Classic Christmas Stories Read Online Free

here with me in the flesh, but
     now, like Rachel`s children, `They are not. “The Christ-Child has taken them to
     Himself. By his abounding mercy. They have reached a fairer region, far away!”
     When at eventide the lamps are lit, we, their parents, trust that we too shall
     be permitted to go in and with them worship Christ the King— “The God, the Lord,
     by all adored, for evermore.”

Christmas 70 Years Ago!: How the Festive Season was Spent in
     the Outports in the 70s
    by P. K. Devine
    T
HE PRESENT GENERATION OF young people have no idea of
     the enthusiastic and whole-souled manner in which Christmas was celebrated
     seventy years ago in the Outports. They only read now and then a short sketch in
     the Christmas publications of today of some few of the salient features of times
     or occasionally listen with doubt to the recital of isolated events by the
     inhabitants. Although our forefathers had few of the necessaries and inventions
     of modern civilized life that nowadays make existence so luxurious, nevertheless
     they enjoyed their existence with more zest and freedom from care than their
     restless and discontented descendants. What a number of inventions our fathers
     and grandfathers lacked that we possess today. They had no stoves, no painted
     canvas on the floor, no kerosene oil light, no sewing machine, no telegraphs, no
     railways, no street cars, no daily mails, no automobile, no electric light, no
     motor boats. We could go on and enumerate a score of other useful inventions,
     the product of man’s brains, during the last half century.
    In spite of all these accessories of modern life, the people
     who kept Christmas in those old days, we are inclined to think, enjoyed life
     with a keener zest and derived more pleasure from their surroundings than their
     descendants do today. In the first place, the friendship and good will were
     genuine and thoroughly sincere, and doing a gratuitous or kind turn for a fellow
     man or woman came as natural to them as swimming is to a duck when thrown into
     the water. This was the normal attitude all the year around, but when Christmas
     arrived the feeling was intensified, and warmest feelings that were in
     everyone’s heart came to the surface.
    Christmas, as a season of good will and fraternal affection was a reality and
     not merely an empty expression as it is now too often in conventional society.
     Every door was open to the visitor and the neighbour, and the gatherings that
     took place at Christmas were suggestive of the golden age that the poets now so
     often sing of and sigh for.
    People visited from home to home in the Christmas holidays and hospitalities
     were displayed with a lavish hand. At night the young men and young women
     assembled in the largest kitchen in the village and dancing and other games were
     kept up with unremitting merriment “till the sun peeped over the hills.” The use
     of the term kitchen here does not convey the correct idea to the younger
     generation who know it as a small room where cooking is done. A kitchen in the
     old dwelling in the Outports was parlor, sitting-room and dancing hall. It was
     in fact the largest room in the house, and in some instances had a floor space
     of 24x30 feet, including the open blue-flagged fire place, where the Christmas
     fire, built up six feet high with cross junks, triggers and back junks, went
     roaring in a sheet of flame up the open chimney. The floor was covered sometimes
     with sand and at others with sawdust in order to keep it clean as long as
     possible. On the rack overhead, near the fireplace, lay the big sealing gun, one
     of the treasures of every prosperous fisherman. The pots, kettles and such
     culinary utensils hung on a crane over the fire, which could be swung in and out
     at will, and on each side of the fireplace were homemade cosy chairs and a long
     pine or fir bench known as the “settle.” The building of a Christmas Eve fire
     was an