tity, probably quite as potent in the
minds of the common people as the more spiritual ideas suggested by the
Church's feasts.

In modern England we have almost lost the festival habit, but if there is
one feast that survives among us as a universal tradition it is
Christmas. We have indeed our Bank Holidays, but they are mere days of
rest and amusement, and for the mass of the people Easter and Whitsuntide
have small religious significance--Christmas alone has the character of
sanctity which marks the true festival. The celebration of Christmas has
often little or nothing to do with orthodox dogma, yet somehow the sense
of obligation to keep the feast is very strong, and there are few English
people, however unconventional, who escape altogether the spell of
tradition in this matter.

_Christmas_--how many images the word calls up: we think of carol-singers
and holly-decked churches where people hymn in time-honoured strains the
Birth of the Divine Child; of frost and snow, and, in contrast, of warm
hearths and homes bright with light and colour, very fortresses against
the cold; of feasting and revelry, of greetings and gifts exchanged; and
lastly of vaguely superstitious customs, relics of long ago, performed
perhaps out of respect for use and wont, or merely in jest, or with a
deliberate attempt to throw ourselves back into the past, to re-enter for
a moment the mental childhood of the race. These are a few of |19| the
pictures that rise pell-mell in the minds of English folk at the mention
of Christmas; how many other scenes would come before us if we could
realize what the festival means to men of other nations. Yet even these
will suggest what hardly needs saying, that Christmas is something far
more complex than a Church holy-day alone, that the celebration of the
Birth of Jesus, deep and touching as is its appeal to those who hold the
faith of the Incarnation, is but one of many elements that have entered
into the great winter festival.

In the following pages I shall try to present a picture, sketchy and
inadequate though it must be, of what Christmas is and has been to the
peoples of Europe, and to show as far as possible the various elements
that have gone into its make-up. Most people have a vague impression that
these are largely pagan, but comparatively few have any idea of the
process by which the heathen elements have become mingled with that which
is obviously Christian, and equal obscurity prevails