By the Christmas Fire

By the Christmas Fire, by
Samuel McChord

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Title: By the Christmas Fire
Author: Samuel McChord Crothers

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Language: English
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BY THE CHRISTMAS FIRE
by
SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS

[Illustration]
Boston and New York Houghton Mifflin Company MCMXII
Copyright, 1908, by Samuel Mcchord Crothers All Rights Reserved
Published November 1908

To O. L. F.
A CHEERFUL FIRE-WORSHIPER

Contents
I. THE BAYONET-POKER 1
II. ON BEING A DOCTRINAIRE 43
III. CHRISTMAS AND THE LITERATURE OF DISILLUSION 97
IV. THE IGNOMINY OF BEING GROWN-UP 131
V. CHRISTMAS AND THE SPIRIT OF DEMOCRACY 191

"Christmas and the Spirit of Democracy" appeared originally in
Everybody's Magazine, the four other essays in the Atlantic Monthly.
Acknowledgments are due to the editors of these periodicals for
permission to reprint them here.

I
The Bayonet-Poker
[Illustration]
As I sit by my Christmas fire I now and then give it a poke with a
bayonet. It is an old-fashioned British bayonet which has seen worse
days. I picked it up in a little shop in Birmingham for two shillings. I
was attracted to it as I am to all reformed characters. The hardened old
sinner, having had enough of war, was a candidate for a peaceful
position. I was glad to have a hand in his reformation.
To transform a sword into a pruning hook is a matter for a skilled smith,
but to change a bayonet into a poker is within the capacity of the least
mechanical. All that is needed is to cause the bayonet to forsake the
murderous rifle barrel and cleave to a short wooden handle. Henceforth
its function is not to thrust itself into the vitals of men, but to encourage
combustion on winter nights.
The bayonet-poker fits into the philosophy of Christmas, at least into
the way I find it easy to philosophize. It seems a better symbol of what
is happening than the harps of gold and the other beautiful things of
which the hymn-writers sing, but which ordinary people have never
seen. The golden harps were made for no other purpose than to produce
celestial harmony. They suggest a scene in which peace and good-will
come magically and reign undisturbed. Everything is exquisitely fitted
for high uses. It is not so with the bayonet that was, and the poker that
is. For it peace and good-will are afterthoughts. They are not even
remotely suggested in its original constitution. And yet, for all that, it
serves excellently as an instrument of domestic felicity.

The difficulty with the Christmas message is not in getting itself
proclaimed, but in getting itself believed; that is, in any practicable
fashion. Every one recognizes the eminent desirability of establishing
more amicable relations between the members of the human family.
But is this amiable desire likely to be fulfilled in this inherently
bellicose world?
The argument against Christmas has taken a menacingly scientific form.
A deluge of cold water in the form of unwelcome facts has been thrown
upon our enthusiasm for humanity.
"Peace on earth," it is said, "is against Nature. It flies in the face of the
processes of evolution. You have only to look about you to see that
everything has been made for a quite different purpose. For ages
Mother Nature has been keeping house in her own free-and-easy
fashion, gradually improving her family by killing off the weaker
members, and giving them as food to the strong. It is a plan that has
worked well--for the strong. When we interrogate Nature as to the
'reason why' of her most marvelous contrivances, her answer has a grim
simplicity. We are like Red Riding-Hood when she drew back the
bed-curtains and saw the wolfish countenance.--'What is your great
mouth made for, grandmother?'--'To eat you with, my dear.'
"To eat, while avoiding the unpleasant alternative of being eaten, is a
motive that goes far and explains much. The haps and mishaps of the
hungry make up natural history. The eye of the eagle is developed that
it may see its prey from afar, its wings are strong that it may pounce
upon it, its beak and talons