CHRISTMAS COMES TO THE SOUTHWEST.

CHRISTMAS COMES TO

A little mining town in the hills of New Mexico becomes a modern Bethlehem.

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the fields keeping watch over their flocks by night.

Twenty centuries ago in Judea shepherds guarded their helpless sheep and looked with awe at a strange Star flaming in the East. And there was unearthly music above those Judean hills-flutter of angels' wings, swift journeying of puzzled shepherds, Mary and Joseph and the new-born Christ, the coming of Wise Men bringing gifts.

From these things was fashioned the Song of Christmas those two thousand years ago, the Song that rises above the roar and clatter of modern cities; that echoes across shell-torn battlefields; throbs through the corridors of great hospitals; sings amid sunlit Southern islands and fills the frozen wastes of the barren Northland, the Song of Songs the Angels sang over Bethlehem.

In these hectic times we are too often deaf to that song which has echoed through the civilized world since the coming of Christ, and it was with some curiosity I listened to rumors of a tiny town in the southwestern desert that completely loses its identity three weeks out of each year and becomes a modern Bethlehem. This is the little hamlet of Madrid in New Mexico, snuggled down against the protecting shoulder of Glorieta Mountain, some twenty miles off the Will Rogers Memorial Highway, U. S. 66. Ten years ago the inhabitants of this drab uninteresting little mining town

THE SOUTH WEST

formed an Employees' Club for the purpose of making their village a much nicer place in which to live the year around and a more beautiful place for their children to grow up in. Since it was nearing the Holiday Season their first thought, of course, was to decorate for Christmas.

What a far reaching effect that first decoration has had! Now at Christmas time there are three hundred outside trees completely decorated with lights and tinsel, besides each individual tree just inside the window of each home and the curtains are left undrawn so that every passerby may share in the beauty.

One half million kilowatt hours of electricity are consumed by the Christmas Lights each year, and were it paid for commercially the power alone would cost $50,000. Of course there is no such charge. The town is the home of the Madrid Coal Company and the corporation joins freely with its employees in making this the brightest place in all the Southwest.

There are 400 employees of the company and the Club assesses each one of them $1.25 each for his share of the expense of new bulbs, trimmings and candy, nuts and oranges that go into Christmas stockings for each and every child. Too, there is a suitable toy for every child living in town, and in order that the toy may be just the proper thing the school teachers list the children, giving their names and ages. So pleased were the natives with their

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