Mince Pie | Page 4

deeper efficiency of the heart. We are
not methodical in kindness; we do not "fill orders" for consignments of
affection. We let our kindness ramble and explore; old forgotten
friendships pop up in our minds and we mail a card to Harry Hunt, of
Minneapolis (from whom we have not heard for half a dozen years),
"just to surprise him." A business man who shipped a carload of goods
to a customer, just to surprise him, would soon perish of abuse. But no
one ever refuses a shipment of kindness, because no one ever feels
overstocked with it. It is coin of the realm, current everywhere. And we
do not try to measure our kindnesses to the capacity of our friends.
Friendship is not measurable in calories. How many times this year
have you "turned" your stock of kindness?

It is the gradual approach to the Great Surprise that lends full savor to
the experience. It has been thought by some that Christmas would gain
in excitement if no one knew when it was to be; if (keeping the festival
within the winter months) some public functionary (say, Mr. Burleson)
were to announce some unexpected morning, "A week from to-day will
be Christmas!" Then what a scurrying and joyful frenzy--what a
festooning of shops and mad purchasing of presents! But it would not
be half the fun of the slow approach of the familiar date. All through
November and December we watch it drawing nearer; we see the shop
windows begin to glow with red and green and lively colors; we note
the altered demeanor of bellboys and janitors as the Date flows quietly
toward us; we pass through the haggard perplexity of "Only Four Days
More" when we suddenly realize it is too late to make our shopping the
display of lucid affectionate reasoning we had contemplated, and clutch
wildly at grotesque tokens--and then (sweetest of all) comes the quiet
calmness of Christmas Eve. Then, while we decorate the tree or carry
parcels of tissue paper and red ribbon to a carefully prepared list of
aunts and godmothers, or reckon up a little pile of bright quarters on the
dining-room table in preparation for to-morrow's largesse--then it is
that the brief, poignant and precious sweetness of the experience claims
us at the full. Then we can see that all our careful wisdom and
shrewdness were folly and stupidity; and we can understand the
meaning of that Great Surprise--that where we planned wealth we
found ourselves poor; that where we thought to be impoverished we
were enriched. The world is built upon a lovely plan if we take time to
study the blue-prints of the heart.
Humanity must be forgiven much for having invented Christmas. What
does it matter that a great poet and philosopher urges "the abandonment
of the masculine pronoun in allusions to the First or Fundamental
Energy"? Theology is not saddled upon pronouns; the best doctrine is
but three words, God is Love. Love, or kindness, is fundamental energy
enough to satisfy any brooder. And Christmas Day means the birth of a
child; that is to say, the triumph of life and hope over suffering.
Just for a few hours on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day the stupid,
harsh mechanism of the world runs down and we permit ourselves to

live according to untrammeled common sense, the unconquerable
efficiency of good will. We grant ourselves the complete and selfish
pleasure of loving others better than ourselves. How odd it seems, how
unnaturally happy we are! We feel there must be some mistake, and
rather yearn for the familiar frictions and distresses. Just for a few
hours we "purge out of every heart the lurking grudge." We know then
that hatred is a form of illness; that suspicion and pride are only fear;
that the rascally acts of others are perhaps, in the queer webwork of
human relations, due to some calousness of our own. Who knows?
Some man may have robbed a bank in Nashville or fired a gun in
Louvain because we looked so intolerably smug in Philadelphia!
So at Christmas we tap that vast reservoir of wisdom and strength--call
it efficiency or the fundamental energy if you will--Kindness. And our
kindness, thank heaven, is not the placid kindness of angels; it is veined
with human blood; it is full of absurdities, irritations, frustrations. A
man 100 per cent. kind would be intolerable. As a wise teacher said, the
milk of human kindness easily curdles into cheese. We like our friends'
affections because we know the tincture of mortal acid is in them. We
remember the satirist who remarked that to love one's self is the
beginning of a lifelong romance. We know this lifelong romance will
resume its sway; we shall lose our tempers, be obstinate, peevish