CHRISTMAS BELLS

“As a subscriber, I love to be called to the telephone on Christmas morning and hear the infectious laugh of a jolly uncle a hundred miles away, the good wishes of a young mother in quarantine with a little scarlet fever patient, the greetings of everyday friends, the impulsive thank-yous of warm-hearted folk, who cannot wait to express gratitude formally, but utter it spontaneously when the feeling is at its height.

“Nothing adds more to the gaiety of the Christmas reunion than the telephoned greetings of the far-away ones served warm and fresh at the family dinner. Christmas would hardly be Christmas now without the telephone.

“Electricity naturally suggests a great world spirit, brooding, powerful, magnificent, like an Egyptian elemental. It is almost too great a force to be casually summoned to attend our small affairs. But Dame Electricity at Christmas, engaged in rapidly transmitting good will from man to man all over the earth, has a task worthy of her strength. How efficiently she works, passing friendship and kind wishes rapidly and without loss from one personality to another, and using none of the burdensome trappings and tinseled fol-de-rol that hamper and confuse the venerable and abused Santa Claus.”

The poetic conception of the telephone is particularly appropriate at Christmastide and is sure to stir chords of tenderness, and perhaps bring together over the wire forgotten or neglected friends in happy reunion.

— The Telephone Review, N.Y.

A CHRISTMAS CHURCH

Give me a snug little church, dressed for the holidays in greens, wreaths of holly, long hanging garlands of ground pine and laurel, perhaps rather awkwardly, but nonetheless lovingly arranged by interested church members, not by a hired florist, and filling the building with the breath of outdoors.

I want some trees on the pulpit and high overhead a blazing star of fire, shining out into the semi-twilight of the building. I want to rise in the starlighted darkness of a properly frosty Christmas morning and in everyday clothes, wearing mittens, if I choose, and my second best hat, walk briskly through quiet streets to the church and join the waiting congregation.

There won’t be a crowd. There will be no display. Only a few score of those to whom Christmas means a wonderful reality will be there. And, there will be congregational singing, lots of it, and we’ll run the gamut of the hymns of the Nativity. We’ll read the appropriate Scripture responsively and listen to the Christmas story told once again by the kindly voice of the unpretentious clergyman.

— New York Evening Post.