Forest City Courier, Dec. 03, 1940
Nearly all the newspapers warn us daily now about how many shopping days till Christmas, but who pays any attention to them? I don’t. With apologies, of course, to merchants and clerks, who suffer most because most people won’t shop early, the aforementioned ones losing every vestige of patience with harassed shoppers. And you can’t blame them. But what can anyone do about it? Or perhaps I should say, what will anyone do about it? I am afraid they will do just what they have been going all the Christmases in years gone by. Today’s paper tells us that it there are exactly 19 shopping days left. If any month offers more than the others in excitement, entertainment and its capacity for keeping us busy and plan it must be December. From its entrance soon after Thanksgiving till we drag out the Christmas tree on the last day, it is one continual round of excitement, hurrying, working, baking and getting ready. And certainly we would not have it otherwise. When all is said and done, maybe it is lots more fun to be late with everything. I’m not smart enough to bake a fruit cake, but if I were, I’m sure we would be eating it warm from the oven, rather than let it ripen for weeks as most housekeepers do. Christmas Eve usually finds us wrapping up last minute gifts, and addressing cards that can’t possibly reach our friends until long after Christmas. There is something in the excitement of late preparation, last minute shopping in crowded stores, good-natured jostling at gift and toy counters, that many of us would not like to miss.
The only visible signs of the Christmas spirit at our house now are two red candles from the dime store, which I was brave enough to put up, hoping that the gesture would inspire in us a desire to be ready on time, but so far, we are ambling along at the usual rate Probably a day or two before Christmas we will get the tree up and have an evening of fun decorating it. But then on Christmas morning we will have time by the forelock, and everyone in the house will is up betimes. After gathering around the tree for the exchange and distribution and opening of gifts, the living room resemble a small section of war-torn China. From then on everything is all excitement and good time till the first of January when we come back to earth with a thump, and realize that the beginning of another new year is at hand, and we are wondering where this new beginning will lead. In our America it will tend to lead toward a thousand different hopes, ambitions and desires, and to happiness and contentment in endless pleasant homes. A different outlook from what citizens of other lands face. However, we must not lose sight of the fact that Christmas means much more than the exchange of gifts, belated preparations, bountiful dinners and Santa Claus.
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Dropping in to see a sick friend the other day, I was impressed with some details in the home that added so much to the general air of hominess, as for instance, a basket of red apples (my favorite fruit), a bowl of peanuts, and, by a sunny window, a singing canary in a cage. The bright yellow of the bird was as striking as the trilling notes coming from its throat. Certainly this contributed a large share to the cheer and enjoyment of the members of this home
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There is a square of grassy ground in. our neighborhood where children gather to play. On rainy days we miss the sound of their laughter. As I watch them at play, I think of how children in foreign lands are denied the freedom of unrestricted play, and how with their parents, thousands of them are sleeping each night wish thousands of others in bomb proof shelters, instead of being tucked in warm beds at home. The freedom of our children’s play brings to mind, a little poem by Ethel Nomig Fuller, which runs like this:
Playground
In the middle of town
There is a stray
Square of ground
Where children play.Where little running
Feet have trod.
Out every flower
And bit of sod.And yet I think
It’s gladder, lots,
Than any tended
Garden spots.
Reprinted with permission from The Daily Courier. Copyright owned by The Daily Courier.
