296 GREEN TRAILS AND UPLAND PASTURES 



white purity of Nature under snow, the aspect of a 

 world transformed from its rigid outlines, with its bare- 

 ness and ugliness softly hidden, gives us all an im- 

 memorial thrill; the delight and the wonder never grow 

 less. And with such a world transformed is Christmas 

 associated. We pray for a "white Christmas." We 

 frost our Christmas cards. We depict the Star of 

 Bethlehem as shining over a snow-laden land. Our 

 artists even fancy steam ascending from the nostrils of 

 the gentle cattle in the stable. Such minor lapses 

 from physiographical accuracy do not trouble us in 

 the least, because for us the great, outstanding fact 

 about Christmas is that it is the sweet, solemn, joyous 

 festival of Winter. That for the inhabitants of the 

 underside of our spinning ball it comes in Summer is a 

 fact totally beyond the range of our comprehensions. 

 I used to wonder as a child how the people of Aus- 

 tralia could have any Christmas at all ! 



The origin of the Christmas tree I do not now re- 

 member. Is the tree a gift from Paganism, also? At 

 any rate, it is another link connecting Christmas with 

 the winter world. The unfortunate inhabitants of 

 towns, who must needs buy their tree from the corner 

 grocer, miss one of the season's rarest delights. In our 

 mountain world, a couple of days before the holiday 

 we put on our moccasins, our snow-shoes, our mittens 

 and caps, and, armed with an axe, we set forth into the 

 woods. The woods are quite silent now, for even 



