Christmas Giving as a Means of Culture 



By Dora May Morrell 



THE sentiment of Christmas giving 

 is based npon the sweetest attribute 

 of our nature — the love of doing 

 something for others. In course of time, 

 however, it has grown into one of two 

 things — a perfunctory giving and taking 

 or the interchange of gifts with affection 

 as the cause, but with no particular fitness 

 or meaning to the gift. The idea that 

 Christmas offerings may be a means of 

 culture must be a new one since it is so 

 seldom acted upon. 



The plan of turning the essentials of 

 life into Christmas remembrances is not 

 one to be commended. There is nothing 

 of the sentiment of a gift in a thing which 

 must have been bought as an absolute 

 essential. If a child needs a new pair 

 of boots and would have them whether 

 it were Christmas or not, he cannot be 

 expected to develop any great amount of 

 enthusiasm when receiving them in his 

 stockings on Christmas morning. There 

 is as much occasion for rejoicing over a 

 loaf of bread as over any ordinary neces- 

 sity of dress or existence when given as 

 a Christmas present. There are many 

 like the girl who said she wanted her 

 presents to be useless things, things she 

 could not buy for herself and for which 

 her soul was longing. To the question, 

 "What, for example?" she replied, "I 

 have wanted a statuette of the Flying 

 Mercury for the last five years. I am 

 positively hungry for it, and if I had one 

 dollar above the absolute needs of clothes, 

 food and room, I should possess it sooner 

 or later. Now these needs I am sure to 

 supply, because I must in order to live, 

 but the needs of my mind and soul go un- 

 satisfied because I cannot gratify them 

 and those of the body, too, so when a friend 

 gives me something of beauty or something 

 that will create the thought of beauty, I 

 am perfectly delighted over it. You 

 would be surprised to know how many 



other people feel just the same way'\ 

 It is a mistake to regard pictures, 

 statues, plants and like objects as super- 

 fluities. They are necessities to the higher 

 nature, and often the moral effect of ob- 

 taining them by the sacrifice of the so- 

 called necessities is distinctly uplifting. 

 All beauty is a harmony and balance, and 

 the love for it is the instinctive outreach- 

 ing of the soul for an adjustment of its 

 forces with the universe. The mother 

 who seeks for her child a craving for 

 beauty, which is the beginning of culture, 

 will never ignore the power inherent in 

 beautiful things. The child's mind is 

 responsive at first to the beauty of color, 

 finding it rather in those which are gay 

 than in those of softer tone; after that, 

 he seeks beauty in the things which tell 

 a story, and, therefore, by placing before 

 him pictures of the right kind, the mother 

 may unconsciously teach tenderness, sym- 

 pathy, and all those divine characteristics 

 which perfect the soul. 



Many conscientious people buy chil- 

 dren's books with colored illustrations, 

 believing that by so doing they are help- 

 ing the child's proper development. In 

 such means of education, however, it is 

 well to make haste slowly, very slowly, in 

 buving. Many of the so-called children's 

 books are thoroughly undesirable in the 

 nature of the text and in their pictures 

 also. The books placed before a child 

 should be perfect in their way, or, at least, 

 they should be free from crudities of color 

 and of drawing. Walter Crane and Kate 

 Greenaway enlightened the world with 

 their artistic books for children, so ex- 

 quisite that any adult may enjoy them 

 as well as a child. In Walter Crane's 

 "Pan Pipes," a book of old songs, there is 

 everything which the wise mother can de- 

 sire for her little ones. The graceful 

 decorations, carrying out the sentiment 

 of the songs, the songs themselves with 



