Too Many Toys – Beene Cheela

Naturalist Says Christmas is becoming a Curse.

One of the most familiar practice of our modern American democratic life is the way we load our children with toys, A modern house where there several children is a perfect chaos of toys, from picture books of every description to all types and sizes of dolls in all stages of decompostion, and all manner of mechanical devices And still they come, new and ingenous contrivances to catch and’ hold the jaded attention of our offspring and make them forget for a momemnt the tedium of life. It is the crime of the age; it is a sin against our children. It corrupts their simplicity, it stimulates their destructiveness; it sates and blunts their curiosity and hastens the time of their general discontent with life. ‘We try at the outset to destroy their interest in the plain wholesome things of life by the multitude of strange and startling devices we shower upgn them. We would have them believe that the world is one great toy shop, made simply for their amusement, We create a false taste, a craving for ceaseless novelty, everything new every day, every hour. The last surprise only sharpens their appetite for a greater, till they go from blond dolls to brunette dolls, and from jumping jack to jumping jack with utter weariness and disculet.
It is like feeding a child only condiments and sweetmeats, A sane and killed.’We give them milk to drink, bread to eat. Why not provide as few and as common things for their amusement? Why sophisticate them? Why foster a craving for novelty and variety that life cannot satisfy? By and by they will cry for the moon and the stars. ‘What are we going to do then?
‘Tis a pity the whole army of toy inventors and toy makers cannot be few banished from the land. Lucky is the child that has but few tovs and those home made, Let it have such things as will help educate its senses and prepare it for life. Let the boy have his blocks and his ball and his cart, and let the girl have her home made rag doll.

Christmas is fast becoming a positive curse. What between gorging ourselves with rich foods, bestowing upon each other useless and senseless gifts and corrupting our children with
a multitude of toys,.the day Is of evil omen. It is a day of overindulgence all around, ‘The Christmas tree becomes a deadly upas if we are not careful. ‘Nothing is as salutary with children as to keep them living on a low-key and close to common things. Let them find joy and entertainment, as they surely will if you give them a chance, in the simple and near at hand, Do not seek to excite and toxicate them with the strange, the bizarre, the extraordinary, Let them alone. If their craving for novelty is stimulated, there is danger that they will find life flat, stale and unprifitable.
I doubt if I had one boughten toy when a child, I had a ball when I got old enough to go to school, But I made it myself, I made many balls out of the yarn of old stockings and covered them with leather. I had kites, but I made them myself. A boy learns many things in making a kite, I had sleds, carts, stilts, strings, pin boxes, darts, crossbows, tops, puzzle blocks, etc., but I made them all by myself. I made most of my own slate pencils by. Cutting them out of soft pieces of slate that we used to get one and a half miles from school. | earned my playthings, and they surfeited me. They each meant something. Mae As

Look into any of our wealthy homes at Christmastime where there are several children, and see the wicked extravagance in the bestowal of Toys. It is a regular toy debauch. The children become sated and lose their interest before half the presents are distributed. In a few days most of them are discarded; the boy contents himself with some simple thing like
a wagon or a cart, and the girl with something equally simple and commonplace. Let us stop this wicked corrupting of the innocents.— Jhon
Jhon Burroughs, in The Independent