E-text prepared by Thierry Alberto, Martin Pettit,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
COPYRIGHT, 1908, BY SAMUEL McCHORD CROTHERS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published November 1908
To O. L. F.
A CHEERFUL FIRE-WORSHIPER
Contents
"Christmas and the Spirit of Democracy" appeared originally inEverybody's Magazine, the four other essays in the AtlanticMonthly. Acknowledgments are due to the editors of theseperiodicals for permission to reprint them here.
I
The Bayonet-Poker
As I sit by my Christmas fire I now and then give it a poke with abayonet. It is an old-fashioned British bayonet which has seen worsedays. I picked it up in a little shop in Birmingham for two shillings. Iwas attracted to it as I am to all reformed characters. The hardened oldsinner, having had enough of war, was a candidate for a peacefulposition. I[Pg 4] was glad to have a hand in his reformation.
To transform a sword into a pruning hook is a matter for a skilledsmith, but to change a bayonet into a poker is within the capacity ofthe least mechanical. All that is needed is to cause the bayonet toforsake the murderous rifle barrel and cleave to a short wooden handle.Henceforth its function is not to thrust itself into the vitals of men,but to encourage combustion on winter nights.
The bayonet-poker fits into the philosophy of Christmas, at least intothe way I find it easy to philosophize. It seems a better symbol of whatis happening than the harps of gold and the other beautiful things ofwhich the hymn-writers sing, but which [Pg 5]ordinary people have never seen.The golden harps were made for no other purpose than to producecelestial harmony. They suggest a scene in which peace and good-willcome magically and reign undisturbed. Everything is exquisitely fittedfor high uses. It is not so with the bayonet that was, and the pokerthat is. For it peace and good-will are afterthoughts. They are not evenremotely suggested in its original constitution. And yet, for all that,it serves excellently as an instrument of domestic felicity.
The difficulty with the Christmas message is not in getting itselfproclaimed, but in getting itself believed; that is, in any practicablefashi