Christmas — Text and Context

From Nativity to Nostalgia

The anthology's first section, 'Origin,' juxtaposes devotional hymns with sentimental reflections. Phillips Brooks's 'O Little Town of Bethlehem' employs a hushed, reverent tone ('the silent stars go by'), while Kate Douglas Wiggin's 'The Glad Evangel' shifts to a narrative warmth. Later, in 'Celebration,' Charles Dickens's 'Christmas Eve at Mr. Wardle's' and 'The Christmas Goose at the Cratchits'' ground the holiday in domestic comedy and pathos. The contrast is deliberate: the sacred nativity gives way to a secular, often nostalgic, celebration of family and community. Schauffler's arrangement highlights how 19th-century writers increasingly framed Christmas as a time of emotional reconciliation, as seen in the anonymous prose piece 'Inexhaustibility of the Subject of Christmas,' which muses on estrangements melting 'in to-night's hospitable smile.'

The Voice of the Solitary Observer

A striking passage from an unnamed essayist (likely Leigh Hunt) offers a first-person meditation on spending Christmas alone. The speaker declares, 'It is my purpose to hold Christmas alone,' then uses imagination to join every table and toast. The prose is intimate and self-aware: 'By imagination I can taste of every table, pledge every toast, silently join in every roar of merriment.' This solitary voice contrasts with the communal scenes elsewhere, revealing a tension between isolation and belonging. The writer notes that 'the face of Christmas glows all the brighter for the cold,' a metaphor that extends to social warmth emerging from physical chill. Such passages suggest that the anthology values not only collective joy but also the reflective, even melancholy, individual experience of the holiday.

The Pantomime as Social Microcosm

In the same essay, the author devotes a long paragraph to the Christmas pantomime, describing it as 'pleasantest Christmas sight of all.' The description is richly detailed: the pit is 'a sea of grinning delight,' the boxes 'a tier of beaming juvenility,' the galleries 'a mass of happy laughter.' The writer observes that 'the hard literal world is for an hour sponged out and obliterated'—the chimney-sweep forgets his master, Cinderella forgets her grates. This passage functions as a microcosm of the anthology's broader interest in how Christmas temporarily suspends social hierarchies and labor. The pantomime becomes a symbol of human life, with Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine representing archetypal roles. The author's analytical eye—calling the pantomime 'a symbol or adumbration of human life'—lifts the description beyond mere reportage into commentary on the holiday's transformative power.

Diction of Generosity and Brotherhood

Throughout the anthology, a recurring lexical field clusters around warmth, charity, and brotherhood. In the solitary essay, the writer notes that 'there is more charity at this time than at any other' and that 'good feeling incarnates itself into plum-pudding.' The phrase 'incarnates itself' is striking, blending the sacred (incarnation) with the domestic (plum-pudding). Similarly, the essay invokes the Master's words, 'The poor ye have always with you,' to give religious weight to seasonal generosity. The anthology's selections frequently use the word 'brotherhood'—'for at least one night on each year over all Christendom there is brotherhood'—and the hope that 'men shall be brethren owning one Father in heaven.' This diction reveals the editor's interest in Christmas as a moment of moral and social unity, expressed through both religious and secular language.

Schauffler's Christmas rewards readers who attend to the interplay between its diverse voices—from the hushed reverence of Nativity hymns to the boisterous comedy of Dickens, from the solitary musings of a fireside essayist to the communal roar of the pantomime. The anthology does not argue a single thesis but instead presents a mosaic of perspectives, inviting comparison across genres and eras. Readers may find particular interest in tracing how the same holiday is rendered in different registers: as sacred mystery, as domestic ritual, as social leveler, as personal memory.

I found Christmas — Text and Context resting on my shelf the other day, and it took me back to winter evenings spent under lamplight, savoring its quiet comforts. There is a hush in those pages, a sense of shared tradition. It somehow reminded me of The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays — A Closer Reading, for both hold their breath, waiting for the reader to notice the warmth in ordinary scenes.