A THIRD PORTRAIT OF DECEMBER.
(From the Literary Pocket Book.) IT is now complete winter. The vapourish and cloudy atmosphere wraps us about with dimness and chilliness; the reptiles, and other creatures that sleep or hide during the cold weather, have all retired to their winter quarters; the farmer does little or nothing, out of doors; the fields are too damp and miry to pass, except in sudden frosts, which begin to occur at the end of the month; and the trees look like skeletons of what they were—
"are ruined choirs in which the sweet birds sing."
The evergreen trees, with their beautiful cones, such as firs and pines, are now particularly observed and valued. In the warmer countries, where shade is more particularly desirable, their worth and beauty: are more regularly appreciated. Virgil talks of the pine as being handsomest in gardens, and it is a great favourite with Theocritus, especially for the fine sound of the air under its kind of vaulted roof.
…
But December has one exercise in it which turns it into the merriest month of the year—Christmas. This is the holiday, which, for obvious reasons, may be said to have survived all others; but still it is not kept with anything like the vigour, perseverance, and elegance of our ancestors. They not only ran Christmas-day, New-year's-day, and Twelfth-night all into one, but kept the wassail-bowl floating the whole time, and earned their right to enjoy it by alt sorts of active pastimes.
The wassail-bowl, (as some of our readers may know by experience, for it has been a little revived of late) is a composition of spiced wine or ale, with roasted apples put into it, and sometimes eggs. They also adorned their houses with green boughs, which, it appears from Herrick, was a practice with many throughout the year,—box succeeding at Candlemas to the holly, bay, rosemary, and misletoe of Christmas,—yew at Easter to box,—birch "and flowers at Whitsuntide to yew,—and then bents "and oaken boughs.
The whole nation were in as happy a ferment at Christmas, with the warmth of exercise and their firesides, as they were in May with the new sunshine. The peasants nestled and sported on the town-green, and told tales of an evening; the gentry feasted them, or bad music and other elegant pastimes; the court had the poetical and princely entertainment of masques, and all sung, danced, revelled, and enjoyed themselves, and so welcomed the new year like happy and grateful subjects of nature.
This is the way to turn winter to summer, and make the world what Heaven has enabled it to be; but, as people in general manage 'it, they might as well turn summer itself into winter.
Nor is it only on holidays that nature tells us to enjoy ourselves. If we were wise we should earn a reasonable portion of pleasure and enjoyment day by day, instead of resolving to do it some day or other, and seldom doing it at all.
A warm carpet and curtains, a sparkling fire, a book, a little music, a happy sympathy of talk, or a kind discussion, may then call to mind with unenvying placidity the very rarest luxuries of the summer time; and instead of being eternally and foolishly told that pleasures produce pains, by those who really make them so, with their profligacy or bigotry, we shall learn the finer and manlier knowledge how to turn pain to the production of pleasure.
