On
the Second Day of Christmas, some thoughts on Christmas from G. K. Chesterton
(1874-1936):
No other birth of a god or childhood of a sage
seems to us to be Christmas or anything like Christmas. It is either too cold
or too frivolous, or too formal and classical, or too simple and savage, or too
occult and complicated. Not one of us, whatever his opinions, would ever go to
such a scene with the sense that he was going home. He might admire it because
it was poetical, or because it was philosophical, or any number of other things
in separation; but not because it was itself. The truth is that there is a
quite peculiar and individual character about the hold of this story on human
nature; it is not in its psychological substance at all like a mere legend or
the life of a great man. . . . It does not exactly work outwards,
adventurously, to the wonders to be found at the ends of the earth. It is
rather something that surprises us from behind, from the hidden and personal
part of our being. . . . It is rather as if a man had found an inner room in the
very heart of his own house, which he had never suspected; and seen a light
from within. It is as if he found something at the back of his own heart that
betrayed him into goodness.
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