The Festival of Christmas

For children the day begins with a weight on the toes, long, angular, and many-faceted as a leg by Picasso. The stocking should be opened by candlelight: no other light is resonant at that high frequency of excitement. Christmas is one of the oldest of our traditions, more ancient than any present-day beliefs, and strong enough to have survived even the attacks of Puritans in the seventeenth century. Shortly after the end of World War II, Laurence Whistler set out to write "a guide to the festiv