If we are to judge from flamboyant advertisements, Christmas, from being the festival of the home, has become the festival of the hotel. Everywhere hotels are arranging festivities for their guests, and the fact is proof that guests will be many. Some development of the kind might have been expected to follow from the social changes of the past few years. A very large number of country houses and large town houses have passed into new hands, and the Christmas traditions of generations are broken. New conditions of domestic service prevent others from doing what they have done in the past. There is a growing tendency to spend Christmas, away from home, and in new jollities artificially conceived by ingenious hotel managers. That is a loss to English life; the simpler Christmas of the country house had a value and a charm all its own, and its passing is to be regretted. Yet the social observance of Christmas is not of its very essence, though so closely associated with it; and though old customs pass, the innermost joy of Christmas remains, for those whom the Catholic Church enfolds, and to whom the Catholic Faith is of all possessions the best. Of that joy even the bereavements of the war cannot deprive us, and at the altars of the Church, and before the Christmas crib, the faithful find their consolation. So the old wish of a Merry Christmas is one which we may still express to all our readers, for while the world lasts the festival of the Nativity, in whatever circumstances it finds us, will bring mirth to Christian hearts.
 

Wills containing apologies

December 29th, 1922.

TWO wills lately proved contain apologies for the omission of bequests to charities. One was the will of a manufacturer, who, having given largely to philanthropic funds during his lifetime, said that he did not feel justified in giving away further sums, in view of the onerous death duties. The other was that of an archdeacon, who explained that having spent half his patrimony during his lifetime in the service of a Church by which he had always been underpaid he made no bequests to religious funds. These apologies or explanations seem to us quite unnecessary. For a testator does not really give, the funds which pass under his will are legacies devised at the expense of those to whom the residue of the estate would otherwise pass. They have nothing of that self-sacrifice which is of the fragrance, if not of the essence, of the true gift; they are but dispositions of that for which the testator has no further use. They are often described as generous, but there is no generosity in them, they show, at best, interest and thoughtfulness. The common term “charitable bequests” encourages the mistake. They are charitable because they are bequests to charities, not because they are manifestations of charity. Where a testator dies without leaving any relatives who might reasonably look for a share of his estate, the case is slightly different, for the bequest then is not at the cost of the living. But in general “charitable bequests” are made at the cost of the living, who may or may not approve them; the absence of them from any will hardly needs apology or explanation. That only is given in charity which is given during life; if a man have omitted his duty in life he will not make amends by benefactions after death.


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