There are those who really are skeptical of festivals. Not just of the kind of fun that goes on during them, but the fact that fun is going on anywhere at all. They are suspicious of the delicious. The shy away from the fat and the sweet. They are too afraid, as Chesterton observes, to be any fun. But he is not the only one to have noticed.
"I begin to suspect that the world is divided not only into the happy and the unhappy, but into those who like happiness and those who, odd as it seems, really don't." — C.S. Lewis
Some people really don't like being happy. That is to say they are only happy as long as they aren't. Which is a step up from those who can only be happy if you aren't. Some people hate fun for their own reasons, but some hate it on a matter of principle and look to ensure that no one else has any of it.
"God threatens terrible things if we will not be happy." — Jeremy Taylor
But a place of weeping and gnashing of teeth awaits those who refuse to rejoice. Those who deny it for themselves and especially those who do everything in their power to withhold it from others. They are the fun-haters and the buzz-killers. But Santa Claus comes around once a year to grab those blokes by the scruff of their necks. He begs them to become childlike, if only for a morning, in order to remind them of the joy of joy.
"Father Christmas exists to haul us out of bed and make us partake of meal too beautiful to be called breakfast." — G.K. Chesterton, The Illustrated London News (1910)
If only once a year, we get up early on purpose. If only once a year, we eat more sweets. We enjoy the joy of the Lord and we find strength. But Father Christmas would not have us atrophy. He would rather prefer we stay in fighting trim, which is to say, that we would be growing more festive.
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