BY Bertha F. Herrick San Francisco Printed by the Stanley-Taylor Company 1901 The following article originally appeared in one of the Christmas editions of the San Francisco Chronicle and is now reprinted by permission from that journal. The celebration of Christmas, which was considered by the Puritans to be idolatrous, has for many centuries been so universal that it may prove of interest to contrast the rites, ceremonies and quaint beliefs of foreign lands with those of matter-of-fact America