tions of the festival, as it is celebrated in solemn, public worship, and kept by the hearts of believing Christians.
The festival is very generally remembered now in this country, though more as a social than a religious holiday, by all those who are opposed to such observances on principle. In large towns it is almost universally kept. In the villages, however, but few shops are closed, and only one or two of the half dozen places of worship are opened for service. Still, everybody recollects that it is Christmas; presents are made in all families; the children go from house to house wishing Merry Christmas; and probably few who call themselves Christians allow the day to pass without giving a thought to the sacred event it commemorates, as they wish their friends a “Merry Christmas.”
Merry Christmas! Some people have found fault with the phrase, they consider the epithet of merry as ill-judged, when applied to this great holiday; but that is a notion that can only arise from a false conception of its meaning; to quarrel with it, they must suppose it to convey the idea of disorder, and riot, and folly. It is, however, in fact, a good Saxon adjective, used by some of the oldest and best writers in the language, as a synonyme for sweet, pleasant, cheerful, gladsome; Chaucer and others apply it in this sense. Hundreds of years ago our English forefathers talked affectionately of their native land as “merrie Englande,” and we cannot suppose that they intended to give the idea of a country of confusion and riot, but claimed for their island-home a cheerful character. Again, the poets sung the “merrie month of May,” a delightful, joyous season, assuredly; but who shall dare to see disorder and folly in the harmony and sweetness of that beautiful period of the year?
