We cannot do less than wish every patron of the Public Ledger the pleasantest possible Christmas. With all the hungry children and old people across the sea in our minds, we dare not say it “A Merry Christmas.” We know, however, that the more we do to make this a happier Christmas for others, the happier our own shall be.
How shall we come to the Christmas of 1923? The answer is simple. Leave Him out of His heaven and out of His world, and Christmas, with its “glorious song of old,” is little less than a mockery. But hold to the faith that has stayed and steadied unnumbered multitudes of earth’s finest spirits in days when those abut them were saying, “Where is now thy God?” and you will greet the dawn of the new Christmas with a deep and satisfying peace. Here is an optimism that will hail the coming Christmas not because it ignores the facts, but in spite of the facts; an optimism that knows that, though mighty empires have come and gone, and darkness settled over many a nation like an impenetrable gloom, the world has steadily, of slowly, rolled out of darkness into light. Look back over human history and trace the upward climb, and mark the larger world into which humanity has come since that first Christmas day, and despair will give place to hope. If we would celebrate Christmas, we must reach out and touch another’s life, perhaps the life of one of the lowliest. Organized charity? Yes, let the poor be fed, but surely each one of us on Christmas needs to spend the impulses of his Christian love. Awake, rejoice! And let your joy gladden the day for another. Merry Christmas!
From the front page of the Oxford Public Ledger, Dec. 25, 1923
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