The Examination and Trial of Father Christmas, (1686), published after Christmas was reinstated as a holy day in England.
’’When gloomy gray Decembers are roused to Christmas mirth,
The dullest life remembers there once was joy on earth,
And draws from youth’s recesses
Some memory it possesses,
And, gazing through the lens of time, exaggerates its worth,
When gloomy gray December is roused to Christmas mirth.’’
—- From “Christmas Fancies,’’ by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919), a Connecticut poet.
