Brave, gay, wreaths are in the windows. Trailing ropes of greenery hang in department stores. Thin and bandy-legged men stand on street corners in red suits ringing cow bells. On envelopes are little green stamps emblazoned with the cross of the crusades. An old woman in the South End stares out a dirty window into a dirty street at a delivery truck painted red and green. Young girls in Beacon Hill loop up to a candle smiling winsomely through lace curtains. Mail men stoop beneath vast leather bags full of hopeful verse in bad metre and worn out welcomes. Shop girls run over their heels and smile in tried silence. Fat dowagers in alligator pumps talk over counters with irascible volubility. Little girls stand on tip toe and squirm while a doll says "mamma" and closes her eyes. On Tremont Street gamins paste their noses against the plate glass and whistle. Choirs seek a new Bass for the Halleujiah Chorus and the Junior League trills "Stille Nacht" amid giggles at pronunciation. Beacon Hill buys tins of choclate against the evening when bell ringers and choristers will trudge up Chestnut Street. Ministers fitfully page the Bible and leave it open on the desk at the Gospel of St. Luke. Mothers hide electric engines in the clothes closet at night. Children play with electric engines on a hard-wood floor the next afternoon. Motor cars are set out into the up country hoping snow will fly in New Hampshire. In the Middle West small, angular cards with family crests announce small dances, big dinners. A special train slips out of the South Station and a saxaphone spills from an upper berth. It is the Christmas season.

Why money should be spent, time should be wasted, energies exhausted, tempers lost, vacations granted, plan puddings made, dinner coats pressed, wreaths hung, the Vagabond is the quite sure. But one cannot analyze Christmas without becoming philosophical, and philosophy at such a season is like tea in rum. Nor must one be fulsomely benevolent. There are already too many Tiny Tims, too many Edgar Guests, too many three penny printed hosannahs. What then can one say?

There will be many Christmas messages this year expressed by word of mouth, in letters, through the papers and editorials. Some will be cheery, some calmly happy, some bitter, but all tempered by a slow thoughtfulness. Gold standards have been dropped, statesmen have grown suddenly old, banks have failed, nations have rotted on the vine of empire. Such are the things which make men show and thoughtful. Economists are bewildered by economics, reason has not led the world to reason, depression seems a long lane down which there is no corner. And on this lane the Vagabond must leave you. All that he might say has been said before, that which he could do no man would do. But it is his hope that these forces which have made the idiom false and empty may in themselves restore a truer, fuller moaning to his wish of a "Most Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year."

TODAY

9 o'clock

"Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale," Professor Robinson, Sever 11.

"Poetry and Philosophy of Lucretius, and its Influence,' Professor Rand, Sever 14.

10 o'clock

"German War of Liberation Against Napoleon," Professor Fay, Harvard 1.

11 o'clock

"Guardi and the Venetian Landscape Painters," Mr. McCombe, Fogg Small Lecture Room.

12 o'clock

"Franco-Prussian War," Professor Langer, Harvard 6.

"Shakespeare's Early Dramatic Work," Professor Murray, Harvard 3.

"The Life and Poetry of Shelley," Professor Lowes, Emerson D.