tham. No. one familiar with Taoist mysticism and legend can help being reminded of Hel Wang Mu's residence in the Kan Lun, among holy groves, surrounded by immortals, at the source of the rivers that feed the four seas.
At all events the Christmas tres. whose symbolic meaning is clearer in modern India than in Europe, is the gift-bearing tree of life by remote descent, and the sacred grove of our immediate ancestors by more direct descent. The 'Anglo-Saxons who invaded Britain had the same unpleasant habit as all their cousins of hanging the heads and hides, and' sometimes the entire corpses, of sacrificed victims on the holiest trees their groves on the high places. It is easy therefore to see that the picture of his kindness and good arturo he would forget the worst remember the best, and grant each member of the family a boon. This ancient heathen friend of our fore-Dears, who was in charge of their affairs every night from sunset to sunrise, comes now but once @ year at the season which was formerly that of his greatest importance, but it is astonishing how, in the person of benevolent old Father Christmas he has maintained his character in spite of his semi-Christian di guise.
'The writer has often thought that the study of the holiday observances in China and a comparison of them with' the most ancient festivals of the Indo-European peoples, might yield results of astonishing interest. Changes of calendar When the early Christian fathers confronted the pagan wortd, they did not reject the old forms of the "natural" religion existing before their appearance, they added to them their own legendaries and doctrine; they recognized that, fundamentally, these cults originated in a religious impulse, and they proceeded to turn them to the most practical account. In this they were successful and the retracing of them is full of interest.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.