Christmas Aunts - Kate Gannett Wells

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Christmas Ants by Kate Gannett Wells.

The possession of relatives at Christmas time is very desirable, provided they give you

the things you want, or there are three factors in giving.

The gift itself, the personal regard of the giver, and the appreciation of the one who

receives.

Appropriateness constitutes its charm, as to give without affection is a bore, and to receive

from one you dislike is hideous.

Now Christmas Ants as a link between parents who want to give something, and acquaintances

who need not, seem to fulfill these conditions.

Generally, they know what is wanted, and have a pride in their young relations, who are

not unwilling to be grateful to them.

It is character that makes the Christmas Ant what she is.

She may give you a bit of ribbon, or a rope of pearls.

In either case, it is her way of giving, which makes her Christmassy.

She may be old-fashioned, or of the modern committee type of hustler, or of teagown grace

and suavity, but through all the variation runs in adorable motherliness.

This is it which made the power of Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, and still creates the charm

and resourcefulness of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe.

Even if a Christmas Ant advises, scolds, praises, or bosses her young people, she yet has

an hereditary pride in them, for they belong to her side of the family.

It is this belonging to somebody else besides your parents, which is so dear.

The mere fact that parents ought to care for those whom they have brought into the world

gives to ants an investor a free royalty.

They care for you just because they need not.

Even if ants have children of their own, they do not lose their prerogatives of grace

to others.

All the unmarried ant rags next to a grandmother in delightfulness.

These old maids of our homes could have been married if they wanted to be.

Any man or woman can be of either wishes.

The afterglow of tender romance always enshrines them, though they may lead lonely lives.

Their range extends from the poor woman whose home is her trunk to the wealthy lady whose

house is a shelter for others.

They both have in their hearts the Christmas feeling.

Single life may often be best, but in regard to marriage it is not the frequency of divorce

that is the trouble, but the self-love, inordinate, self-respect, and ambition of married life

that most needs correction.

Don't pity yourself, don't cherish vain imaginings, don't expect to get more than one-third

of what you want, which usually is one-half more than you deserve.

Whereas good roles for married as for single life.

As civilization increases, people naturally will find more difficulty in getting suited

to each other.

As the spirit of religion grows, people will ask more from themselves than from each other,

and in that asking will find as much fullness of joy and of service in being single, as

in being married, say that the true companionship of marriage with its children is a multiplied

joy.

Christmas aunts know all of this.

One of them, a wealthy married woman, sent her nephew, who had a hard time to get along,

a check saying, you do for me, I give to you.

Doing and giving are alike family ties.

Another aunt of the panerius unmarried type sent to her niece a single carnation lying on

a pair of garters she had knit, and the niece thought of the many solitary hours in which

the yarn had been knitted, and of the many economies lovingly practiced by means of which

the flower had been purchased.

Still another aunt and a niece, to whom fortune had a light been kind, gave each other

gifts of equal value, and they were quits.

Yet there is a certain phase of Christmas giving that is more sentimental than strengthening.

The exchange of thoughts, which are supposed to have either religious or literary value.

Such expressions may soothe the nervous or occupy the amateur, self-conscious pose her

to herself of superficial culture.

Yet such sentiments are very different from the praise of honest affection.

But many of us have not yet got rid of the old notion that praise is dangerous.

It may be when it is false, but when true it is an incentive to further effort.

It is so much better to praise another while she is living than after she has died.

All the same, exchange of thoughts, literary or otherwise, may be an invigorating process,

and may those who enjoy it continue its pastime.

But do not let the thoughts be tinged with self-pity, for courage and common sense help

us to bear the ills of life that be set us from one Christmas to another.

We can never say too often how grateful we are for the Christmas fact.

What would our daily life have been if the first Christmas had not been born?

Keeping now the truth of that fact, we pour around at the service of our daily lives.

Never too pour too lonely, too sick, to be useful to somebody.

Thank God for his Christmas gift of lowly usefulness.

Thanks to him also for Christmas aunts, where he has set the world in families.

And the trouble is that as we do not want Christmas to come, but once a year with all

its array of presents to get and to be answered, which makes the day a heavy burden, we must

carry along its spirit from month to month and hour to hour, in perpetual giving and receiving

of service.

Many persons already prefer to make their gifts spasmotic rather than annual, just because

of the meaning of the day has become so desecrated by Cragaria's giving.

Simplicity in all things is to be followed.

Always may the Christmas aunt remain transfigured before us as one who gives, not because she

must, but because she loves to bring forth from her storehouses of invention and affection,

gifts new and old.

And of Christmas aunts by Kate Gennett Wells.