Show STUDENT LIFE TO the Parisian year Whether one starts in student fashion to have a “noce a tout casser” (a high old time but feebly expresses the French phrase) or as a pere de faniille to give his children a happy Christmas all pursue much the same programme an evening at the theatre the midnight mass and then the reveillon the only difference is one of degree and of associates Everyone at Paris has his favorite theatre and tries to get there on Christmas eve-Thworking classes throng the Ambigu and the Porte St Martin in quest of the melodramatic emotions in which they forget their sordid lives the jeunc fille bien elevee longs for the Opera the student haunts the classic Odeon and Comedie Francaise d at the the children stare of Chatelet the spectacular plays while the Paris qui s’amuse frequents the theatres of the Boulevards where the star is the thing or tickles his palate with the Gallic salt of French farce which flourishes at Cluny or the Palais Royal And so the Christmas celebration starts in with a dramatic flavor but this means that the theatre goer must be willing to hear his midnight mass in some small church with inferior music for an evening at the theatre in Paris lasts from eight until twelve and anyone who wants to hear a mass with singing by artists from the opera must stand in line for many weary hours in e big-eye- order to get a chance to be admitted to the service at midnight This midnight mass is of great interest to the stranger within the gates of Paris and he usually tries to hear it at some church famous for its music such as the Madeleine St Eustache or St Sulpice At no time in the Catholic year so rich in ecclesiastical pagentry not even at Easter does the outsider feel so deeply as at this mass the impressive theatrical beauty of the Catholic service The time of night the rich associations in which nearly every Parisian church abounds the creche picturing the Holy Family the altars with their myriad lights the harmonious appropriate architecture of the church the kneeling multitude — all this helps to create in the beholder a feeling of meditative seriousness (recueillement is the exact untranslatable term) and as he hears some grand tenor singing the Noel of Adam he would be an inartistic and irreligious stone indeed if he did not feel himself thrilled with the feeling of the beauty and deep ! Noel ! scene “Noel Void le It may be only a mere transitory emotion but it is a glorious one for the moment and one which expresses the genuine spirit of Christmas more truly than the German Christmas tree or the American avalanche of gifts Re-dempteur- !’’ |