These days, it may be by way of radio or by the voices of the children, Christmas carols come into these old rooms, to be an exquisite part of the season—to be one with the fragrance of the Christmas bakings, to belong with the hushed snow-spread fields, with December sun and moon, and the distant sparkling stars, and all its mystery and charm. And we find we turn again to read precious tales of the long, long ago. We read-through do we not know the story by heart? “And it came to pass in those days…” to find again that Bethlehem road.

We take down too from its shelf, for this is the season, Dicken’s Christmas Stories—an ancient volume, cover faded, leaves yellowed, print quaint, to enjoy again the deep understanding of humans, the engaging humour caught in pages: A Christmas Carol with the characters as bright and likable, or as mean and unlikable as ever the author intended them to be.

There is too the story of “A Christmas Tree”, not so well known possibly as the former, but to us most enjoyable, inspired it would seem by the sight of children seated about their tree. It brings back to the author memorie[sic] of his young Christmas-tides. The toys, the gift-books… everything in those reflections which carry him back across the years.

…” But hark! The waits are playing”, he recalls “and they break my childish sleep. What images do I associate with the Christmas music, as I see them set forth on the Christmas Tree? Known before all the others, keeping far apart from all the others, they gather round my little bed. An angel speaking to a group of shepherds in a field; some travelers with eyes uplifted fllowing[sic] a Star: a Baby in a manager; a Child in a spacious temple, talking with grave men; a figured with a mild, beautiful face raising a dead girl by the hand. Still, on the lower and maturer branches of the Tree, Christmas associations cluster thick. School-books shut up; Ovid and Viril[sic] silenced; the Rule of Three, long disposed of…If I no more come home at Christmas time, there will be boys and girls (thank Heaven!) while the world lasts; and they do! Yonder they dance, and play upon the branches of my Tree God bless them, merrily, and my heart dances and plays too!”

“And I DO come home at Christmas. We all do, or we all should. We all come home, or ought to come home, for a short holiday- the longer the better – from the great boarding-school, where we are forever working at our arithmetic slates, to take and give a rest.”

Christmas gives so much delight to all. Not alone to the children, whose special season it is supposed to be, but also to those older-grown, who seeing their joy and happiness, again re-lived as did Charles Dickens in his immortal Christmas stories, their own of the years bygone  

                                                                              –  Ellen’s Diary, December 13, 1958

Source: Islandnewspapers.ca