The Exeter Times-Advocate, 1968-12-24, Page 2ervwsivrov C?si etsivio,iiiir4v0,rwtroiioutvittletvreweivilaNiVilt0114•FrO ma rt
A
3
3
3
DRAWN BY JANET DATARS —GRAND BEND PUBLIC SCHOOL
'2;7(4WfaiVe4 C941 W41 CINI CPti tggi tta't ZNIVVEIVAII tOftilVt tgiti liPt4 Old tOtrWitrWti VPtil,gt C0146 006W4613245 044V3746 046 Oat Oft OM Ond ONO I0 1 t:744 traii Or4 tArci tv't447Ci cztk 07{6 cv't faiti
Have a good Christmas
Don't you dare feel hurt
because you didn't get a
Christmas card from us this
year. It wasn't the extra
tuppence for stamps, the only
visible sign of the Just
Society. It was a straight lack
of time.
In December, my wife
was up to her ears in essays
with a pre-Christmas deadline.
Kim was up to hers in
practising for her performer's
degree in piano. And I've
been sniziwee%under the usual
assortment , of anti-hero
activities ihaCevery day, every
week, make me less afraid of
going to hell. It's right here
on earth.
Like an idiot, I offered
to type my wife's essays for
her, after she'd written them.
Did you every try to type
with three fingers and
someone breathing hotly down
your neck? There was nothing
sexy about that breathing.
She just wanted to make sure
I didn't alter a word, a
comma, or a quotation mark
in that deathless prose.
She thinks she knows
more about punctuation than
I do. Hilarious! And I told
her so.
About every 20 minutes,
I'd snarl, "All right, type the
dam' thing yourself!" and
stomp off. And she'd snap,
"How anybody who writes a
column can 'type as badly as
that is beyond me." And so
it went. It took at least three
times as long as it should
have.
This was right in the
midst of that annual debacle
of pre-Christmas exams, an
event that makes the honest
teacher feel like handing in
his resignation, because after
marking the kids' papers he
knows that he has taught
nothing whatever in the fall
term. Except, maybe, some
bad grammar.
IlEFAVOMMA
Times Established 1873
Alter this ordeal, it's
pleasant to look forward to
holidays: Time to relax, read,
contemplate, gird up one's
loins and say, "The hell with
it. It's the kids who are
stupid, not me." Only thus
can one face the long, bitter,
winter term.
Not this time. There I
was, typing wife's essays,
marking exam papers, trying
to cheer up Kim for her
flunk in French. Enough, one
might say, on top of the
regular chores. "Oh, no!" cry
the Fates. "That bird is still
too cocky. Let's really sock it
to him."
And they did. My car,
for which I pay the bank
$9D a month in perpetuity
was the target. Right in the
middle of that cold snap and
those blizzards, it began to act
like a hamstrung mule. It
wouldn't go at all, except
when I didn't need it. And
when it did, it not only
limped, but coughed.
Did you ever try to get
a tow truck, at midnight, in
a blizzard? Have you gone
out three mornings in a row,
after having your battery
charged fully, turned on the
key, and got a "Rargh, rargh,
rargh, rargh, sput, rargh,
rargh, cough, rargh, rar ra . . /79 . .
Three licensed mechanics
and at least ten amateurs,
told me it was: the automatic
choke, the ignition, the
points, the plugs, the m
carburetor, the altimeter, the
tachometer or whatever. They
meant as much to me as the
past perfect subjunctive
participle means to ;them.,.
I though longinly of my,
grandfather's,,,, transpprtation :
Giddap, Nell; we ain't home
yet."
I replaced everything
they told me, except that
rotten little plastic thing you
scrape the windows with. And n
it still runs like a horse with
the heaves.
So I'm not dreaming of
a white Christmas, or a Yule
log, or wassail, or jolly guests.
The only guests around our
place this holiday season will
be a bunch of foreigners. rT
My wife will be
entertaining a 19th-century,..
German philosopher, Herr
Hegel, who is duller than a '
dish of mashed peas. My
daughter will be consorting,'
with a bundle of Bohemians
called Beethoven, Bach,
Granados and Dohnani.
I'll be the one with the
apron on, doing the dishes, or
vacuuming. (Or I might even
be the one on the bus,
headed for the airport and
Acapulco, with the joint
account).
However, "no reason to
be grievin' in the holiday
season, ' as Kim might put it t'
in one of her songs. Hugh
will be home, and we'll have
some jolly chats about his
future as a waiter, which he ,
is now.
You have a good one,
anyway, with all my heart.
Or what's left.
0.7-14Rwitmnrimigm.tortvrAmmtvolse
Advocate Established 1881 Amalgamated 1924
SERVING CANADA'S BEST FARMLAND
C.W.N.A., 0.W.N.A., CLASS 'A' and ABC
Publishers: J. M. •Southcott, R. M. Southcott
Editor — Bill Batten — Advertising Manager
Phone 2351331
Published Each Thursday, Morning
at Exeter, Ontario
Authorized as Second Class Mails
'Pia Office Dep't, Ottawa,
and for Payment of Posts'', in Cash
Paid in Advance Circulation,
September 30, 1968, 4,520
RATES: Canada $5.00 Per Year; USA $7:00
lagaSg Magnager
SUBSCRIPTION
4.Y., Adigge •":*44:41,4"4 fat?
class,
Commtiniq
rit*ipapoi
etisrMAY4rtsiltizittzNITRAMIti IF:WPM cRod WilzN cft 'Wfillgti vf.tlif.111?fil tRiA'WeitgiaVegrOMAISICkilettsTgreftlkitIMOVIWASIMI eggieetilgtigtlft eftftIsftkagtilftellftislIthsftisfi413?$10%14Mt
1
L.,.,,
§
DRAWN BY DEBBIE ttifiNSULt- GRAND SENO SCHOOL
rtottrovrrirOrtiokOriiiravvavrlii***O*OvrmitOirrOO*4./610ircr.ostgivrrwririrtievrO0410.4wOrove*Ortromovre***irirIOir*OriotiOevrwireivOsio014004 . -arkatovoremotoipstifektweitorobiot
By REV, S.E. LEWIS
James Street United church, Exeter
These days the newscasts and headlines are often
disturbing, and indeed sometimes threatening, anci
spite of ourselves we must wonder sometimes how it
will all end.
Twenty centuries ago people felt much the same as
we do. Rome was the Colossal power that bestrode the
earth. Her soldiers and the symbols of her power over
men Were everywhere, The penalties for questioning this
power were exceedingly cruel,
Herod, king of Palestine, was a collaborationist. He
served Rome more than the people and back of him
was all the power of Rome. Herod was an evil man,
some say insane. He murdered one of his wives and
two of his own sons. There was nothing to check his
evil. The Jews had to suffer him. It was an age of
frustration and despair.
Then something happened, a baby was born to a
carpenter and his wife, and the baby grew up to
challenge all that Herod was and what he stood for. He
Set heaven and earth singing: Peace on earth, goodwill
among men, and the song and the hope have never
died.
Christian people have learned to think of God as
coming in that way, not in the clash of nations, not in
the explosion of nuclear power, but in birth and
creation.
A century and a half ago our great great
grandfathers and mothers were fearful about what was
happening in Europe. Napoleon was bringing country
after country under his control and it seemed that
nothing could stop his armies. It was a time of fear
and apprehension comparable to our own. But
something was happening other than the fighting of
battles. Babies were being born.
Someone 'has made a list of them for the year
1809, halfway between Trafalgar and Waterloo. In that
year Gladstone the English statesman was born, and
Alfred Tennyson the poet. Oliver Wendell Holmes, was
born in America and Abraham Lincoln. Charles Darwin
the scientist was born in England, and Samuel Morley
and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Frances Kemble. In
that year Frederick Chopin was born, and Feliz
Mendelssohn.
What a list of men and women who have enriched
our lives since then in every dimension. But nobody
thought of babies, everybody was thinking of battles.
Yet in the truer perspective of one hundred and fifty
years we can see how tremendously more important the
babies were than the battles.
We people who are supposed to be materialists
living in a materialistic age ought easily to see this
truth, this fact of experience. The future belongs
always, not to the noisy and ostentatious, but to the
new beginnings which are small of course but vital and
creative. It is true of things. Once a man named
Benjamin Franklin made some experiments with
something called electricity. "What good is that?" asked
his neighbours. "What good is a new born baby?"
replied Frinklin.
One, of the members of our congregation is almost
one hundred years old. Since lie was born the first
telephone exchange was set up in this country; it had
twenty one subscribers.
Since he was born a man named Edison made a
glass bulb that would produce light by electricity. Since
he was born a young man named Wilbur Wright wrote
to his father saying he was going to a place called
Kitty Hawk in North Carolina to try a little
experiment. "It is my belief," he wrote, "that flight is
possible." As materialists, people interested in things, we
ought to be used to the things of greatest significance
starting from the smallest of beginnings.
However we are not as materialistic as we are
supposed to be. Ideas and ideals count tremendously in
this age. Just now there is an idea in many minds of a
"just society." Occasionally you hear it mentioned with
scorn, but it is an ideal with a proud pedigree; it goes
back to the preaching of Isaiah and the' teaching of
Plato. It means in its simplest terms a good society,
good for every man, woman and child in it. It means a
society in which everyone has a right to, and receives,
what is due him as a man. And this idea is struggling
in rebirth in many men's minds today.
In recent months a man named George Wallace
campaigned to become president of the United States.
One of his main goals was to ensure white supremacy.
His campaign made a great stir, he appeared again and
again on national television, great crowds were moved
by his emotional appeals. It seemed to some that he
might have a chance of becoming the next president, or
failing that, would be in a position to make the next
president.
The other day a newspaper carried a description of
his campaign headquarters in Georgia, or wherever it
was, where they were still filing papers and finishing up
jobs left from the campaign. It described its pervading
atmosphere of defeat, a defeat from which the people
there felt there was no hope of recovery in another
election.
What defeated Mr. Wallace and his platform? It was
this ideal of a just society which is being born anew in
many men!s minds and consciences, a society in which
there 'is no place for master and, servant races, first and
"Second class citizens:
Christmas tells us of the birth of Christ. But it is
not an ordinary birth. It is the coming of God into our
human life and society, not once only long ago, but
continually in creation and rebirth.
We sing this shining truth in our carols: "Born this
happy morning," we sing; and "be born in us today."
It took Christian people three long centuries to realize
that. For the first three hundred years the New
Testament Church and the. Early Church did not keep
Christmas. They thought of Jesus only as crucified and
exalted on His throne in the heavens. Then they began
to think more and more of the mystery of God's entry
into the world and they began to celebrate Christmas
with joy and splendour.
The heart of the meaning of Christmas is in the
present as well as the past. God comes t6 earth, as He
once came as a new born' baby. And the future will be
His, and we shall know it because there will be peace
on earth and goodwill among men.