The Bride of the Mistletoe | Page 2

ages
before man had emerged from the deeps of ocean with eyes to wonder,
thoughts to wander, heart to love, and spirit to pray. Many a scene the
same power has wrought out upon the surface of the Shield since she
brought him forth and set him there: many an old one, many a new. She

has made it sometimes a Shield of war, sometimes a Shield of peace.
Nor has she yet finished with its destinies as she has not yet finished
with anything in the universe. While therefore she continues her will
and pleasure elsewhere throughout creation, she does not forget the
Shield.
She likes sometimes to set upon it scenes which admonish man how
little his lot has changed since Hephaistos wrought like scenes upon the
shield of Achilles, and Thetis of the silver feet sprang like a falcon
from snowy Olympus bearing the glittering piece of armor to her
angered son.
These are some of the scenes that were wrought on the shield of
Achilles and that to-day are spread over the Earth Shield Kentucky:
Espousals and marriage feasts and the blaze of lights as they lead the
bride from her chamber, flutes and violins sounding merrily. An
assembly-place where the people are gathered, a strife having arisen
about the blood-price of a man slain; the old lawyers stand up one after
another and make their tangled arguments in turn. Soft, freshly
ploughed fields where ploughmen drive their teams to and fro, the earth
growing dark behind the share. The estate of a landowner where
laborers are reaping; some armfuls the binders are binding with twisted
bands of straw: among them the farmer is standing in silence, leaning
on his staff, rejoicing in his heart. Vineyards with purpling clusters and
happy folk gathering these in plaited baskets on sunny afternoons. A
herd of cattle with incurved horns hurrying from the stable to the
woods where there is running water and where purple-topped weeds
bend above the sleek grass. A fair glen with white sheep. A
dancing-place under the trees; girls and young men dancing, their
fingers on one another's wrists: a great company stands watching the
lovely dance of joy.
Such pageants appeared on the shield of Achilles as art; as pageants of
life they appear on the Earth Shield Kentucky. The metal-worker of old
wrought them upon the armor of the Greek warrior in tin and silver,
bronze and gold. The world-designer sets them to-day on the throbbing
land in nerve and blood, toil and delight and passion. But there with the

old things she mingles new things, with the never changing the ever
changing; for the old that remains always the new and the new that
perpetually becomes old--these Nature allots to man as his two portions
wherewith he must abide steadfast in what he is and go upward or go
downward through all that he is to become.
But of the many scenes which she in our time sets forth upon the stately
grassy Shield there is a single spectacle that she spreads over the length
and breadth of it once every year now as best liked by the entire people;
and this is both old and new.
It is old because it contains man's faith in his immortality, which was
venerable with age before the shield of Achilles ever grew effulgent
before the sightless orbs of Homer. It is new because it contains those
latest hopes and reasons for this faith, which briefly blossom out upon
the primitive stock with the altering years and soon are blown away
upon the winds of change. Since this spectacle, this festival, is thus old
and is thus new and thus enwraps the deepest thing in the human spirit,
it is never forgotten.
When in vernal days any one turns a furrow or sows in the teeth of the
wind and glances at the fickle sky; when under the summer shade of a
flowering tree any one looks out upon his fatted herds and fattening
grain; whether there is autumnal plenty in his barn or autumnal
emptiness, autumnal peace in his breast or autumnal strife,--all days of
the year, in the assembly-place, in the dancing-place, whatsoever of
good or ill befall in mind or hand, never does one forget.
When nights are darkest and days most dark; when the sun seems
farthest from the planet and cheers it with lowest heat; when the fields
lie shorn between harvest-time and seed-time and man turns wistful
eyes back and forth between the mystery of his origin and the mystery
of his end,--then comes the great pageant of the winter solstice, then
comes Christmas.
So what is Christmas? And what for centuries has it been to differing
but always identical mortals?

It was once the old pagan festival of dead Nature. It