The Feast of St. Friend by Arnold Bennett
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THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND
A Christmas Book
by
ARNOLD BENNETT
Author of _The Old Wives' Tale_, _Buried Alive_, etc., etc.
New York
George H. Doran Company
1911
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. THE FACT
II. THE REASON
III. THE SOLSTICE AND GOODWILL
IV. THE APPOSITENESS OF CHRISTMAS
V. DEFENCE OF FEASTING
VI. TO REVITALIZE THE FESTIVAL
VII. THE GIFT OF ONESELF
VIII. THE FEAST OF ST. FRIEND
IX. THE REACTION
X. ON THE LAST DAY OF THE YEAR
ONE
THE FACT
Something has happened to Christmas, or to our hearts; or to both. In
order to be convinced of this it is only necessary to compare the
present with the past. In the old days of not so long ago the festival
began to excite us in November. For weeks the house rustled with
charming and thrilling secrets, and with the furtive noises of paper
parcels being wrapped and unwrapped; the house was a whispering gallery.
The tension of expectancy increased to such a point that there was a
positive danger of the cord snapping before it ought to snap. On the
Eve we went to bed with no hope of settled sleep. We knew that we should
be wakened and kept awake by the waits singing in the cold; and we were
glad to be kept awake so. On the supreme day we came downstairs hiding
delicious yawns, and cordially pretending that we had never been more
fit. The day was different from other days; it had a unique romantic
quality, tonic, curative of all ills. On that day even the tooth-ache
vanished, retiring far into the wilderness with the spiteful word, the
venomous thought, and the unlovely gesture. We sang with gusto
"Christians awake, salute the happy morn." We did salute the happy morn.
And when all the parcels were definitely unpacked, and the secrets of
all hearts disclosed, we spent the rest of the happy morn in waiting,
candidly greedy, for the first of the great meals. And then we ate, and
we drank, and we ate again; with no thought of nutrition, nor of
reasonableness, nor of the morrow, nor of dyspepsia. We ate and drank
without fear and without shame, in the sheer, abandoned ecstasy of
celebration. And by means of motley paper headgear, fit only for a
carnival, we disguised ourselves in the most absurd fashions, and yet
did not make ourselves seriously ridiculous; for ridicule is in the
vision, not in what is seen. And we danced and sang and larked, until we
could no more. And finally we chanted a song of ceremony, and separated;
ending the day as we had commenced it, with salvoes of good wishes. And
the next morning we were indisposed and enfeebled; and we did not care;
we suffered gladly; we had our pain's worth, and more. This was the
past.
* * * * *
Even today the spirit and rites of ancient Christmas are kept up, more
or less in their full rigour and splendour, by a race of beings that is
scattered over the whole earth. This race, mysterious, masterful,
conservative, imaginative, passionately sincere, arriving from we know
not where, dissolving before our eyes we know not how, has its way in
spite of us. I mean the children. By virtue of the children's faith, the
reindeer are still tramping the sky, and Christmas Day is still
something above and beyond a day of the week; it is a day out of the
week. We have to sit and pretend; and with disillusion in our souls we
do pretend. At Christmas, it is not the children who make-believe; it
is ourselves. Who does not remember the first inkling of a suspicion
that Christmas Day was after all a day rather like any other day? In the
house of my memories, it was the immemorial duty of my brother on
Christmas morning, before anything else whatever happened, to sit down
to the organ and perform "Christians Awake" with all possible stops
drawn. He had to do it. Tradition, and the will that emanated from the
best bedroom, combined to force him to do it. One Christmas morning, as
he was preparing the stops, he glanced aside at me with a supercilious
curl of the lips, and the curl of my lips silently answered. It was as
if he had said: "I condescend to this," and as if I had said: "So do I."
Such a moment comes to most of us of this generation. And thenceforward
the change in us is extraordinarily rapid. The next thing we know is
that the institution of waits is a rather annoying survival which at
once deprives us of sleep and takes money out of our pockets. And then
Christmas is gluttony and indigestion and expensiveness and quarter-day,
and Christmas cards are a tax and a nuisance, and present-giving is a
heavier tax and a nuisance. And we feel self-conscious and foolish as we
sing "Auld Lang Syne." And what a blessing it will be when the
"festivities" (as they are misleadingly called) are over, and we can
settle down into commonsense again!
* * * * *
I do not mean that our hearts are black with despair on Christmas Day.
I do not mean that we do not enjoy ourselves on Christmas Day. There is
no doubt that, with the inspiriting help of the mysterious race, and by
the force of tradition, and by our own gift of pretending, we do still
very much enjoy ourselves on Christmas Day. What I mean to insinuate,
and to assert, is that beneath this enjoyment is the disconcerting and
distressing conviction of unreality, of non-significance, of exaggerated
and even false sentiment. What I mean is that we have to brace and force
ourselves up to the enjoyment of Christmas. We have to induce
deliberately the "Christmas feeling." We have to remind ourselves that
"it will never do" to let the heartiness of Christmas be impaired. The
peculiarity of our attitude towards Christmas, which at worst is a
vacation, may be clearly seen by contrasting it with our attitude
towards another vacation--the summer holiday. We do not have to brace
and force ourselves up to the enjoyment of the summer holiday. We
experience no difficulty in inducing the holiday feeling. There is no
fear of the institution of the summer holiday losing its heartiness. Nor
do we need the example of children to aid us in savouring the August
"festivities."
* * * * *
If any person here breaks in with the statement that I am deceived and
the truth is not in me, and that Christmas stands just where it did in
the esteem of all right-minded people, and that he who casts a doubt on
the heartiness of Christmas is not right-minded, let that person read no
more. This book is not written for him. And if any other person,
kindlier, condescendingly protests that there is nothing wrong with
Christmas except my advancing age, let that person read no more. This
book is not written for him, either. It is written for persons who can
look facts cheerfully in the face. That Christmas has lost some of its
magic is a fact that the common sense of the western hemisphere will not
dispute. To blink the fact is infantile. To confront it, to try to
understand it, to reckon with it, and to obviate any evil that may
attach to it--this course alone is meet for an honest man.
TWO
THE REASON
If the decadence of Christmas were a purely subjective phenomenon,
confined to the breasts of those of us who have ceased to be children
then it follows that Christmas has always been decadent, because people
have always been ceasing to be children. It follows also that the
festival was originally got up by disillusioned adults, for the benefit
of the children. Which is totally absurd. Adults have never yet invented
any institution, festival or diversion specially for the benefit of
children. The egoism of adults makes such an effort impossible, and the
ingenuity and pliancy of children make it unnecessary. The pantomime,
for example, which is now pre-eminently a diversion for children, was
created by adults for the amusement of adults. Children have merely
accepted it and appropriated it. Children, being helpless, are of course
fatalists and imitators. They take what comes, and they do the best they
can with it. And when they have made something their own that was adult,
they stick to it like leeches.
They are terrific Tories, are children; they are even reactionary! They
powerfully object to changes. What they most admire in a pantomime is
the oldest part of it, the only true pantomime--the harlequinade! Hence
the very nature of children is a proof that what Christmas is now to
them, it was in the past to their elders. If they now feel and exhibit
faith and enthusiasm in the practice of the festival, be sure that, at
one time, adults felt and exhibited the same faith and enthusiasm--yea,
and more! For in neither faith nor enthusiasm can a child compete with a
convinced adult. No child could believe in anything as passionately as
the modern millionaire believes in money, or as the modern social
reformer believes in the virtue of Acts of Parliament.
Another and a crowning proof that Christmas has been diminished in our
hearts lies in the fiery lyrical splendour of the old Christmas hymns.
Those hymns were not written by people who made-believe at Christmas for
the pleasure of youngsters. They were written by devotees. And this age
could not have produced them.
* * * * *
No! The decay of the old Christmas spirit among adults is undeniable,
and its cause is fairly plain. It is due to the labours of a set of
idealists--men who cared not for money, nor for glory, nor for anything
except their ideal. Their ideal was to find out the truth concerning
nature and concerning human history; and they sacrificed all--they
sacrificed the peace of mind of whole generations--to the pleasure of
slaking their ardour for truth. For them the most important thing in the
world was the satisfaction of their curiosity. They would leave naught
alone; and they scorned consequences. Useless to cry to them: "That is
holy. Touch it not!" I mean the great philosophers and men of
science--especially the geologists--of the nineteenth century. I mean
such utterly pure-minded men as Lyell, Spencer, Darwin and Huxley. They
inaugurated the mighty age of doubt and scepticism. They made it
impossible to believe all manner of things which before them none had
questioned. The movement spread until uneasiness was everywhere in the
realm of thought, and people walked about therein fearsomely, as in a
land subject to earthquakes. It was as if people had said: "We don't
know what will topple next. Let's raze everything to the ground, and
then we shall feel safer." And there came a moment after which nobody
could ever look at a picture of the Nativity in the old way. Pictures of
the Nativity were admired perhaps as much as ever, but for the exquisite
beauty of their naivete, the charm of their old-world simplicity, not
as artistic renderings of fact.
* * * * *
An age of scepticism has its faults, like any other age, though certain
persons have pretended the contrary. Having been compelled to abandon
its belief in various statements of alleged fact, it lumps principles
and ideals with alleged facts, and hastily decides not to believe in
anything at all. It gives up faith, it despises faith, in spite of the
warning of its greatest philosophers, including Herbert Spencer, that
faith of some sort is necessary to a satisfactory existence in a
universe full of problems which science admits it can never solve. None
were humbler than the foremost scientists about the narrowness of the
field of knowledge, as compared with the immeasurability of the field
of faith. But the warning has been ignored, as warnings nearly always
are. Faith is at a discount. And the qualities which go with faith are
at a discount; such as enthusiasm, spontaneity, ebullition, lyricism,
and self-expression in general. Sentimentality is held in such horror
that people are afraid even of sentiment. Their secret cry is: "Give us
something in which we can believe."
* * * * *
They forget, in their confusion, that the great principles, spiritual
and moral, remain absolutely intact. They forget that, after all the
shattering discoveries of science and conclusions of philosophy, mankind
has still to live with dignity amid hostile nature, and in the presence
of an unknowable power and that mankind can only succeed in this
tremendous feat by the exercise of faith and of that mutual goodwill
which is based in sincerity and charity. They forget that, while facts
are nothing, these principles are everything. And so, at that epoch of
the year which nature herself has ordained for the formal recognition of
the situation of mankind in the universe and of its resulting duties to
itself and to the Unknown--at that epoch, they bewail, sadly or
impatiently or cynically: "Oh! The bottom has been knocked out of
Christmas!"
* * * * *
But the bottom has not been knocked out of Christmas. And people know
it. Somewhere, in the most central and mysterious fastness of their
hearts, they know it. If they were not, in spite of themselves,
convinced of it, why should they be so pathetically anxious to keep
alive in themselves, and to foster in their children, the Christmas
spirit? Obviously, a profound instinct is for ever reminding them that,
without the Christmas spirit, they are lost. The forms of faith change,
but the spirit of faith, which is the Christmas spirit, is immortal amid
its endless vicissitudes. At a crisis of change, faith is weakened for
the majority; for the majority it may seem to be dead. It is conserved,
however, in the hearts of the few supremely great and in the hearts of
the simple. The supremely great are hidden from the majority; but the
simple are seen of all men, and them we encourage, often without knowing
why, to be the depositaries of that which we cannot ourselves guard, but
which we dimly feel to be indispensable to our safety.
THREE
THE SOLSTICE AND GOOD WILL
In order to see that there is underlying Christmas an idea of faith
which will at any rate last as long as the planet lasts, it is only
necessary to ask and answer the question: "Why was the Christmas feast
fixed for the twenty-fifth of December?" For it is absolutely certain,
and admitted by everybody of knowledge, that Christ was not born on the
twenty-fifth of December. Those disturbing impassioned inquirers after
truth, who will not leave us peaceful in our ignorance, have settled
that for us, by pointing out, among other things, that the twenty-fifth
of December falls in the very midst of the Palestine rainy season, and
that, therefore, shepherds were assuredly not on that date watching
their flocks by night.
* * * * *
Christians were not, at first, united in the celebration of Christmas.
Some kept Christmas in January, others in April, others in May. It was a
pre-Christian force which drove them all into agreement upon the
twenty-fifth of December. Just as they wisely took the Christmas tree
from the Roman Saturnalia, so they took the date of their festival from
the universal pre-Christian festival of the winter solstice, Yule, when
mankind celebrated the triumph of the sun over the powers of darkness,
when the night begins to decrease and the day to increase, when the
year turns, and hope is born again because the worst is over. No more
suitably symbolic moment could have been chosen for a festival of faith,
goodwill and joy. And the appositeness of the moment is just as perfect
in this era of electric light and central heating, as it was in the era
of Virgil, who, by the way, described a Christmas tree. We shall say
this year, with exactly the same accents of relief and hope as our pagan
ancestors used, and as the woaded savage used: "The days will begin to
lengthen now!" For, while we often falsely fancy that we have subjugated
nature to our service, the fact is that we are as irremediably as ever
at the mercy of nature.
* * * * *
Indeed, the attitude of us moderns towards the forces by which our
existence is governed ought to be, and probably is, more reverent and
awe-struck than that of the earlier world. The discoveries of science
have at once quickened our imagination and compelled us to admit that
what we know is the merest trifle. The pagan in his ignorance explained
everything. Our knowledge has only deepened the mystery, and all that we
shall learn will but deepen it further. We can explain the solstice. We
are aware with absolute certitude that the solstice and the equinox and
the varying phenomena of the seasons are due to the fact that the plane
of the equator is tilted at a slight angle to the plane of the ecliptic.
When we put on the first overcoat in autumn, and when we give orders to
let the furnace out in spring, we know that we are arranging our lives
in accordance with that angle. And we are quite duly proud of our
knowledge. And much good does our knowledge do us!
* * * * *
Well, it does do us some good, and in a spiritual way, too! For nobody
can even toy with astronomy without picturing to himself, more clearly
and startlingly than would be otherwise possible, a revolving globe that
whizzes through elemental space around a ball of fire: which, in turn,
is rushing with all its satellites at an inconceivable speed from
nowhere to nowhere; and to the surface of the revolving, whizzing globe
a multitude of living things desperately clinging, and these living
things, in the midst of cataclysmic danger, and between the twin enigmas
of birth and death, quarrelling and hating and calling themselves kings
and queens and millionaires and beautiful women and aristocrats and
geniuses and lackeys and superior persons! Perhaps the highest value of
astronomy is that it renders more vivid the ironical significance of
such a vision, and thus brings home to us the truth that in spite of all
the differences which we have invented, mankind is a fellowship of
brothers, overshadowed by insoluble and fearful mysteries, and dependent
upon mutual goodwill and trust for the happiness it may hope to achieve.
* * * Let us remember that Christmas is, among other things, the winter
solstice, and that the bottom has not yet been knocked out of the winter
solstice, nor is likely to be in the immediate future!
* * * * *
It is a curious fact that the one faith which really does flourish and
wax in these days should be faith in the idea of social justice. For
social justice simply means the putting into practice of goodwill and
the recognition of the brotherhood of mankind. Formerly, people were
enthusiastic and altruistic for a theological idea, for a national idea,
for a political idea. You could see men on the rack for the sake of a
dogma; you could see men of a great nation fitting out regiments and
ruining themselves and going forth to save a small nation from
destruction. You could see men giving their lives to the aggrandisement
of an empire. And the men who did these things had the best brains and
the quickest wits and the warmest hearts of their time. But today,
whenever you meet a first-class man who is both enthusiastic and
altruistic, you may be sure that his pet scheme is neither theological,
military nor political; you may be sure that he has got into his head
the notion that some class of persons somewhere are not being treated
fairly, are not being treated with fraternal goodwill, and that he is
determined to put the matter right, or perish.
* * * * *
In England, nearly all the most interesting people are social reformers:
and the only circles of society in which you are not bored, in which
there is real conversation, are the circles of social reform. These
people alone have an abounding and convincing faith. Their faith has,
for example, convinced many of the best literary artists of the day,
with the result that a large proportion of the best modern imaginative
literature has been inspired by the dream of social justice. Take away
that idea from the works of H.G. Wells, John Galsworthy and George
Bernard Shaw, and there would be exactly nothing left. Despite any
appearance to the contrary, therefore, the idea of universal goodwill is
really alive upon the continents of this planet: more so, indeed, than
any other idea--for the vitality of an idea depends far less on the
numbers of people who hold it than on the quality of the heart and brain
of the people who hold it. Whether the growth of the idea is due to the
spiritual awe and humility which are the consequence of increased
scientific knowledge, I cannot say, and I do not seriously care.
FOUR
THE APPOSITENESS OF CHRISTMAS
"Yes," you say, "I am quite at one with you as to the immense importance
of goodwill in social existence, and I have the same faith in it as you
have. But why a festival? Why eating and drinking and ceremonies? Surely
one can have faith without festivals?"
* * * * *
The answer is that one cannot; or at least that in practice, one never
does. A disinclination for festivals, a morbid self-conscious fear of
letting oneself go, is a sure sign of lack of faith. If you have not
enough enthusiasm for the cult of goodwill to make you positively
desire to celebrate the cult, then your faith is insufficient and needs
fostering by study and meditation. Why, if you decide to found a
sailing-club up your creek, your very first thought is to signalise your
faith in the sailing of those particular waters by a dinner and a
jollity, and you take care that the event shall be an annual one! * * *
You have faith in your wife, and in your affection for her. Surely you
don't need a festival to remind you of that faith, you so superior to
human weaknesses? But you do! You insist on having it. And, if the
festival did not happen, you would feel gloomy and discouraged. A
birthday is a device for recalling to you in a formal and impressive
manner that a certain person still lives and is in need of goodwill. It
is a device which experience has proved to be both valuable and
necessary.
* * * * *
Real faith effervesces; it shoots forth in every direction; it
communicates itself. And the inevitable result is a festival. The
festival is anticipated with pleasure, and it is remembered with
pleasure. And thus it reacts stimulatingly on that which gave it birth,
as the vitality of children reacts stimulatingly on the vitality of
parents. It provides a concrete symbol of that which is invisible and
intangible, and mankind is not yet so advanced in the path of spiritual
perfection that we can afford to dispense with concrete symbols. Now, if
we maintain festivals and formalities for the healthy continuance and
honour of a pastime or of a personal affection, shall we not maintain a
festival--and a mighty one--in behalf of a faith which makes the
corporate human existence bearable amid the menaces and mysteries that
for ever threaten it,--the faith of universal goodwill and mutual
confidence?
* * * * *
If then, there is to be a festival, why should it not be the festival of
Christmas? It can, indeed, be no other. Christmas is most plainly
indicated. It is dignified and made precious by traditions which go back
much further than the Christian era; and it has this tremendous
advantage--it exists! In spite of our declining faith, it has been
preserved to us, and here it is, ready to hand. Not merely does it fall
at the point which uncounted generations have agreed to consider as the
turn of the solar year and as the rebirth of hope! It falls also
immediately before the end of the calendar year, and thus prepares us
for a fresh beginning that shall put the old to shame. It could not be
better timed. Further, its traditional spirit of peace and goodwill is
the very spirit which we desire to foster. And finally its customs--or
at any rate, its main customs--are well designed to symbolize that
spirit. If we have allowed the despatch of Christmas cards to degenerate
into naught but a tedious shuffling of paste-boards and overwork of
post-office officials, the fault is not in the custom but in ourselves.
The custom is a most striking one--so long as we have sufficient
imagination to remember vividly that we are all in the same boat--I
mean, on the same planet--and clinging desperately to the flying ball,
and dependent for daily happiness on one another's good will! A
Christmas card sent by one human being to another human being is more
than a piece of coloured stationery sent by one log of wood to another
log of wood: it is an inspiring and reassuring message of high value.
The mischief is that so many self-styled human beings are just logs of
wood, rather stylishly dressed.
* * * * *
And then the custom of present-giving! What better and more convincing
proof of sympathy than a gift? The gift is one of these obvious
contrivances--like the wheel or the lever--which smooth and simplify
earthly life, and the charm of whose utility no obviousness can stale.
But of course any contrivance can be rendered futile by clumsiness or
negligence. There is a sort of Christmas giver who says pettishly: "Oh!
I don't know what to give to So-and-So this Christmas! What a bother! I
shall write and tell her to choose something herself, and send the bill
to me!" And he writes. And though he does not suspect it, what he really
writes, and what So-and-So reads, is this: "Dear So-and-So. It is
nothing to me that you and I are alive together on this planet, and in
various ways mutually dependent. But I am bound by custom to give you a
present. I do not, however, take sufficient interest in your life to
know what object it would give you pleasure to possess; and I do not
want to be put to the trouble of finding out, nor of obtaining the
object and transmitting it to you. Will you, therefore, buy something
for yourself and send the bill to me. Of course, a sense of social
decency will prevent you from spending more than a small sum, and I
shall be spared all exertion beyond signing a cheque. Yours insincerely
and loggishly * * *." So managed, the contrivance of present-giving
becomes positively sinister in its working. But managed with the
sympathetic imagination which is infallibly produced by real faith in
goodwill, its efficacy may approach the miraculous.