At midnight on the 31st of
December bells ring out around the world to welcome the New Year.
Although certain countries calculate time by other calendars, most
countries in the world now number their year according to the
Gregorian calendar introduced in the 16th century by Pope
George x111.
Bell ringing is one way of celebrating
the arrival of the New Year, which is common to many countries
nowadays; but there are differences in their celebrations and customs,
which are interesting.
In Europe traditions are considerably
different, but most of them involve a meal or special food. Swiss
housewives bake special bread rich in butter, eggs and raisins. They
also cook roast goose. Children go from house to house greeting the
occupants and receiving invitations to come inside. There is a
practical reason for meals featuring in these New Year festivities.
Most people stay up all night of at least until midnight to “see the
New year in”, so food is essential. Also there is a common belief
that if the New Year begins well it will continue like that. So great
efforts are made to provide an atmosphere of goodwill and plenty.
In Spain it is a custom to eat 12
grapes at midnight and toast the New Year in champagne at family
gathering.
Groups of friends visit restaurants in
Turkey intending to spend the night in celebrations, which include
present giving.
Some people in Greece play cards,
hoping that a win will bring them luck for the whole year.
We
Wish You a Merry Christmas
an Old
English Carol
We wish you a Merry
Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
And a Happy New Year!
Good tidings to you and
all of your kin;
Good tidings for Christmas, and a Happy New Year!
We wish you a Merry
Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
We wish you a Merry Christmas,
And a Happy New Year!
Good tidings to you
wherever you are;
Good tidings for Christmas, and a Happy New Year!
Jingle
Bells
by James Pierpont, 1857
Dashing through the
snow, in a one-horse open sleigh,
Over the fields we go, laughing all the way (ha-ha-ha)
Bells on bob-tail ring, making spirits bright!
Oh, what fun it is to ride and sing a sleighing song tonight.
Oh! Jingle bells,
jingle bells, jingle all the way!
Oh, what fun it is to ride, in a one-horse open sleigh-ay!
A day or two ago, I
thought I'd take a ride,
And soon Miss Fanny Bright Was seated by my side.
The horse was lean and lank, misfortune seemed his lot,
He got into a drifted bank, and then we got upsot.
Oh! Jingle Bells,
Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way!
Oh, what fun it is to ride, in a one-horse open sleigh-ay!
Oh! Jingle Bells,
Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way!
Oh, what fun it is to ride, in a one-horse open sleigh-ay!
Santa
Claus is Coming to Town
by Haven
Gillespie and J. Fred Coots
You'd better watch out,
you'd better not cry,
You'd better not pout, I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town!
He's making a list and
checking it twice,
Gonna find out who's naughty and nice,
Santa Claus is coming to town!
He sees you when you're
sleeping,
He knows when you're awake,
He knows if you've been bad or good,
So be good for goodness' sake!
Oh! You'd better watch
out, you'd better not cry,
You'd better not pout, I'm telling you why,
Santa Claus is coming to town!
White
Christmas
by Irving
Berlin, 1942
I'm dreaming of a white
Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know.
Where the treetops glisten,
and children listen,
To hear sleigh bells in the snow.
I'm dreaming of a white
Christmas,
With every Christmas card I write.
May your days be merry and bright,
And may all your Christmases be white.
I'm dreaming of a white
Christmas,
With every Christmas card I write.
May your days be merry and bright,
And may all your Christmases be white
The
Gift Of The Magi
by O. Henry
One dollar and
eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in
pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer
and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with
the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied.
Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And
the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly
nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So
Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made
up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of
the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second,
take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not
exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the
lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below
was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button
from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining
thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham
Young."
The
"Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former
period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week.
Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking
seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever
Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was
called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham
Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry
and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the
window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a
gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87
with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she
could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go
far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always
are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour
she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and
rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of
the honor of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass
between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-glass in
an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his
reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly
accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered
the art.
Suddenly she whirled
from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining
brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds.
Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two
possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a
mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and
his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba
lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair
hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's
jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his
treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his
watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from
envy.
So now Della's
beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of
brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a
garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly.
Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two
splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown
jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the
brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and
down the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the
sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One
flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large,
too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."
"Will you buy my
hair?" asked Della.
"I buy hair,"
said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the
looks of it."
Down rippled the brown
cascade.
"Twenty
dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
"Give it to me
quick," said Della.
Oh, and the next two
hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was
ransacking the stores for Jim's present.
She found it at last.
It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other
like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside
out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly
proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious
ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The
Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was
like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both.
Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home
with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly
anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he
sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap
that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home
her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out
her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the
ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous
task, dear friends--a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes
her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look
wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in
the mirror long, carefully, and critically.
"If Jim doesn't
kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second
look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what
could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven
cents?"
At 7 o'clock the coffee
was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready
to cook the chops.
Jim was never late.
Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the
table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on
the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just
a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the
simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God,
make him think I am still pretty."
The door opened and Jim
stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor
fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He
needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
Jim stopped inside the
door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were
fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could
not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor
disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been
prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar
expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the
table and went for him.
"Jim,
darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my
hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas
without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind,
will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry
Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what
a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."
"You've cut off
your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at
that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and
sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well,
anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"
Jim looked about the
room curiously.
"You say your hair
is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.
"You needn't look
for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone,
too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you.
Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with
sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love
for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim
seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us
regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other
direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the
difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer.
The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This
dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from
his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don't make any
mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's
anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could
make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you
may see why you had me going a while at first."
White fingers and
nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of
joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and
wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting
powers of the lord of the flat.
For there lay The
Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long
in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with
jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair.
They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved
and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now,
they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted
adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to
her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a
smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And them Della leaped
up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen
his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open
palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her
bright and ardent spirit.
"Isn't it a dandy,
Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the
time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how
it looks on it."
Instead of obeying, Jim
tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head
and smiled.
"Dell," said
he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while.
They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the
money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know,
were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in
the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being
wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the
privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely
related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a
flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest
treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days
let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O
all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere
they are wisest.
They are the magi.
