This column first appeared in the Victoria Daily Times on Nov. 30, 1940.
With Christmas coming around the corner, and the need of a Christmas spirit more imperative than ever in a world that seems in danger of forgetting what life was given to us for, I hope we can do something definite this year in the matter of Christmas giving.
Women are knitting and sewing for the people who need all the warmth, protection and comfort they can get. So let us count out bedroom slippers, pincushions, nightingales, shopping bags and all that category of regular presents for the folks at home. Most of us have these, with extra ones still in their wrappings, in the lower bureau drawer.
This year, the need of our people is different. Our bodies are clothed, our dressing tables have a full supply of gadgets, but there is a clear and definite need for the things of the spirit.
I am always flattered when people give me books. Ten years ago, I received a copy of Moffatt’s translation of the Bible, with its modern arrangement, and the poetical parts written as poetry should be written, and each time I read it I am grateful to the giver.
There is something infinitely precious about books. They equalize life. They raise the standard of living like nothing else. We cannot all live in fine houses, with broadloom carpets and pictures by the old masters, but we can all possess minted words of wisdom, mined from the greatest souls on Earth. There is something pathetic in the falling market for books today, when rare old volumes sell at the price of Penguin editions, but let us think of this in reverse, and rejoice that more beautiful books are coming into the hands of real book lovers.
I have on my desk a hand-bound book printed on vellum, and I read on the fly leaf that 45 years ago it was given to Beatrice May Howell, as a prize at Southfield, Dorchester. It is a book of narrative poems, dealing with Italian life.
Many of the poems in this book tell of the Italians’ fight for freedom, bringing back to us, in these days of frantic boastings and treacherous “stabs in the back,” the fact that the Italians have been a gentle people, who read poetry and fairy tales and love music and who have, until recent years, occupied an honoured place in the Family of Nations.
I have just read a modern book, The Heart of a Child, by Phyllis Bottome, which is the story of a little German boy and his dog, who lived and suffered in the hard days of starvation following the last war. The peasants of Feldmuss, a little village in the high mountains, believed that the English were savage and cruel and were the cause of all their miseries, but at the end of the war, the Society of Friends mysteriously appeared with their hands full of gifts, and the word went out through the village that a Christmas party would be given to all the children.
Karl, the hero of the story, who had stolen money from the church to save the life of his dog, Rolf, was torn with fear and suspicion. He was afraid to take his young brothers and sisters to the English women’s party. He knew the English had great guns of destruction and was afraid that this party was nothing but a blind. However, the kind faces of the English women, and the prospect of something to eat overcame his fears, and Karl and his nine brothers and sisters went to the party, and what a party it was!
The high point of the proceedings came when a Christmas tree blazed at them out of the dark, and at the foot there lay the Holy Child, in His manger cradle with Mary in her blue cloak beside Him, and Joseph standing guard. Warmed and fed in body and mind, the little boy went to the church before going home and made his peace with God, restoring the money to the poor box, and offered a prayer:
“Please God forgive the English, if they need it, and thank you for sending them, and a Merry Christmas to you and me and Rolf.”
It’s a good thing for us to read books, written from the other side of the wall. Books are the best ambassadors. They bind us to our fellow man more securely than treaties. The burning of the books in Germany was a crime against all humanity, a symbolic act, which shows that the mind and soul of their people has been cut off from human relationships with the other people of the world for the purpose of starving them into spiritual servility and mental death.
We wouldn’t burn books here in Canada. We are too civilized for that. But let us take care that we do not ignore them. The results are not dissimilar. We relate with pride that the Bible is the best-selling book in the world, but a Bible on a shelf is just a piece of merchandise, as sterile as a china egg.
Last year, when we read of the Finnish people dropping New Testaments on their enemies, it came as a challenge to many of us. What are we doing to spread the Gospel even among our friends?
The Bible is a great but neglected weapon in the fight for righteousness. It is the charter of our liberties. No one can read the life of Christ as told in the four gospels and not be changed by it. The Gideons have put a Bible in every hotel bedroom in Canada and we would have one in every home in
Canada if we had a vision of its power!
Christmas 1940, is a good time to begin.
