quote for today

long time, no blogging! now that i'm back around a computer, i can finish off that essay by Lewis on Christmas versus Xmas. ___ Xmas and Christmas--a lost chapter from Herodotus by C. S. Lewis "But when the day of the festival comes, then most of the citizens, being exhausted with the Rush, lie in bed till noon. But in the evening they eat five times as much supper as on other days and, crowning themselves with crowns of paper [an Niatirbian Xmas tradition], they become intoxicated. And on the day after Exmas they are very grave, being internally disordered by the supper and the drinking and the reckoning how much they have spent on gifts and wine. For wine is so dear among the Niatirbians that a man must swallow the worth of a talent before he is well intoxicated. "Such, then, are their customs about the Exmas. But the few among the Niatirbians have also a festival, separate and to themselves, called Crissmas, which is on the same day as Exmas. And those that keep Crissmas, doing the opposite to the majority of the Niatirbians, rise early on that day with shining faces and go before sunrise to certain temples where they partake of a sacred feast. And in most of the temples they set out images of a fair woman with a new-born Child on her knees and certain animals and shepherds adoring the Child. (The reason of these images is given in a certain sacred story which I know but do not repeat.) "But I myself conversed with a priest in one of these temples and asked him why they kept Crissmas on the same day as Exmas; for it appeared to me inconvenient. But the priest replied, It is not lawful, O Stranger, for us to change the date of Crissmas, but would that Zeus would put it into the minds of the Niatirbians to keep Exmas at some other time or not keep it at all. For Exmas and the Rush distract the minds even of the few from sacred things. And we indeed are glad that men should make merry at Crissmas; but in Exmas there is no merriment left. And when I asked him why they endured the Rush, he replied, It is, O Stranger, a racket; using (as I suppose) the words of some oracle and speaking unintelligibly to me (for a racket is an instrument which the barbarians use in a game called tennis). "But what Hecateus says, that Exmas and Crissmas are the same, is not credible. For first, the pictures which are stamped on the Exmas-cards have nothing to do with the sacred story which the priests tell about Crissmas. And secondly, the most part of the Niatirbians, not believing the religion of the few, nevertheless send the gifts and the cards and participate in the Rush and drink, wearing paper caps. But it is not likely that men, even barbarians, should suffer so many and great things in honour of a god they do not believe in. And now, enough about Niatirb." --C. S. Lewis. God in the Dock (1970). pp. 301-303.