^58 
CHRISTM AS-KEEPING. 
remote part of the island, it is still hailed as the period of enjoyment — 
it is still m'arked by genial appearances ; and round the social hearth 
of Christmas-eve, the less artificial inhabitants of the country will be 
found as Burns describes them : — 
The lasses feat, an’ clonely neat. 
More braw than when they ’re fine, 
Their faces blythe, fu’ sweetly kythe, 
Hearts leal, an’ warm, an’ kin’. 
The lads sae trig, wi’ wooer-babs. 
Well knotted on their garten, 
Some unco blate, an’ some wi’ gabs, 
Gar lasses’ hearts gang startin. 
Whiles fast at night. 
Christmas is supposed by some to be founded on the Saturnalia of 
the Romans, and was distinguished a century or two ago by its 
‘‘festival of fools.” The mummeries practised at that season were 
performed in disguises made with the skins of animals ; and the lower 
orders, who could not afford masks and dresses, daubed their faces 
with soot, the sexes changing clothes. The Saturnalia were cele- 
brated in a similar manner. Such resemblance, and the obvious 
policy of transmitting the heathen festivities into rejoicings of some 
kind, after the introduction of Christianity, that the people might 
not be deprived of their customary pleasures, give a plausible ground 
for supposing that the early Christians availed themselves of the 
opportunity to establish 2ifetl in honour of the birth of their Founder 
But this can only be conjecture, like a thousand other opinions we 
read of the same nature, and must for ever remain so. The deci- 
sion of the question, indeed, might gratify curiosity, but could be of 
no utility to the interests of mankind. It is a most pleasing occupa- 
tion to dwell upon the celebration of Christmas at later periods 
among ourselves, to go over ground that is interesting from its proxi- 
mity to our own, and to realize the agreeable feeling always excited 
in the human bosom at the contemplation of every thing, however 
insignificant, w'hich is tinged with the gray melancholy of age. 
In London, as in all great cities, particularly in those which are 
commercial, where strangers continually arrive, and new customs are 
daily introduced, observances of a nature similar to those formerly 
kept at Christmas must soon be lost. That season is accordingly 
marked here by few^ of the pleasantries and enjoyments with which it 
is even now characterized in the country. The merchant and shop- 
keeper are absorbed in traffic, and the closing up of their accounts ; 
and but a short space is devoted to that drunkenness and gluttony 
among the lower orders, which are the besetting sin of the time. 
The genuine cockney, however, though on the verge of bankruptcy, 
considers it a moral duty to spend his creditors’ guinea for a fat 
turkey on Christmas-day ; which wdth a plenary potation of some 
kind of liquor, a minute fraction within the quantity necessary to 
produce ebriety among the more sober citizens, and a fraction 
beyond it among those less Concerned as to outward deportment, 
completes the annual memorial of the time. The canaille be seen, 
