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Christmas In Poganuc
by
“I wish, my dear,” said Mrs. Cushing, after they were retired to their room for the night, “that to-morrow morning you would read the account of the birth of Christ in St. Matthew, and give the children some advice upon the proper way of keeping Christmas.”
“Well, but you know we don’t keep Christmas; nobody knows anything about Christmas,” said the Doctor.
“You know what I mean, my dear,” replied his wife. “You know that my mother and her family do keep Christmas. I always heard of it when I was a child; and even now, though I have been out of the way of it so long, I cannot help a sort of kindly feeling toward these ways. I am not surprised at all that the children got drawn over last night to the service. I think it’s the most natural thing in the world, and I know by experience just how attractive such things are. I shouldn’t wonder if this other church should draw very seriously on your congregation; but I don’t want it to begin by taking away our own children. Dolly is an inquisitive child; a child that thinks a good deal, and she’ll be asking all sorts of questions about the why and wherefore of what she saw last night.”
“Oh, yes, Dolly is a bright one. Dolly’s an uncommon child,” said the Doctor, who had a pardonable pride in his children–they being, in fact, the only worldly treasure that he was at all rich in.
He rose up early on the following Sabbath and proceeded to buy a sugar dog at the store of Lucius Jenks, and when Dolly came down to breakfast he called her to him and presented it, saying as he kissed her:
“Papa gives you this, not because it is Christmas, but because he loves his little Dolly.”
“But isn’t it Christmas?” asked Dolly with a puzzled air.
“No, child; nobody knows when Christ was born, and there is nothing in the Bible to tell us when to keep Christmas.”
And then in family worship the Doctor read the account of the birth of Christ and of the shepherds abiding in the fields who came at the call of the angels, and they sung the old hymn:
“While shepherds watched their flocks by night.”
“Now, children,” he said when all was over, “you must be good children and go to school. If we are going to keep any day on account of the birth of Christ, the best way to keep it is by doing all our duties on that day better than any other. Your duty is to be good children, go to school and mind your lessons.”
Tom and Bill were quite ready to fall in with their father’s view of the matter. As for Dolly, she put her little tongue advisedly to the back of her sugar dog and found that he was very sweet indeed–a most tempting little animal. She even went so far as to nibble off a bit of the green ground he stood on–yet resolved heroically not to eat him at once, but to make him last as long as possible. She wrapped him tenderly in cotton and took him to the school with her, and when her confidential friend, Bessie Lewis, displayed her Christmas gifts, Dolly had something on her side to show, though she shook her curly head and informed Bessie in strict confidence that there wasn’t any such thing as Christmas, her papa had told her so–a heresy which Bessie forthwith reported when she went home at noon.
“Poor little child–and did she say so?” asked gentle old Grandmamma Lewis. “Well, dear, you mustn’t blame her–she don’t know any better. You bring the little one in here to-night and I’ll give her a Christmas cooky. I’m sorry for such children.”
And so, after school, Dolly went in to see dear old Madam Lewis, who sat in her rocking-chair in the front parlor, where the fire was snapping behind great tall brass andirons and all the pictures were overshadowed with boughs of spruce and pine. Dolly gazed about her with awe and wonder. Over one of the pictures was suspended a cross of green with flowers of white everlasting.