The most interpreted of religions reaches a fitting finality of paradox nowhere so thoroughly as in the celebration of the birth of its founder. Christmas embraces a variety of activity bounded at last only by the mistletoe of the Druids and the tinkling jewelry of Texas Guinan. Those who bear the costliest gifts and those who humbly pray in the chill obscurity of the cell both sight the same event as test for their expression of honor and devotion.

By tomorrow evening Harvard will be deserted, and those who leave will have directed themselves on paths, the variety of which is made only the more remarkably by their unity of origin. The hearthfires of the New England hills and the sparkling lights of Broadway will next week both shine upon the men who are now leaving Harvard. The warm glow of family affection and the brighter sparkle of old friendship will help them to relax from the pressure of December hour examinations and to reawake the peculiar joy in a community of human experience which for nearly twenty centuries has been known as the Christmas spirit.