Of course, all this secrecy about Christmas is merely sentimental and ceremonial; if you do not like what is sentimental and ceremonial, do not celebrate Christmas at all.  You will not be punished if you don’t; also, since we are no longer ruled by those sturdy Puritans who won for us civil and religious liberty, you will not even be punished if you do.  But I cannot understand why any one should bother about a ceremonial except ceremonially.  If a thing only exists in order to be graceful, do it gracefully or do not do it.  If a thing only exists as something professing to be solemn, do it solemnly or do not do it.  There is no sense in doing it slouchingly; nor is there even any liberty.  I can understand the man who takes off his hat to a lady because it is the customary symbol.  I can understand him, I say; in fact, I know him quite intimately.  I can also understand the man who refuses to take off his hat to a lady, like the old Quakers, because he thinks that a symbol is superstition.  But what point would there be in so performing an arbitrary form of respect that it was not a form of respect?  We respect the gentleman who takes off his hat to the lady; we respect the fanatic who will not take off his hat to the lady.  But what should we think of the man who kept his hands in his pockets and asked the lady to take his hat off for him because he felt tired?

This is combining insolence and superstition; and the modern world is full of the strange combination.  There is no mark of the immense weak-mindedness of modernity that is more striking than this general disposition to keep up old forms, but to keep them up informally and feebly.  Why take something which was only meant to be respectful and preserve it disrespectfully?  Why take something which you could easily abolish as a superstition and carefully perpetuate it as a bore?  There have been many instances of this half-witted compromise.  Was it not true, for instance, that the other day some mad American was trying to buy Glastonbury Abbey and transfer it stone by stone to America?  Such things are not only illogical, but idiotic.  There is no particular reason why a pushing American financier should pay respect to Glastonbury Abbey at all.  But if he is to pay respect to Glastonbury Abbey, he must pay respect to Glastonbury.  If it is a matter of sentiment, why should he spoil the scene?  If it is not a matter of sentiment, why should he ever have visited the scene?  To call this kind of thing Vandalism is a very inadequate and unfair description.  The Vandals were very sensible people.  They did not believe in a religion, and so they insulted it; they did not see any use for certain buildings, and so they knocked them down.  But they were not such fools as to encumber their march with the fragments of the edifice they had themselves spoilt.  They were at least superior to the modern American mode of reasoning.  They did not desecrate the stones because they held them sacred.