OCR Text |
Show KO KIDDIES NO CHRISTMAS Children Are AbiJJteIy Necessary tc Keep the Yuletide and Happy Season in Existence. j rqPWAr.U S. MARTIN, who is Hi2j never happier than when sT-. .a, writing about children, had Li?52?rbJ !1 characteristic article In the Metropolitan Magazine entitled "Christmas and Children." In the course of its lines Mr. Martin introduces in-troduces a suggestion that is extremely extreme-ly unpleasant, but he clears it away delightfully. de-lightfully. He says: "Consider, if there were to be a lapse of new babies for even so short a time as ten years. Santa Claus would fade out of active existence and become be-come a mere tradition to be read about in books. A failure of the infaut crop for fifteen years would , result in the decay cf the habit of hanging up stockings, and only antiquarians an-tiquarians would any longer take the trouble to have Christinas trees. Of course, in such an unthinkable contingency con-tingency as that our world would I in such a desperate state of dejection that it would have no fun, though it would go through the motions of existence ex-istence from habit. But the kind of Christmas keeping we are used to would be knocked on the head. That lasts simply and solely because there are children. The people who have the children maintain the current Christmas practices for their children's chil-dren's sake.' the older children maintain main-tain them for their own sake, and the folks who have no children keep thera up for old times' sake and because it is the custom of the country. "What an intolerable suggestion that is, of there being no children to be had under fifteen years old; no babies to blink and coo at the Christmas tree candies; no five-year-olds to come downstairs in their nightgowns after their stockings; no seven-year-olds to wake up everyone in the house hours before breakfast ; no ten-year-olds to sit at the Christmas board and be warned against over-indulgence in plum pudding. No consuming interest in dolls and no market for them; no laborious searching of the toy shops, and harassing indecision whether to get Ihe same old toys or the new ones; no active concern ' about jack knives and sleds and roller skates. No having hav-ing in but it is much too awful to go on about. Let us be devoutly thankful thank-ful that it is only an awful idea without with-out basis; that there are lots and lots of children in commission, of all kinds and ages, and myriads more coming, whatever croaks there may be about race suicide." |