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Then the uncle who spends his life in making the most villainous puns you ever heard. Not a remark, not a word in any assembly, which this witty specimen of humanity does not at once garnish with a pun of the poorest description. It generally has to be repeated twice, too, for it is never noticed the first time. The poor pun, indeed, has a most melancholy existence, for it is greeted with no other applause than that emanating from the author of its being, and stirs up a torrent of abuse from the maiden aunt, who thinks the laughter is directed at her.

Why were punsters ever invented, or family parties either? They are our thorns in the flesh, I suppose, and so must be endured.

After dancing attendance upon these lively old people during the day, the least you expect is a good night’s rest to support and invigorate you for the battles on the following day. But no, at Christmas time any repose is denied you.

You are just off to sleep, forgetful of all troubles and strife, when you are rudely awakened and brought back to the present by the most awful screechings under your window. Morpheus flies, he has a musical ear has that god, and when once, “Oh, come let us adore him,” with a concertina accompaniment, both voices and instrument woefully out of tune; when once these harmonious strains have started, that good old deity goes, to return no more that night.

Where does the pleasure come in, I wonder? Certainly not to us fuming inside; and surely not to those poor deluded people squalling outside! It must be so cold, so raw; and they never get appreciated, these so-called “waits”–oh, if they only would not wait, but go away somewhere else, how much more satisfactory for us all!

No, Christmas is not a soothing time. It does not altogether improve your temper. How glad I am when the festive season draws to a close, and the last petitioner for Christmas-boxes goes on his way rejoicing. To me it always realizes that period so often referred to by the lower classes, “a month o’ Sundays.” So much church and so few posts!

It certainly is a little more interesting when the presents come in. There is a kind of excitement about them; and it is not until the following day, when you find yourself with a dozen letters of gratitude to indite, that you feel that perhaps, after all, you might have done without them.

There is nothing so annoying as being obliged to write letters when you do not feel inclined. It is a great art, this letter writing, and very few possess it. People often think they do, and they write for writing’s sake; but these letters are most wearying to read. Between every line you seem to see the words, “Is not this a charming letter?” and in reality you are so bored it is all you can do to reach the end. Then those dreadful persons who “cross and recross” their epistles in every direction! Paper is not so dear but that they could at least afford a fly-leaf. They defeat their own ends, too, for their letters are never legible, and they have to write again to explain their meaning, thus paying another penny away in postage.

Why do we not make a stand against the old forms? Why should we always tread in the footmarks of our ancestors, instead of making tracks of our own? “Dear Mr. So-and-So,” we write to a man almost a stranger to us. Imagine his surprise if we addressed him so to his face! And we end in just such a foolish and unreasonable way, “Yours obediently, faithfully, truly!” Where is the sense? Your signature should be quite enough. You have to be so careful, too, in saying whether you are obedient, faithful, or affectionate to your correspondent. If you end too warmly, by mistake, the whole letter has to be written again. It is not a thing you can scratch out or correct. It would look so very bad.

People have different ideas of “Christmasing.” Some prefer to adopt an unsteady gait, and to spend the night in a ditch or a police-station; some have a taste for family parties; some like it better by themselves, and some go right away and spend the time at a different place every year. These last are, I think, by far the most sensible. It is a mistake to have land-marks to remind you how time is running on, how friends have left, how the loved ones have passed away. The vacant place appears even more empty. The old happy times show out even happier in contrast to the present. You cannot enjoy yourself or forget the past, for

“A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier things.”

It is far better to go away somewhere to places which recall no sorrows or recollections and have no associations with the years gone by.

He is growing such a foolish old man is Father Christmas. He rarely visits us now with hoary head, his garments sparkling with frost and snow. He is tired of all that. He likes a change of fashion, like everybody else. He either comes so thickly enveloped in yellow fog that you can scarcely distinguish the old man, or else he arrives so drenched with rain and splashed up to the beard in mud that we scarcely like to open our doors to him.

He is growing old, I suppose, and trembling on the brink of second childhood, so we must not blame him. But still he is not a very great favorite of mine, and I cannot refrain from echoing the complaint in one of the comic papers–“Why doesn’t he strike, like the rest?“