Christmas at the Y, 1915

With finals coming to an end and students heading home, I wanted to share the a short entry taken from the student newspaper, The White and Blue, one hundred years ago. The paper, which was established in 1897, ran a Christmas issue every year featuring short stories, poetry, and other seasonal content. The December 1915 issue also included a short editorial, entitled “Carry the ‘Y’ Spirit Home” (p. 191), with some advice for departing students:

Since we are going home for holidays, what about our school? The majority of us have now been gone from Pa and Ma nearly four months and this has been, in one form or another, a struggle. What can we take with us as a present? At best, only a very small one is all many of us can venture.

But is it? Don’t forget the school. Let us remember the big thing for which we left home; the enterprise undertaken, for the success of which, our parents have been hoping and praying. We can take home to these people the biggest present of all, the greatest remembrance for their efforts,–the true character and spirit for which our Alma Mater stand, embued in all activities. Let us present to them ourselves, cheerful, wild with enthusiasm and thankful. And with a smile playing about our lips exclaim: ‘Dad, I have made good thus far and I’m bound to return and make a finish.’

This is the ‘Y’ spirit. Let us carry it home for Christmas.