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Then plum-pudding! What a word is that! how plump and plump again! How
round and repeated and plenipotential! (There are two p’s, observe, in
plenipotential; and so there are in plum-pudding. We love an exquisite
fitness,–a might and wealth of adaptation). Why, the whole round cheek
of universal childhood is in the idea of plum-pudding; ay, and the
weight of manhood, and the plenitude of the majesty of city dames.
Wealth itself is symbolized by the least of its fruity particles. “A
plum” is a city fortune,–a million of money. He (the old boy, who has
earned it)–

“Puts in his thumb,

videlicet, into his pocket,

And pulls out a plum,
And says, What a good man am I!”

Observe a little boy at a Christmas-dinner, and his grandfather opposite
him. What a world of secret similarity there is between them! How hope
in one, and retrospection in the other, and appetite in both, meet over
the same ground of pudding, and understand it to a nicety! How the
senior banters the little boy on his third slice! and how the little boy
thinks within himself that he dines that day as well as the senior! How
both look hot and red and smiling, and juvenile. How the little boy is
conscious of the Christmas-box in his pocket! (of which, indeed, the
grandfather jocosely puts him in mind); and how the grandfather is quite
as conscious of the plum, or part of a plum, or whatever fraction it may
be, in his own! How he incites the little boy to love money and good
dinners all his life! and how determined the little boy is to abide by
his advice,–with a secret addition in favor of holidays and
marbles,–to which there is an analogy, in the senior’s mind, on the
side of trips to Hastings, and a game at whist! Finally, the old
gentleman sees his own face in the pretty smooth one of the child; and
if the child is not best pleased at his proclamation of the likeness (in
truth, is horrified at it, and thinks it a sort of madness), yet nice
observers, who have lived long enough to see the wonderful changes in
people’s faces from youth to age, probably discern the thing well
enough, and feel a movement of pathos at their hearts in considering the
world of trouble and emotion that is the causer of the changes. That
old man’s face was once like that little boy’s! That little boy’s will
be one day like that old man’s! What a thought to make us all love and
respect one another, if not for our fine qualities, let at least for the
trouble and sorrow which we all go through!

Ay, and joy too; for all people have their joys as well as troubles, at
one time or another,–most likely both together, or in constant
alternation: and the greater part of troubles are not the worst things
in the world, but only graver forms of the requisite motion of the
universe, or workings towards a better condition of things, the greater
or less violent according as we give them violence, or respect them like
awful but not ill-meaning gods, and entertain them with a rewarded
patience. Grave thoughts, you will say, for Christmas. But no season has
a greater right to grave thoughts, in passing; and, for that very
reason, no season has a greater right to let them pass, and recur to
more light ones.

So a noble and merry season to you, my masters; and may we meet, thick
and three-fold, many a time and oft, in blithe yet most thoughtful
pages! Fail not to call to mind, in the course of the 25th of this
month, that the divinest Heart that ever walked the earth was born on
that day: and then smile and enjoy yourselves for the rest of it; for
mirth is also of Heaven’s making, and wondrous was the wine-drinking at
Galilee.