"Christmas comes but once a year! Christmas! The same festive, jovial, old visitor; the same welcome, mirth-begetting Old Father Christmas, with his thousand and one pleasures, his ever sweet recollections, his time-honoured associations, recalling to one and all the happiest, merriest hours of life; the same last year, this year, and for all time; King of Holidays!
Beloved alike by young and old, rich and poor; yes dear Old Christmas is here again - once more approaching our thresholds and wishing us the compliments of the season; bidding us rekindle the blazing yule, and load the groaning tables with the best of good cheer!
Who is there in this world of ours that does not look forward with feelings of indescribable pleasure to the great annual festival?
Who is there that does not for this one day of all three hundred and sixty-five, throw aside dull care, and shut his eyes and ears to the call of business, the troubles and petty vexations of everyday life?
Who is there that does not long for the annual gathering round the family board that comes but once in the busy year, to reunite brother and sister, parent and child, in that magical home circle that bears with it an affectionate charm, unknown only to the orphan and castaway?
Miserable indeed must be that man who, like the Scrooge in Dickens's Carol who shut himself up alone from his fellow-men on this day of days, frowning in his darksome solitude on their pleasures - forgets to rejoice at this season of the year, or who from any other cause whatever cannot or will not participate in the merriment of Christmas!"
- From the Morpeth Herald, 1881.
To all my family and friends all over the world, Merry Christmas!
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