Joyce Kilmer

If a dentist stuck a bit of holly in his cap and went through the streets on Christmas morning, his buzzing drill over his shoulder and his forceps in his hand, stopping at the houses of his friends to give their jaws free treatment, meanwhile trolling out lusty Yuletide staves—if he were to do this, I say, it would be said of him, among other things, that he was celebrating Christmas in a highly original manner. Undoubtedly there would be many other adjectives applied to his manner of generosity—adjectives applied, for instance, by the children whom, around their gayly festooned tree, he surprised with his gift of expert treatment. But the adjective most generally used (not perhaps in adulation) would be “original.” And the use of this adjective would be utterly wrong.

The holly bedecked dentist would not be acting in an original manner. He would not be following the suggestion of his own philanthropic heart. He would be acting in accordance with tradition, a particularly annoying tradition, the evil and absurd superstition that a gift should be representative of the giver rather than of the recipient.

Now, I am aware that there is high literary authority for the dentist’s Christmas morning expedition. The dentist himself would be the first to disclaim having originated the idea; if you were to question him he would tell you, as he deftly adjusted his rubber dam in your mouth, that the credit belonged to the late Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“Emerson,” the dentist would say as he sharpened the point of his drill, “said that a gift was meaningless unless it was a genuine expression of the giver; it would be unfitting, for instance, for a poet to give his friend a house and lot, and a painter, his friend, a diamond necklace. The poet should give a poem and the painter should give a painting. Therefore it naturally follows that a minister should give a sermon and a school teacher should bestow upon his expectant pupils an extra page of mathematical problems. This,” the dentist would say, “is the gift most expressive of my personality.” And the drill would seek its goal.

Now, there is much to be said in favour of the Emersonian theory of giving. Certainly it has the advantages of cheapness and convenience. Many a poet could more easily give his friend a whole ode or a sequence of sonnets or a bale of vers libre than he could give a box of cigars, or a cigar. Many a painter could more easily cover his children’s Christmas tree with his own cubist canvases than with peppermint canes and toy locomotives and dolls and little trumpets. A storekeeper or a manufacturer of any sort can more easily select his gifts from his own stock than he can select them elsewhere. Should a brewer, for instance, desire to help make Mr. Bryan’s Christmas happy, it would be a simpler matter for him to put in that gentleman’s stocking a case of beer than a case of grape juice.

But cheapness and convenience are not the chief reasons for this sort of giving. A poet who gives a poem when he should give a pair of fur gauntlets, a painter who gives a painting when he should give a doll, does so, it often happens, in spite of the fact that he has thousands of dollars in the bank and lives within a block of a department store, which he much enjoys visiting. He gives the gifts that he does give because of his selfishness and conceit. He gives his own wares because they advertise his talent.

The poet knows that his friend will not say, to inquiring admirers of his fur gauntlets, “These were given me by Ezra Dusenbury, author of ‘Babylonian Bleatings’ and other Lyrics: Smith, Parker & Co., $1 net.” The painter knows that the infant he has enriched will not say to her young companions: “‘Bettina’ was given me by the illustrious Gaspar Slifestein whose incomprehensiblist canvases are now on exhibition at the Microscopic Mania Gallery, 249 Fifth Avenue, New York City.” These gentlemen take a violent interest in their own work, and when they give presents of that work they are trying to force their friends to share that interest and to extend it to all the world. They are trying to force their friends to become their press agents.

Of course there are exceptions to the rule that a giver should not give his own wares. Any man who deals in wares that are universally delightful may express himself in his gifts to his heart’s content and no one will criticise him. So let no brewer or cigar-maker or money-changer of my acquaintance puzzle his head long in the effort to discover in the marts of the world something appropriate to my peculiar tastes. These honest citizens may be as Emersonian in their giving as they wish.

As I said, there is much to recommend the idea that inspired the hypothetical dentist on his Yuletide denting; there is much to recommend the gift-expressing-the-giver theory. It is convenient, it is cheap, it is satisfying to the giver’s conceit. It is in many respects excellent. But it does not happen to be suited to Christmas Day. It is suited to the celebration of Emerson’s birthday, if any one knows the date of that festival.

You see, unselfishness is supposed to be a characteristic of Christmas giving. And unselfishness, true unselfishness, was known to the philosophy of the Transcendentalists as little as it is known to that of the Nietzscheans. He who gives really in accordance with the spirit of the feast gives not to express his own personality, to call attention to his own prowess as a painter or a poet or a candlestick-maker, but to make his friend happy. If his friend remembers him when he enjoys the gift, so much the better. But the essential thing is that he shall enjoy the gift.

James Russell Lowell represented the Founder of the Feast of Christmas as saying: “Who gives himself in his gift feeds three; himself, his suffering neighbour and me.” But in Lowell’s mind when he wrote this was no idea of justifying the poet who thrusts poems into his friends’ Christmas stocking and tips the elevator man with a villanelle. He was thinking of sacrificial giving, of giving which necessitates a sacrifice on the part of the giver rather than on that of the recipient. And it is no sacrifice for a poet to give his poem or his book of poems. James Russell Lowell’s distinguished kinswoman, now living in Boston, knows this. If Miss Amy Lowell really loves you she will give you for Christmas an automobile or one of her Keats manuscripts, rather than an autographed copy of “Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds,” or “Men, Women, and Ghosts.”

Few Bishops resemble Mark Twain. But there once was a Bishop who resembled Mark Twain in this respect (and in no other)—he is known to many thousands who do not know his real name. Mark Twain has thousands of friends who never heard of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. And hundreds of thousands of children yearly are gladdened by Santa Claus, yet have no association whatever with the name of Saint Nicholas of Bari.

Yet the amiable Nicholas (who is the patron of sailors, of prisoners, and of children) is the benefactor of humanity caricatured during December in every shop window and on every eleemosynary corner. His mitre has degenerated into a hat trimmed with doubtful fur; his embroidered cope has become a red jacket. But (except when he rings a little bell and begs for alms) he has retained his extra-episcopal function of giving. Saint Nicholas was a master of the art of giving; and since we have taken him so seriously as to transmogrify him into Santa Claus, we should profit by his illustrious example and model our giving upon his.

How and what did Saint Nicholas give? Well, he gave tactfully and opportunely and appropriately. There was the nobleman of Lucia whose three daughters were starving to death. Saint Nicholas gave them marriage portions, throwing purses of gold in at the window at night. When he was in Myra he gave to the poor people all the wheat that was in the ships in the harbour, promising the owners that when they arrived at the port for which they were bound their ships would still be full of wheat; and so it came about. To a drowned sailor and to children who had been killed by a cannibal he gave the gift of life. And to innocent men accused of treason and imprisoned he gave freedom.

His first gift, you see, was money, his second life, his third freedom. And thus he set an example to all the world. Now, it may not be convenient for us to celebrate Christmas by throwing money through the windows of apartments wherein repose dowerless young women. Nor are life and freedom gifts for our bestowal. But it is at any rate possible for us to imitate Saint Nicholas’s manner of giving; to give tactfully, opportunely, and appropriately. There was nothing especially characteristic of his episcopal functions in the gifts that Saint Nicholas gave. Nor did he worry about whether or not they reflected his personality. Let us make Santa Claus resemble Saint Nicholas as closely as we can.

This business of expressing one’s personality by one’s gifts has been carried to extraordinary lengths of late years. There are people who actually select for all their friends and relatives things that they themselves would like. If they consider themselves to be dainty—as all women do—they give dainty presents, disregarding the fact that the recipient may suffer acute physical pain at the mere thought of daintiness.

They wish their beneficiaries to say on Christmas morning, “How characteristic of Mrs. Slipslop to give me this exquisite Dresden china chewing-gum holder,” instead of “How generous and discerning of Mrs. Slipslop to give me this pair of rubber boots or this jar of tobacco or this hypodermic syringe!” But what every child and every grown person wants to receive is a gift suited to his tastes and habits; it is a matter of indifference whether or not it expresses the personality of the giver. Perhaps it will in his eyes supply the giver with a new and charming personality.

You have hitherto regarded Mr. Blinker, the notorious efficiency engineer, with disfavour. You have regarded him as a prosaic theorist, a curdled mass of statistics. On Christmas morning you find that he has presented you, not with an illuminated copy of “Rules for Eliminating Leisure,” or a set of household ledgers or an alarm clock, but with a cocktail set or a pool table or an angora kitten or some other inefficient object.

At once your opinion of Mr. Blinker changes for the better. He assumes a new and radiant personality. Your Sunday school teacher has always exhibited to you virtues which you respect but do not enjoy; she has seemed to you lacking in magnetism. If she gives you for Christmas a Bible or a tale of juvenile virtue, you will write her a graceful letter of thanks (at your mother’s dictation), but your affection for the estimable lady will not be materially increased. But if your Sunday school teacher gives you a bowie knife or a revolver or a set of the Deadwood Dick novels! then how suddenly will the nobility of your Sunday school teacher’s nature be revealed to you!

To elevator men, janitors, domestic servants, newspaper deliverers, and other necessary evils we always give something appropriate—money. And money does not express the personalities of most of us. We—that is, the general public, the common people, the populace, the average man, the great washed and the rest of us—do our duty in this matter, following religiously the admirable tradition of the Christmas box. But our retainers—if they will permit us thus picturesquely to address them—do not. They serve us during the year, and are duly paid for it, but they do nothing picturesque and extraordinary at Christmas time to justify our gifts to them.

As a matter of fact, they are not upholding their part of the tradition. It is not enough for them to bow, and say, “Thank you,” while they feverishly count the money. They should revel romantically, as did their predecessors who established the custom by which they profit. The elevator boys should sing West Indian carols under our windows—especially if our apartment is in the twentieth story. The janitor and his family should enact in the basement a Christmas miracle play.

It is pleasant to think of the janitor attired as a shepherd or as a Wise Man, with his children as angels or as sheep, to picture the Yule log on the janitorial hearth, and to hear in fancy, rising up the dumbwaiter shaft, the strains of “The Carnal and the Crane,” or of the excellent carol which begins:

In some places the newspaper deliverers and the telegraph boys feebly support this tradition by writing, or causing to be written, a “carrier’s address” and leaving printed copies of it with their customers. It would be better, of course, if they were to sing or to recite these verses, but even the printed address is better than nothing. It is a pity to see even this slight concession to tradition disappearing. In bygone days some of the most distinguished of our poets were glad to write these addresses—the late Richard Watson Gilder wrote one for the newspaper carriers of Newark.

And then there are the numerous public servants who nowadays receive from the public no special Christmas benefaction—How gracefully they might obtain it by infusing into their occupations a little Yuletide pageantry! As it is, the subway guards celebrate the golden springtime by donning white raiment. Let them on Christmas day be wreathed with mingled holly and mistletoe, and let them chant, in lusty chorus:

Few subterranean voyagers could resist this appeal.

And the street cleaners, how comes it that they are unrewarded of the public? Their predecessors, the crossing sweepers of London fifty years ago, exacted tribute from pedestrians not only at Christmas time, but on every day of the year. Let our street cleaners assume holiday garb and manner, let them expect Christmas gifts, but give in turn a Christmas spectacle. Methods of doing this will readily suggest themselves—an appropriate thing would be for them to procure mediæval attire at any theatrical costumer’s, and build great bonfires at such points of vantage as Columbus Circle, Times Square, Madison Square, and Union Square. Over these bonfires boars’ heads should be roasted and great bowls of steaming punch should hang. From passersby who partook of their hospitality the street cleaners, through one of their number dressed as an almoner, should request a golden remembrance. These things may yet come to pass. They are not so archaic as seemed in nineteen-thirteen a worldwide war. And the municipal Christmas trees are a good beginning.

But to return to our muttons, or, rather, to our geese and plum puddings, the most important thing for us to remember in the selection of Christmas presents is their suitability to the person for whom they are intended. We may like books, but let us not therefore feel obliged to sustain our literary reputation by giving books to our neighbour who wants a box of cigars or a jumping-jack. We have the precedent, furnished by Saint Nicholas, and we have a higher precedent still. For the first great Christmas gift to humanity was what humanity most needed, and always needs—a child.