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HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND MERRY NEW YEAR

With the advent of each Christmas a new spirit seems to steal over the community, a spirit of cheerfulness and goodwill. Minor employees of hotels, restaurants, and the like smile at our approach. Our relatives in the country write us long, newsy letters and speculate round the fireside on how much we are good for. Our friends greet us with a merry "Well, Christmas will soon be here!", registering the while a mental vow that, until they know what sort of a present we are going to give them, they are going to be pretty careful.

Everywhere you see it, this genial, Dickensy, peace-and-goodwill spirit.

In these circumstances, it behoves us to be prepared. It is useless to imagine, as every one has done in his more optimistic moments, that people will accept regrets and stories of parcels gone wrong in the post. You worked that, if you remember, in 1925, and it is not a thing that goes well twice.

No, presents must be bought, and the only thing is to try to get off as lightly as possible.

The first rule in buying Christmas presents is to select something shiny. If the chosen object is of leather, the leather must look as if it had been well greased; if of silver, it must gleam with the light that never was on sea or land. This is because the wariest person will often mistake shininess for expensiveness. A shiny pocket-book will often get by where a duller gift of twice its value would have been received with sneers.

Books are very popular for this reason. There are very few things which can look so shiny as a Collected Works of Longfellow, Tennyson, or Wordsworth. Longfellow particularly. I have seen a common house-fly alight on the back of a Christmas Longfellow and slide the whole length of the volume, eventually shooting off with extraordinary velocity and stunning itself against the wall. For this reason a Collected Works will always be a welcome gift. They can be left about the drawing-room in lieu of fly-paper.

They may also be used as mirrors.

Intelligence should be the sheet anchor of the Christmas-present buyer. This and a consideration for others. He should always bear in mind the fact that the recipient will be wanting to pass it on later to somebody as a wedding present. Much misery has been caused in a great number of homes by a want of thought in this matter.

I, myself, am not blameless. I recollect giving as a Christmas present to a friend a rather repellent claret-jug which had been given to me on my birthday by my aunt Charlotte, and which, unknown to me, bore the inscription "With fondest love from C. B. H.". Naturally, this friend gave it to another friend as a wedding present, and the discovery of it among the gifts and the bridegroom's total inability to explain who the fondly-loving C. B. H. was gave the bride an advantage from which he never recovered, and it was only when, a year later, the courts separated the happy pair that he found himself once more in possession of a latchkey.

How different a present was that Smoker's Ideal Comrade which I received on Christmas Day, 1922. It was given me by one of my uncles, and it had everything, including a brass cigar-cutter, which makes smoking distasteful to the right-thinking man. I hesisate, for I am not quite sure of my facts, to make such an accusation, but I rather think the thing included a velvet smoking-cap.

I gave it away in the autumn of 1923 to an old school friend as a wedding present, and thought no more of it. What was my surprise, on Christmas morning, 1924, to receive it back from a distant cousin. I gave it away once again, Christmas, 1925, only to unpack it in my home on the twenty-fourth of December, 1930-this time as the gift of the very uncle who had first given it to me in 1922. The thing had completed full circle, and looked as good as new, though it contained no smoking-cap. It may be that it never had contained a smoking-cap, or possibly the passage of time had wrought more heavily on the velvet than on the brass.

I confess to a not unmanly wave of sentiment when I beheld it once more and thought of all the good men whom it had enabled to give a handsome Christmas present without expense. In a month from now it will be starting out on its travels again, but on a different route, for 1 am sending it to a friend in Australia, whither, I feel sure, it has never yet penetrated.

In this instance we have watched the career of a Christmas present from start to-I hope-finish. But this is but one of millions. The question of what becomes of Christmas presents must still continue to vex thinking men. Every year a tidal wave of incredibly useless matter bursts upon the country, yet somehow or other it is disposed of long before the first mosquito steps from the West Indian pier into the crate of bananas which is to take it to the Old Country. A proportion of this, no doubt, is kept working after the manner of my Smoker's Ideal Comrade: but the vast majority of Christmas presents simply disappear. My own theory is that they are sold back to the shops, whence they emerge next year in another incarnation.

It is probably true, as I have heard said, that every large London shop retains a special staff of skilled workmen whose duty it is to transform old Christmas presents into new Christmas presents of a different nature. They receive the combined pocket-book, cigar-case, and handy manicure set and with a few deft touches transform it into Milady's vanity-case. They take the slightly soiled Longfellow and give it a new coat of varnish. The too bright scarf of yesteryear becomes a sweater for the Pekingese.

If I had only known in time of the existence of these men, I could, no doubt, for a small consideration, have got them to make over my aunt's claret-jug into a pair of slippers or a presentation set of the works of Robert Browning.

For that they do exist, I am now convinced. On no other theory is the total disappearance of last year's Christmas presents to be explained. Matter cannot be destroyed. It can only be transformed.

The burden of Christmas-present giving has of late years been sadly increased by the growing sophistication of the modern child. In the brave old days it was possible to give a child almost anything, and to receive in return a very warm gratitude. I can still recall thanking with genuine sincerity a relative whose annual Christmas gift to me consisted of an orange.

In fact, the thought of what the average child expects from you nowadays at Christmas is so saddening that I hurry to skip a week and get into the new year.

It was when I took down my Encyclopedia Britannica in order to obtain material for a few thoughtful pages on New Year's Day and its customs that I noticed, not for the first time, a very annoying habit of that great work of reference. I allude to its habit of leaving off just at the point where it has got the reader all agog and excited.

Take, for example, its description of New Year's Day in medieval England.

In those times, it says, it was the practice for the King to "extort gifts from his subjects", adding that in the year 1533 Henry the Eighth collected many thousands of pounds in this manner-being laid a stymie in only one instance, when Bishop Latimer, a man with a good business head, handed him in lieu of cash a copy of the Old Testament with the leaf turned down at Hebrews xm. 4.

So far, so good. Most interesting. But then, having mentioned that on another occasion the bluff monarch got into the ribs of Cardinal Wolsey to the tune of one hundred and seventeen pounds, seventeen shillings and sixpence, it signs off without a word of explanation, leaving the reader completely mystified. Why one-one-seventeen, seventeen and six? Why the seventeen bob? Why the sixpence?

I have heard two theories advanced. The first, that the King met the Cardinal in a dark alley on his way back from the bank and stood him on his head and lifted the contents of his pockets, does not satisfy me. If Cardinal Wolsey drew a cheque to Self, it would have been for some less eccentric figure, and, knowing that it was New Year's Day and Henry was about, he would certainly not have gone to the bank without an armed escort. It is far more likely that the money changed hands at the conclusion of a merry party in the small hours of the morning. The waiter came round with the bill, and King Henry, after the usual unconvincing fumbling, told him to take it on to the clerical gentleman in the paper cap.

This would explain everything. The bill came to exactly a hundred and seventeen pounds, fifteen shillings. Two bob for the waiter and sixpence for the hat-check girl, and there you are. One can always reason these things out if one tries, but my point is that the Encyclopedia Brilannica ought not to throw the burden of the brainwork on its readers. Making these silly mysteries is mere verbal horseplay, unworthy of its great reputation.

Another result of consulting the Encyclopedia is that my opinion of the ancient Persians has been considerably lowered. I had always looked on them as a sober, responsible people, by no means the kind you would suspect of a distorted sense of humour. And yet, we read, it was their custom to go round on New Year's morning making presents of eggs to their friends-the one day when one simply can't look at an egg. I shall never feel quite the same about the ancient Persians again.

How much more fitting was the attitude of the early Christians. Christians, in the early days of the Church, were, we are told, "expected to spend New Year's Day in quiet meditation ". It is a custom which after nearly two thousand years still persists. Visit any of your friends on the morning of January the First, if you are in a condition to do so, and see for yourself. The odds are a hundred to one that you will find him in bed with a vinegar-soaked bandage round his head and the bromo-seltzer bottle by his side, quietly meditating.

Oddly enough, there has always been a great deal of confusion in the public mind as to when exactly New Year's Day really is. What reason have we to suppose that the year begins on January the First? One only, that the ancient Romans said it did. Yes, but what ancient Romans? Probably Horace or somebody at a moment when he was well into his second bottle of Falernian. One can picture the scene . . .

HORACE. Well, boys, Happy New Year, boys.

LUCULLUS (looking up from the grape which he is cracking with the nutcrackers). How do you mean, Happy New Year?

HORACE. It's New Year's Day to-morrow. We celebrate it with masquerades, the making of sacrifices to Janus, and feasting. Yessir!

MAECENAS. Feasting?

HORACE. Feasting was what I said.

MAECENAS (thoughtfully). I believe he's right.

LUCULLUS. I'm sure he's right. Happy New Year.

MAECENAS. Happy New Year.

HORACE. Happy New Year.

VIRGIL. All the same, I could have sworn it came at the time of the autumnal equinox, on September the twenty-first.

That was because Virgil had been brought up in the school of thought of the ancient Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Persians. In Egypt, Phoenicia and Persia the sale of squeakers and rattles and paper caps was brisk all through September, culminating on the twenty-first. The medieval Christians, on the other hand, held their celebrations on the twenty-fifth of March. The Greeks were broad-minded. Some of them thought New Year's Day came on December the twenty-first, while others voted for the twenty-first of June. This was good for the restaurateurs, who could count on two big nights in the year, but confusing for the Income Tax authorities, who never knew when to send in their demands.

One can readily see that this sort of conflict of ideas is not only bewildering but decidedly inconvenient. It makes it difficult for a conscientious man to do the right thing. He starts out simply and straightforwardly enough by taking a reserved table for the last night in December, prepared to dance on it should the occasion arise, and there, one would suppose, the matter would rest.

But mark the sequel. As March approaches, doubts begin to assail him. "Was I right?" he begins to ask himself. "Those medieval Christians were shrewd fellows. Who knows whether they may not have had the correct idea?" The only way he can square his conscience is by going out and lowering himself to the level of the beasts of the field on the night of March the twenty-fourth. And scarcely has the doctor left his bedside next morning with the statement that all he needs is a diet of arrow-root for a week or two, when he starts to brood on the fact that the ancient Phoenicians, who were no fools, were convinced that September the twenty-first was New Year's Day.

By this time he is so uncertain that he feels the only safe course is to hunt up all the data and celebrate every New Year that any nation or collection of people ever invented, with the result that he has only just time to get discharged from the nursing-home by December the thirty-first, the now fashionable date, and join his unthinking friends in their revels. Many a young man, in the springtime of life, has developed cyrrhosis of the liver simply through reading the New Year article in the Encyclopedia. My own perusal of it has left me with grave doubts, and I had better be closely watched on the eve of June the twenty-first, as I am beginning to come round to the Greek view.

I have little more to add. If any word of mine enables my readers to approach New Year's Eve in a more thoughtful frame of mind, I shall be amply repaid. If, when throwing celluloid balls at some perfect stranger while endeavouring to sing Auld Lang Syne, you pause for a moment to say to yourself "Even so did the ancient Egyptians do!" or "I bet Henry the Eighth was a whale at this sort of thing!" and, as you break the last remains of the crockery and glassware, you feel a passing pang for the days that are no more, my labours will not have been in vain. I thank you.