“A merry Christmas and a happy New Year!”
These be immortal words. They suggest happy firesides and blazing logs; the joy of little children; the repeated handshake; the ready offering of charity; the deepening of love; and a sweeter showing of spiritual life.
As the words are written, the voice of the cow bell and the tin horn and the explosion of the torpedo are heard out on the streets. ‘Tis the night before Christmas. One can shut his eyes and see the long rows of houses covered with snow; can almost feel the quietude. There is the gathering of families–the oft-told reminiscences. Some one reads a Christmas story. The youngest child goes to sleep on the lounge. Such things form part of the universal idea of what Christmas eve should be.
But the noise of the cow bell grows louder and louder outside.
A perfect bedlam! It was so all day. Not hundreds but thousands of people thronged the shops; and the streets were crowded with shoppers who lopped over and sometimes blocked traffic in the widest thoroughfares.
The increased shopping was only an emphasized feature of the week. There was more shopping–much more shopping. Before this the paper has called attention to the vast amount of Christmas money that was being spent here. But yesterday, records were broken. Seemingly, all merchants were selling out everything they had. In the stores there seemed to be a veritable stampede, and there might have been a stampede had it not been for the wonderful amount of good nature that was shown everywhere.
Everything was bought and sold in large quantities. One furniture establishment had three hundred orders for delivery in the forenoon. Hardware stores came under the shower of holiday gold. And the Christmas stores proper–the places where the conventional holiday gifts are to be had–were strained to the utmost capacity just in selling the articles that the merry crowd wished to purchase in a hurry.
The year has been unprecedented in its financial success.
Everybody seemed to have plenty of money. Certainly everybody made a pretty pretense of spending plenty of money. Wealth was scattered recklessly. The spectator, keeping tab on some part of the multitude, swore that the shoppers gave far less than usual thought to purchases. Money came readily out of pocket, and flowed quickly in the general effort to satisfy the municipal Santa Claus. The evidence of prosperity was the keynote of the day. Charlotte had relaxed and was showing itself and the world that it was rejoicing in the commercial blessing.
This suggests the inner condition–the general bias. Everybody seemed glad to see everybody else. Laughter was heard every five feet. Old friends were returning and receiving warm welcomes. The faces of little children were radiant with happiness. The spirit of Christmas was perfect in a heartfelt way.
The purely physical aspect of Christmas eve was bewildering. The noise beggared description. The little boy touches off a firecracker, and fires a cannon, or yells at the top of his voice. That is the ideal concomitant of Christmas. But it is marvellous when all the sound that can be made by ten thousand or more people moving in a small area is drowned by the sound of a cow bell. But that is what happened. It is not known how the cow bell mania started here; but there is a tradition to the effect that once, when the police shut off all noise, Armistead Burwell, Jr., who was quite a lad, bought a cow bell and gave vent to his surcharged feelings by trailing it half a block. That was sufficient to create the disease–started the epidemic, just as Buffalo Bill’s show blanketed the town with measles.
The only extra business stand that was erected during the holiday season was for the purpose of retailing cow bells. Their use is odd. They are not held aloft and waved as a token of jubilation, but are dragged in a bumpety-bump sort of manner along the pavement carelessly or apathetically, and yet the effect is such that the composite sound that goes to the heavens from Charlotte is that of a cow bell trying to blend harmonies with a tin horn.
Youth and age meet here on the dead level with a cow bell. Col. R. O. Colt cracked his heels together at the square, whooped in the fulness of his joy, and jangled his cow bell. Little Lacy Seawell did likewise. A colored girl with a green hat and a pink waist sniffed the air because her cow bell was as good as anybody’s. The society women and the factory girl found democracy in the bell.
The noise was devilish and incessant.
Jubilation was unchecked, and the police merely confined themselves to a diligent effort to keep the street as passable as possible. From eight till eleven o’clock last night nearly every foot of space at the square was covered by surging humanity that held noise-making as a common object. Confetti was dashed into the face of anybody. There must have been people at home; but the local world seemed to be on the streets. Never was such a Christmas in Charlotte.
The day was without sensational incident. In all the melée no one was seriously hurt. Beyond the arresting of those who drank too deeply, the police had very little to do. Out of a hurrying crowd on East Trade Street came a burly negro who fought hard against several officers. The crowd held its breath momentarily. Then an officer swung his club hard into action, and there was the splutter of blood–the end of the struggle. The offender joined others of his kind at the station, where stentorian voice or heavy, soggy snores tell the tale of ineffectual pleasure.
But the day, taken altogether, stood for success. The beginning and end of it showed a wonderful degree of prosperity; or to quote Mr. L. W. Sanders, “It was the best Christmas Charlotte ever had.”
To-day the note of the cow bell will be resumed as the only pronounced sign of celebration. In keeping with the real spirit of the hour there will be much hospitality here–many family dinners and reunions. And, of course, there will be the usual service in all the churches, with unusually good music everywhere.
Such is the general outline of Christmas in Charlotte. No one feature rises up for special notice except the happiness that is the result of money-making and money-spending. As a token of the times the cow bell has the right of way. If there is peace in you, and you, the cow bell and the tin horn may not speak it, and it may not come, individually, as a part of the flush of money. Here are the mystery and the wonder. But–
“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.”
