrogated upon the Holy day. These are material cautions, the
day has a spiritual significance of which material manifestations are,
or ought to be, outward and visible expressions only.

Christmas is one of the great days of obligation in the Church year,
then as at Easter if at no other time, Christians should gather around
the table of the Lord, kneeling before God's altar in the ministering of
that Holy Communion which unites them with the past, the present, and
the future--the communion of the saints of God's Holy Church with His
Beloved Son. Then and thus in body, soul, and spirit we do truly
participate in the privilege and blessing of the Incarnation, then and
there we receive that strength which enables everyone of us to become
f