For now the
shortest day is past. The sun is just beginning to climb higher and
higher in the sky each day, and bring back with him longer sunshine,
and shorter darkness, and spring flowers, and summer crops, and a
whole new year, with new hopes, new work, new lessons, new blessings.
The old year, with all its labours and all its pleasures, and all its
sorrows and all its sins, is dying, all but gone. It lies behind us,
never to return. The tears which we shed, we never can shed again.
The mistakes we made, we have a chance of mending in the year to
come. And so the heathens felt, and rejoiced that another year was
dying, another year going to be born.
And Christmas was a time of rejoicing too, because the farming work
was done. The last year's crop was housed; the next year's wheat was
sown; the cattle were safe in yard and stall; and men had time to
rest, and draw round the fire in the long winter nights, and make
merry over the earnings of the past year, and the hopes and plans of
the year to come. And so over all this northern half of the world
Christmas was a merry time.
But the poor heathens did not know the Lord. They did not know who
to thank for all their Christmas blessings. And so some used to
thank the earth for the crops, and the sun for coming back again to
lengthen the days, as if the earth and sun moved of themselves.
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