Delving once more into the amazing treasure trove that is the Blandyke Papers (for information on the origins of this remarkable resource see our 2014 Christmas blogpost) we wish to share the beginning of the editorial message of the 1928 Christmas number of the Blandyke Papers, which reads:
It is our pleasant duty at this season of high festivity to offer to all and sundry the age-old greeting of a merry and a joyous Christmastide. We make no pretence of saying something new. However ambitious may bean editor's aspirations on such an occasion as this to dip his quill into the ink-pot of
inspiration and bespatter his pages with sparkling epigram, he must necessarily feel his poor powers as nothing in the face of the Mystery Divine. And cast about him as he may for a new way of clothing the old greeting, he is ever forced back upon that sublime salutation of the Angel-host that thundered in the still of the night from the very ramparts of heaven and roused the shepherds to a new life: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth Peace to men of good-will!" We can only hop to make our modest editorial a very faint (though we trust, not inaudible) echo of the repercussions of that first Christmas Greeting, as it rings down the vast ages that stretch in bewildering retrospect back to the very Wonder of the Cave of Bethlehem.
The Archives team would like to echo these editor's sentiments and wish all a blessed Christmas! As a little gift we share some of the artistic contributions found in this edition of the Blandyke Papers.
Comments