day when at Christmas-time our hand is liberal, and we think it
wrong that the poorest wretch should fail to feel the pleasure of
the day.

Of course Christianity inspired the freedom of the Saturnalia with a
higher meaning. The mystery of the Incarnation, or the deification
of human nature, put an end to slavery through all the year, as well
as on this single day. What had been a kind of aimless licence
became the most ennobling principle by which men are exalted to a
state of self-respect and mutual reverence. Still in the Saturnalia
was found, ready-made, an easy symbol of unselfish enjoyment. It is,
however, dangerous to push speculations of this kind to the very
verge of possibility.

The early Roman Christians probably kept Christmas with no special
ceremonies. Christ was as yet too close to them. He had not become
the glorious creature of their fancy, but was partly an historic
being, partly confused in their imagination with reminiscences of
Pagan deities. As the Good Shepherd, and as Orpheus, we find him
painted in the Catacombs; and those who thought of him as God, loved
to dwell upon his risen greatness more than on the idyll of his
birth. To them his entry upon earth seemed less a subject of
rejoicing than his opening of the heavens; they suffered, and looked
forward to a future happiness; they would not seem to make this
world permanent by sharing its gladness with the Heathens. Theirs,
in truth, was a religion of hope and patience, not of triumphant
recollection or of present joyfulness.

The Northern converts of the early Church added more to the peculiar
character of our Christmas. Who can tell what Pagan rites were half
sanctified by their association with that season, or how much of our
cheerfulness belonged to Heathen orgies and the banquets of grim
warlike gods? Certainly nothing strikes one more in reading
Scandinavian poetry, than the strange mixture of Pagan and Christian
sentiments which it presents. For though the missionaries of the
Church did all they could to wean away the minds of men from their
old superstitions; yet, wiser than their modern followers, they saw
that some things might remain untouched, and that even the great
outlines of the Christian faith might be adapted to the habits of
the people whom they studied to convert. Thus, on the one hand, they
destroyed the old temples one by one, and called the idols by the
name of devils, and strove to obliterate the songs which sang gre